Exxel Outdoors said it will increase production and hiring at its 250,000-square-foot facility in Alabama thanks to Sen. Jeff Session's (R-AL) blocking renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences. Exxel has been fighting to remove what it calls a loophole in GPS that allowed  duty-free imports of sleeping bags from Bangladesh.


CEO Harry Kazazian announced that Exxel Outdoors will immediately hire 20 additional employees to start a fourth sleeping bag line that will boost production capacity by 33% at the company's plant in Haleyville, AL.  Exxel will also invest significant capital for additional equipment and retooling its operations in  Haleyville, where the unemployment rate is amongst the highest in the region.

The company's bags are sold primarily through discount and mass retailers like Walmart.


The expansion was made possible by Session's intervention on behalf of Exxel in company's campaign to remove what it calls “loopholes” in the GSP, which provides duty-free treatment for about 4,800 goods produced in developing countries to help them create jobs.

 

Importers of Bangladeshi-made sleeping bags pay no duty on their raw materials from China. At the same time the GSP, which will expire on Dec. 31, was allowing bags from Bangladesh to enter the country without paying the standard tariffs.

“I have not allowed a trade bill to move forward that would preserve this unjust loophole, a loophole which violates our nation’s longstanding trade principles,” Sessions' said in a recent statement. “These tax preferences were intended to apply only to those foreign businesses which do not compete with American workers. ”


Sessions has been pilloried for his role in holding up GSP renewal by both Democrats and his own party, who claim it supports 80,000 jobs in the United States.

 

Kazazian remarked, “We have immense gratitude for our Congress members who are fighting for our American factory – Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Congressman Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), and Congresswoman Judy Chu (D-CA).”

“Because of their tenacious efforts, the playing field is more level,” said Exxel Outdoors President Armen Kouleyan. “We’ll now be able to resume our trend of bringing jobs back home, and more American-made sleeping bags will be found on store shelves.”


“We also thank Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) for his deep concern for American factory workers across the country and the future of U.S. manufacturing,” Kazazian commented.


Exxel Outdoors purchased the Haleyville sleeping bag factory in 2000, when it was slated for closure. Kazazian and Kouleyan hired the workers back and teamed with them to make the factory efficient enough to compete with Chinese sleeping bag imports.


Starting in 2007, Exxel gradually shut down their own sleeping bag operations in China to shift production to the U.S., expanding their Alabama workforce by 20 %. Currently they are producing the majority of their sleeping bags in America and are striving to bring all of their production back here.


“We’re so proud of our Alabama employees – their ingenuity and their will,” said Kouleyan. “Thanks to them, when all of our competitors moved offshore we were able to stay in the U.S. and thrive.”


“When the playing field is level, our American workers are second to none,” Kazazian noted.


Congresswoman Chu became involved with this issue when she learned that Exxel’s western headquarters is located in her California district and its factory was struggling with the competitive disadvantages from sleeping bags made in Bangladesh.