On target: bulletproof vests prove a lucrative market for Point Blank Body Armor

South Florida CEO, August, 2004 by Barbara Perkins

To say things are busy for workers at Oakland Park-based Point Blank Body Armor, Inc. is an understatement. Walk through the company's new 104,000-square-foot production facility in Pompano Beach and it will become apparent why.

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Parent company DHB Industries, based in Westbury N.Y., booked $230 million in sales last year, up from $130 million the year prior. The bulk of the sales came from its South Florida body armor division, which manufactures bulletproof vests. For the first quarter, DHB's revenues stood at $74 million, compared to $46 million during the same period a year ago. Sandra Hatfield, Point Blank's president, projects sales should reach $270 million by year-end.

"This is not a normal manufacturing facility--this is not just a cut and sew," Hatfield says. "We are making lifesaving products here at a totally different level."

No less than 450 employees crowd into the Pompano facility, each meticulously working on assignments from cutting patterns, to counting layers of bulletproof Kevlar, to stitching the materials up.

Exactly how many orders Point Blank is taking these days is a secret Hatfield closely guards. She estimates the company is fulfilling between 1,000 and 3,000 orders a day for products that include concealable and tactical (visible) armor as well as antiballistic blankets to protect military vehicles from explosives. Since the start of United States military action in Iraq, those items have been in high demand.

Opening the Pompano facility in April was essential, Hatfield says, for the company to fill its rising backlog of orders, which currently stands at $415 million. The facility nearly doubled the company's manufacturing space, adding to Point Blank's original facility in Oakland Park and another that opened in February in Deerfield Beach, which together have 118,000 square feet.

Orders flood in from correctional facilities and law enforcement agencies such as the Los Angeles Police Department, the US Treasury Department's Secret Service and the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Local accounts such as the Broward Sheriff's Office also contribute to Point Blank's bottom line.

The company's biggest customer, though, is the US military.

"If you took all the pieces of the pie and put them together," Hatfield says, "they are still not as big as the military."

Hatfield, who is 50 years old, started out working sewing machines in a Tennessee dress-shirt factory. She rose through the ranks, and in 1992 was named a vice president of Protective Apparel Corp. of America, now a unit of DHB's body armor division. DHB, which also makes athletic supports and braces, acquired Point Blank out of bankruptcy in 1995, then shifted its operations from New York to South Florida. Hatfield came down to set up production lines for the newly resuscitated company and she stayed.

"We have been busy," says Hatfield, who this spring settled a long-standing labor dispute with one of the company's workers' unions. Since then, Point Blank hired 150 additional workers, bringing her total work-force to more than 800 employees--a far cry from the 37 working there when Hatfield first took over the company in 1996.

Two years later, Point Blank was contracted to provide the Interceptor--a vest worn over the uniform--to all branches of the US military. Action in Afghanistan, and now Iraq, torqued up demand for the protective vests, for which Point Blank is the sole provider. Since July, the company has shipped out more than 600,000 Interceptors.

In June, Point Blank was again tapped by the US Army, this time snagging a $239.4 million contract. The massive new order includes supplements for the Interceptor vest, which only covers the torso. Dubbed the Dorsal Axillary Protection System, or DAPS, the supplement is a set of padded attachments that protects the shoulders, underarms and upper arms.

"This is huge. This is the largest contract of its type ever awarded," says Kenneth Reid, editor of Spear's Security Industry Analyst, a financial newsletter that tracks companies in the security sector. "They are not innovating in terms of technology. What they are good at, though, is designing easy-to-wear, practical gear, and they have shown they can execute [orders] very well."

A year ago, DAPS did not exist, says Hatfield. The Army met with Point Blank to discuss its design requirements, and left the meeting 10 hours later, having approved a final design. The manufacturing contract was put out to bid, and Point Blank won the deal. "Just by listening to what they wanted, we cut one year of research and development down to one day," says Hatfield. "It is a whole new way of doing business."

The company has slashed production time too, she adds. Less than two weeks after product conception, US soldiers in Iraq were wearing the first DAPS. Now the Army is looking for at least 132,000 more. With hostilities in Iraq and else-where, there is no slowdown in sight for Point Blank.

"We will be in production for quite some time," says Hatfield, who adds that she may add another manufacturing plant and plans to hire more personnel as soon as the newest facility is maximized. "As I said, we have been busy."