New Cascade Designs president sits down with SGB to talk Made in the U.S.A. and where there’s room for improvement.
By David Clucas
Last week, the parent company to the Therm-a-Rest, Mountain Safety Research (MSR), Platypus, SealLine and PackTowl brands named David Burroughs (pictured above), son of founder John Burroughs, as Cascade Designs’ new president.
The younger Burroughs replaces Joe McSwiney, who after 10 years as president and nearly 22 years with the company is stepping down but remaining on the board. John Burroughs, who founded the company in 1972, remains as board chair for Cascade Designs.
David Burroughs steps into the president role having most recently worked as vice president, strategic business development for Cascade Designs, and has officially been with the company for a dozen years, but remembers “packaging Therm-a-Rest stuff sacks in my bedroom as a kid.”
He tells us why the company believes U.S. manufacturing has more advantages than disadvantages, where there’s room for improvement, and why brands must boost their educational reach to support specialty retailers and consumers.
What has stuck with you from your early days with the company that you still find yourself applying today?
Back in the very early days, the company tried a number of different approaches to manufacturing, from licensing to outsourcing and contracting – all resulted in challenges for quality and service that have been heavily resolved by aligning the vast majority of our operations in-house. To get the quality and service right, we feel it is essential to control manufacturing (as much as possible) for all of our brands. Manufacturing is in our DNA going back more than 40 years to the connections my father and his partners had with Boeing.
What have been the biggest hurdles to keeping manufacturing in the United States? The biggest benefits?
The biggest benefit is the fact that we are close to our markets and can respond to customer needs faster than competitors who source their products offshore. If we don’t have a product the customer wants, we can make it in our U.S. factories — whether it’s a stove, a mattress or a hydration system. Manufacturing in-house enhances our ability to innovate. Much of the inspiration for a new technology actually occurs on the factory floor. Our Seattle-based product engineers can be on Mt. Rainier one day and working with our factory production lines the next. In addition, we don’t have to wait days or weeks to resolve a manufacturing challenge and we don’t have the barriers of distance and language to overcome.
U.S. manufacturing does come with its challenges. Our nation has much stricter labor and environmental standards than most Asian countries. Cascade Designs’ competitors are typically product and marketing focused firms that don’t do any manufacturing. They source their products from companies that are not subject to U.S. or European labor, environmental or quality standards, which can result in cost advantages and misinformation within the market.
We take a lot of pride in our U.S.A.-made products. Cascade Designs maintains a steady workforce through quality U.S. jobs with benefits. There is a manufacturing multiplier effect that broadens the economic impact; it is estimated that one U.S. manufacturing job results in four additional support jobs.
David Burroughs, President, Cascade Designs.
Obviously, by keeping Cascade in the family, there won’t be any drastic changes, but talk about any smaller changes or longer-term goals you’d like to accomplish.
We are very good at product innovation and will continue to prioritize this in every category. Next year will unquestionably be Cascade Designs’ biggest year for rolling out new product — from Therm-a-Rest’s first-ever tent collection to MSR’s award-winning TrailShot on-the-go water filtration, SealLine’s complete line reinvention, extensive upgrades to Platypus SoftBottles to new fabrics within PackTowl.
There’s a huge opportunity for us to do more around process innovation and continuous improvement around all of our information systems. It’s not glamorous but important to the future success of the company and — as we see it — the industry, and something we believe both our retail partners and end consumers will benefit from.
We are in the midst of the company’s largest capital improvement project in history. This year we have brought online a new generation of Therm-a-Rest manufacturing equipment, launched a new manufacturing and distribution center in Reno and upgraded our enterprise resource planning system.
In the long term, we will continue to grow our foreign markets by placing factories near our foreign customers for the products that those customers buy. We currently have two such factories in Ireland that serve our European customers very well. It’s likely we’ll pursue this same strategy of in-market manufacturing to have a greater presence in Asia.
Where do you see the state of the outdoor industry today? What are the biggest opportunities for brands? What are the biggest challenges?
It’s a healthy industry from our perspective. Outdoor participation is continuing to grow as more people look for things to do beyond the confines of crowded urban areas. These new users want quality products to make their outdoor experiences more enjoyable. It’s essential for us and our competitors to continue to create products that make outdoor experiences more enjoyable. The new generation of consumers isn’t into the sufferfest of our forefathers. Our job is to create reliable, quality, easy-to-use products that ensure outdoor experiences are fun and make life a little better when any consumer is out on the trail or in the water.
What are the best ways Cascade Designs and its house of brands can help the specialty outdoor retailer in these days when retail is changing so rapidly?
Product innovation and deep retail partnerships will continue to help position specialty retailers as the premier providers of outdoor goods. Cascades Designs will always deliver innovative products that are not available from offshore manufacturers to give consumers a reason to visit their local specialty shops.
While product is paramount, manufacturers can no longer just create product and expect retailers to sell it through without a collaborative effort from the brand. Our brands are working hard to increase educational opportunities about product benefits and to provide tools to help our dealers in the retail environment. We have definitely stepped up our efforts to become a content resource and our latest programs strive to embed us as a partner with our dealers to ensure that the specialty market maintains its supremacy in the outdoor retail space.
Photos courtesy Cascade Designs. Lead photo by Daniel Silverberg
