INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: Patriot Performance Materials Inc.
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William Henderson
President
Patriot Performance Materials Inc.
Q: Can you tell us about your business?
A: Patriot Performance Materials was founded in 2002 specifically to meet the unique demands and needs of the special operations community. William Powell and I founded Patriot with the intent to make gear and equipment we wanted when we served in military. We have extensive experience in naval special warfare and U.S. Army special operations, respectively. Patriot also employs a wide variety of personnel with significant military, scientific and manufacturing backgrounds.
PPM offers innovative armor solutions, products, and services for personnel, vehicle, aircraft and architectural applications. We also design and manufacture some of the best tactical gear and equipment on the market today.
Patriot provides proven systems and products that meet the warfighters needs for individual equipment, individual body armor and specialized armor applications. We also provides armor and textile solutions for integration into existing systems to enhance protection and/or functionality.
Q: What makes Patriots products stand out?
A: Patriot’s products are designed with direct input from the battlefield. Each piece of equipment is designed for operators, by operators with years of special operations experience in every theater of the world. All of our products are designed and produced as if they are a part of a life support system that cannot fail. When an operator touches our equipment they immediately recognize its durable functional design.
Q: Why are PPM products different or best in the market?
A: We at Patriot have a business that creates economic synergy and focused quality control since all the work we perform is completed under the same production and manufacturing management team. We will not allow ourselves to be held captive to foreign markets in our material needs, thereby insuring we can deliver on time, and as requested by our end users. The quality of American-made raw materials is something we take great pride in and we believe Americans produce the best products in the world.
Q: Can you name some of Patriot’s successes?
A: I would say that PPM has successfully provided numerous short notice/suspense projects for many elements within USSOCOM. One of PPM’s greatest strengths is understanding our customer’s needs and delivering a solution to meet or exceed their expectations. In addition to our daily product line of normal production [over 150 items]; I am most proud of our company’s capability to quickly meet our customer’s requests. We have rapidly developed and manufactured many specialized armor solutions including a variety of commercial vehicles, personnel protective inserts and unique fragmentation blankets. We also have developed and delivered many unique tactical nylon products to include, vests, pouches, cases and backpacks. We take the approach that by employing veteran special operations, military personnel, technicians and engineers from a myriad of backgrounds that we can better understand our customer’s needs and provide a solution that fully meets the soldier, sailor, Marine or airman’s requirements. So for me, the daily challenge of anticipating needs or responding to requests and delivering useful products to our warfighters continues to be my source of satisfaction and pride. Our success is measured by the continued favorable comments we get back from the users.
Q: What are Patriots’ goals for 2007 and beyond?
A: While we continue to focus on growing our core business, we are expanding into the military service industry as well. We have hundreds of years of institutional knowledge within Patriot in operating in austere environments. This experience is a valuable commodity for the big army as they are being tasked to do more and more in these types of environments. For example, Patriot was tasked by TACOM to provide a facility and all personnel to provide for the installation of add on armor kits to heavy and medium wheeled vehicles in Kuwait. From contract award in January 2005, PPM secured, retrofitted, tooled and staffed a stand-alone vehicle service facility and was producing armored vehicles within 20 days of contract award. Our initial contract was for a 6-month period, but burgeoned to a 13- month effort due to our tremendous productivity and quality. In the 13-month period ending in March 2006, PPM successfully armored 1,157 medium wheeled vehicles. We will continue to offer these types of services to the military and plan to grow the service side of our business in the coming years.
Q: How is Patriot positioned in the marketplace?
A: We are a young company with a streamlined management team that enables us to react quickly to our customers needs. Everyday we strive to become a more vertically integrated company enabling us to increase the speed, flexibility and control of our solutions. It is this methodology that has allowed Patriot to experience consistent and controlled growth over the last four years.
Additionally, our growth has allowed us to expand into other areas that support our core business segments. This methodology has gained us consistent market growth and penetration in our industry segment. With our continued emphasis on adding additional capabilities/ capacity, we are positioning ourselves to be the market leaders in the design, engineering, and manufacturing of armor, armor components and tactical nylon products in the USA. ♦