by Bob Ratliff
photos by Fred Faulk

Kappler suits are not for the fashion conscious. They're kind of baggy, the choice of colors is limited, and they just don't look good with a tie. If, however, you're a firefighter or in any other profession where contact with hazardous materials is a possibility, Kappler has just the suit for you.

Kappler Safety Group is the world's leading protective garment manufacturer, with more than 90 percent of the emergency response workers in North America depending on the company's suits for protection. The company also provides protective suits to much of the rest of the world. Annual sales total about $90 million.

The company's success is due, in large part, to a friendship that developed more than 20 years ago between two Mississippi State graduates.

George Kappler Jr., (B.S. '69, chemistry) is the driving force behind the business. He started his career as a chemist for Monsanto Corp. in the Guntersville, Ala., area in the early 1970s. During his time with Monsanto, he met another Mississippi State graduate, John Langley (B.S. '70, industrial engineering), also a chemist with the company.

Saturday afternoons at football games and other sporting events soon became a common pastime for the two men and their families.

By 1976, Kappler had ventured out on his own to start a cut-and-sew business in a Guntersville storefront with six sewing machines and eight employees. He was sewing inexpensive coveralls worn in industrial settings for middlemen who sold the garments to safety equipment distributors. When he lost his main contract to a cheaper supplier, the young entrepreneur was faced with either closing the doors to his business or finding another way of selling his products. He soon found a way-marketing his coveralls directly to safety distributors.

"In those early days, we collected phone directories from all across the country and my office was literally wallpapered with Yellow Pages ads for safety distributors," he said.

As his business and reputation as a supplier of quality products grew, Kappler found himself turning away customers wanting more specialized garments. That's when his friend John Langley became an important part of the new business.

"George called and asked if I wanted to come to work for him," Langley said. "I said 'sure,' but never asked what I'd be doing."

What Langley did then-and continues to do-is serve as the company's director of research and development.

Kappler likes to tell the story about how he locked Langley and another engineer in a rented building in downtown Guntersville, away from telephones and other distractions, to develop new inventions. He admits there may be some exaggerations to the story, but whatever the facts, they resulted in success. Over the years, Langley's research team has produced more than 30 patents for fabrics and production technology.

"What happens is, John invents new materials and I have to make garments out of it," said Kappler, who serves as head of manufacturing as well as performing the duties of president of the company.

The two men looked at providing protective clothing from a new perspective, and that resulted in a vastly improved product.

"In the past, fire trucks might have to carry up to five suits, each made from a different material for protection from different chemicals, when responding to accidents involving hazardous material," Langley said. "The suits were heavy, bulky, and expensive-$2,000 to $5,000 each."

The suit developed by Langley, called Responder, helped put Kappler at the forefront of the protective garment industry. It provides protection from a whole battery of chemicals and costs about $500. Responder suits can typically be worn on three responses if they do not become contaminated.

George Kappler and John Langley, top, inspect a gas-tight protective suit at the Guntersville, Ala., factory. Each one of the top-of-the-line protective garments is checked for leaks before being shipped to fire departments and other customers around the world. A large board at the Guntersville headquarters, center, tracks operations at Kappler's manufacturing and distribution facilities around the world. John Langley, bottom, heads a research team that has produced more than 30 patents for fabrics and production technology.

Another development that helped put the company ahead of the competition is a patented process for using hot air to seal the seams of protective suits.

"With the introduction of the heat-sealing process, people began to see us as a high-end supplier of chemical protection suits," Langley said.

One of the latest products of Langley's lab is a material that allows body moisture to escape, but blocks out most liquids, including blood.

"Some materials that will stop water won't stop blood," Langley said.

The Kappler fabric, Pro/Vent, is being used in industrial suits, surgical gowns, Emergency Medical Technician garments, and even consumer wear.

"With Pro/Vent, you can make a rain coat that's comfortable enough to wear when it's not raining," Langley said.

The successful research and development program is certainly a cornerstone of Kappler's success, but the forces that built the company don't stop there. One of those forces is a concern for the individuals who use the company's products. Providing detailed information on the type of protection needed for various situations is one manifestation of that concern.

"We are known in the industry as the best source of reliable information for making decisions on choosing the right protection for any application," Kappler said.

The company has a simple slogan that underscores its communication efforts: "know what you're getting into." To help people involved in hazardous waste handling and cleanup know what they are getting into, the company provides free CD-ROMs and a website, http://www.kappler.com/, with detailed information on choosing the right application for various situations.

"Sales is kind of a misnomer with our company," Kappler explained. "Everything we do-the web pages, the CD-ROMs-provides information so people can make decisions on what they should have. It is, of course, somewhat slanted toward our product, but it's information on what they should have. That's what sets us apart from our competition."

There's also the feeling that George Kappler knows and cares for his employees, who now number about 450 at two Alabama locations and total almost 1,500 worldwide. Overseas operations include manufacturing facilities in Mexico, Canada, and England.

During a walking tour of the sprawling Guntersville facility, it doesn't take long to realize that Kappler knows his employees and what's involved with their jobs, from the sewing machine operators to shipping clerks to product managers.

"We have high standards for our employees," he said, noting that the people who use Kappler products are often in life-threatening situations. Strict quality control is evident in every phase of the manufacturing process in the Alabama locations and at Kappler facilities overseas.

The north Alabama area provides the company with skilled employees for manufacturing jobs. Kappler noted that some of the sewing machine operators and other employees in the manufacturing process have gone to the company's overseas facilities to train their counterparts.

The company also looks close to home for its engineers and other university-educated employees.

"We could recruit from the most elite universities, but we've found world-class talent right here at home," Kappler said. "And the kids that come to us from the schools in this area are more down to earth and have good basic values."

Cooperative education students come to the company from Auburn, the University of Alabama, and Mississippi State, with the majority of engineering co-op students from MSU.

"The MSU engineering students have worked out well for us," Kappler said, noting that the students are well prepared for today's engineering environment and are instilled with the same basics that were present when he and John Langley earned their degrees. "I'm kind of happy to see that there hasn't been a lot of change in the character of the students coming out of the program at State, because character and values are critical in our business."

As seen on TV... and other places No one has shown up at the Oscar presentations in a Kappler suit, but at least one Oscar winner has worn one. Mia Sorvina donned a custom-made Kappler creation for last year's science fiction thriller Mimic. Kappler garments also made an appearance in another 1997 science fiction hit, Twelve Monkeys. On the small screen, Kappler suits have been seen in episodes of ER and Chicago Hope. Kappler Canada has provided the stars of The X Files with suits for several episodes of the popular TV series, as well as for the recent X Files movie. The Kappler label also can be found in the closet of the Middle East Bureau of CNN and Kappler suits have followed the pope, Olympic athletes, and Tokyo fire brigades. The U.S. Secret Service found that quality matters in protective clothing when they brought President Clinton a competitor's garment to try on following a bio-hazard scare in Washington, D.C. The seams in the seat failed when the president bent over and he noted that such a failure could be a problem in a real emergency. The Secret Service then called a Kappler distributor to outfit the president. Photo courtesy of Kappler