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Craig Bennett rides from Maine to Miami selling riding apparel for Gerbing's Heated Clothing. He's shown here at Cliff's Cycle Revolution.

Never a Cold Moment

for Gerbing's Bennett

  By BUD WILKINSON

     Craig Bennett’s business card lists “Dealer Sales” on the line for job title. He’s a talkative guy and a traveling salesman who possesses the convincing charm of Professor Harold Hill and a knack for phrase turning much like the upbeat TV pitchman Ron Popeil.

     “Anywhere you go in life where you’re cold, I can resolve that issue,” he promises those who approach him, and darned if you don’t instantly believe him.

     Had he been alive 100 years ago, Bennett might have actually ridden the rails and maybe even peddled band instruments, like the fictional character of Professor Harold Hill did in the Meredith Willson musical “The Music Man.”

     These days, though, he packs 70 to 100 pounds of samples on the back of his motorcycle and routinely rides hundreds of miles from client to client. That’s because motorcycle “dealers tend to have a little more respect for you” if they see you pull up on two wheels.

     Were his products aimed at a much wider customer base, he could certainly use TV to show off his merchandise, instead of focusing on “warming all of humanity – one person at a time,” which is his company’s mission. But that would strip away the fun. “I love to ride and meet fantastic dealers and fantastic people along the way,” said the self-described workaholic.

     Bennett spends some 26 weeks a year away from his family and can put as many as 30,000 miles a year on his bikes. That’s because he lives in Minnesota and his closest customers are a BMW dealership in Pittsburgh and a custom leather store not far away in Beaver Falls. His territory stretches from Maine to Miami.

     “I ride 978 miles to start my job,” he said last weekend, explaining that he usually takes a 1988 BMW K75C from his collection of bikes that also includes a 1994 BMW K1100RS and a 1992 Kawasaki Concours. “Given my druthers, I’d constantly ride,” he said, acknowledging that he is sometimes forced to fly and drive to see customers.

     Bennett works for Gerbing’s Heated Clothing, the Union, Washington-based company known for its high-quality riding gear. “We’re about warmth without bulk, warmth without layers,” he said.

     Last Sunday, Bennett was at Cliff’s Cycle Revolution in Danbury for the BMW-Ducati-MV Agusta dealership’s fall open house. RIDE-CT met him next to a rack filled with Gerbing’s apparel – heated vests, jacket liners and jackets, and pant liners and pants – and was quickly taken by his entertaining patter and his knowledge of his merchandise.

     For example, as I tried on a heated jacket liner at his urging, Bennett explained that it contains more than 900 inches of wire in seven independent heating pads – two in front, two in back, one each in the most exposed areas of the arms and one in the collar. With the thermostat set at 70 percent, the liner provided a toasty feeling all-around.

     In addition to jackets, pants and liners, Gerbing’s also makes heated gloves and socks. Most of the company’s products get their juice from a bike’s battery. 

     Gerbing’s aim is to manufacture gear that meets the needs of riders in terms of “form, fit and function, not fashion,” explained Bennett. All of the company’s products come with a lifetime electronics guarantee and there’s even a toll-free telephone number printed on the label of each article in case there’s a problem.

     Customer service has always been a goal of the company, said Bennett, recalling that Gordon Gerbing started making heated clothing in the early ‘70s to assist the motorcycle-riding employees of a company that he then owned that supplied parts to Boeing. Gerbing’s Heated Clothing eventually became so successful that the other company was shuttered.

     “He’s extremely moral and ethical. The company was built one customer at a time,” said Bennett, recalling that the founder would himself answer the phone whenever it rang – no matter the time of day. When a stroke sidelined Gerbing in 2000, his son Jeff took up the reins.

     Harley-Davidson tapped Gerbing’s to make its own branded line of heated clothing in 1999. While Harley offers heated jacket liners in only seven sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL), Gerbing’s makes its own liners in “36 tailored sizes because we don’t want anyone left behind,” said Bennett.

     There’s a price difference, too, between Gerbing’s branded gear and the gear that Harley sells, Bennett reported. For instance, a Gerbing’s heated jacket liner is priced at $199 while the same article with the Harley name applied costs $220-$230.

     Bennett noted that Gerbing’s has not raised the price of its branded gear in seven years, and invoked another phrase from his arsenal: “If you get greedy, you’ll wind up needy.”

     Bennett’s a truer believer in his company’s products and says they can help expand the riding season each year from two to four months, depending on location and the severity of the winter.

     Another benefit is added safety. “It’s real simple. Your body lives at 98.6 (degrees),” he said. “The bottom line is that if your body gets cold, your brain says, ‘Get me some warmth.’”

     One consequence of riding in the cold is slowed reactions. “You’re a danger to yourself and a danger to the public,” said Bennett, emphasizing that an article of heated gear “provides warmth. It provides happiness and it’s all about safety.”

     Bennett headed home on Monday but was due to be back on the road in Maryland later in the week, along with his samples and his enthusiasm. “I choose to be a riding billboard. How lucky I am every day,” he said.  

(Originally published October 6, 2007 in "The Republican-American.")

  Vanson Leathers large showroom in Fall River, Mass.

Quality Riding Apparel

Made By Vanson Leathers

By BUD WILKINSON 

     Fall River, Mass. – Five years ago, Kevin Nixon was driving a rural postal route, going from mailbox to mailbox as a carrier in Middlebury and Watertown, when he got the urge to break away from the monotony. He moved to Newport, R.I. in June 2003 and soon visited his brother, Blair, who then worked for the high-end motorcycle apparel maker Vanson Leathers.

     Within days, Nixon had a job there as well overseeing the company’s web site. The 38-year-old Naugatuck native and 1987 graduate of Sacred Heart High School in Waterbury now holds the title of art director at Vanson Leathers. He works at a computer inside a 19^th Century granite factory building in this mill town and designs the rugged riding gear that gets sold around the world.

     “Every day is a new challenge. Every day I make a new product,” said Nixon. “It’s a tough, fast-paced job. It’s not all glamour.”

     It just looks that way, because just footsteps away from his work area is the company’s dazzling, 5,000-square-foot, first-floor showroom, packed with racks filled with exquisitely stitched gear adorned with Vanson Leathers’ familiar oval logo and punctuated by both antique and modern-day motorcycles.

     John Travolta wore a Vanson Leathers jacket in the motion picture “Wild Hogs.” Tom Cruise had one covered with logos in the stockcar movie “Days of Thunder” and Will Ferrell wore one in the more recent stockcar flick “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” Hugh Laurie even wears a Vanson Leathers jacket on the hit TV series “House.”

     Nixon has three hanging in his closet as well having taken up motorcycling after joining the company. “I grew up in a home where a motorcycle was called a ‘murdercycle,’” he recalled. He now owns four motorcycles – a Honda CL175, a Honda CB200, a Yamaha FZ1 and a Kawasaki EX500 – and participates each June in the “Lake Erie Loop,” a 650-mile, one-day charity race in the U.S. and Canada for bikes up to 225cc. Last year, he finished in second place, completing the circuit in 11 hours and 27 minutes.

     Nixon took RIDE-CT on a different kind of loop last month, a tour of the Vanson Leathers plant. While the first floor is devoted the showroom and office space, it is on the fifth floor where the garments are actually made. The process mixes the hands-on skills of some 50 workers with state of the art technology.

     “It’s a bit of a magical science. Knowing how to match two (leather) panels takes time,” Nixon explained. “You have to worry about the imperfections of the leather (and) the texture.”

     Some of Vanson Leathers’ employees have been expertly sewing for 30-plus years, and the result of their efforts is a highly durable, long-lasting product. “That’s a problem. We make them too well. We regularly get 25-, 30-year-old jackets to repair,” said Nixon, reporting that Vanson Leathers uses “some of the thickest, toughest hides in the industry,” imported from Brazil.

     To demonstrate the quality of Vanson Leathers garments, hanging on the wall in the showroom is a racing suit that has survived 67 crashes. 

    Just like the motorcycles that its customers ride, each Vanson Leathers jacket comes with a serial number, along with a matching serialized leather key fob. If the jacket’s stolen and the thief foolishly sends it back to the company for repair, the company will know it and can return it to its rightful owner.

     Vanson Leathers jackets aren’t cheap. Some models cost as much as $900. Roughly half of the jackets that Vanson Leathers makes are for rack sales with the other half being custom orders. Nixon reported that it takes six to eight hours to construct a jacket, with a custom order taking six to eight weeks to get out.

     This is the busy time of the year – January through April – as riders and motorcycle racers look ahead to the coming riding season. Determining how many different jacket designs Vanson Leathers offers isn’t possible. “That’s very hard to say because anything we’ve ever made we can do,” said Nixon, guessing the total number of patterns may be in the vicinity of 200,000.

     Like many American companies, Vanson Leathers faces increased competition from overseas manufacturers that are capable of making and selling goods for much less. Nixon volunteered that the company once employed more than 150 workers and is now in the process of emerging from bankruptcy caused partially by imports from low-wage countries.

      Another contributing factor, according to a column in the Providence Journal last summer, was sagging European sales that company executives tied to the plummeting popularity of the U.S. as a result of the Iraq war and the conduct of troops.

     The column quoted Vanson Leathers owner Mike Vanderseesen as saying, “Every time you saw a picture of Abu Ghraib (prison), our sales dropped… America has always been a place that stood for something good. That’s been hugely damaged.”

     Vanson Leathers can’t dictate U.S. policy, but it can go after the competition, and it’s now planning to establish a manufacturing operation in Costa Rica for a new line of lesser-priced, entry-level gear.

      “It’s going to be the same leather. It’s going to be the same materials,” said Nixon, emphasizing that the company’s more expensive apparel will continue to be made in Fall River. “We aren’t shutting any of this down. This isn’t going away.”

     In touring the factory operation, despite seeing many empty work stations, what struck me was the pride and spirit exhibited by those who still work for Vanson Leathers, and their absolute attention to detail. The company’s “Made in U.S.A.” reputation depends on quality, and the skilled employees deliver.

     “We could send out things that nobody would ever see a problem with, but we’d know,” said Nixon, who also demonstrates great pride in his employer and in the specific products that he creates. “I enjoy the sense of accomplishment when I see what I made,” he said.

     Vanson Leathers can be found online at vansonleathers.com and Nixon said that tours are always possible for anyone visiting the showroom. 

Vanson Leathers factory in Fall River, Mass.

(Originally published February 9, 2008 in The Republican-American.)