An incubator-oriented business park in Philipsburg, Pa., is home to companies with progressive corporate cultures striving to meet the growing challenges in manufacturing today: creating and marketing high quality products; retaining workers; and operating sustainably. By achieving these goals, the businesses hope to evolve the Made in America story.
Industry backstory
Pennsylvania was once home to an extensive garment industry, employing 174,500 people in its heyday. Up until the 1990s, over 5,000 people worked in the sewing trade in and around Phillipsburg. The region once produced high-end products, including Starter jackets and Cannondale bicycle paniers.
Enter Josh Helke. He started his business, Organic Climbing, out of his garage in Minnesota in 2004. The ‘organic’ climber was looking for a better crash pad—the buffer placed on the ground below the climber to break a fall. Organic climbing, unlike traditional rock climbing, is accomplished without a rope and consists of lower, smaller climbs.
After moving the company to Wyoming for a time, in 2009, Josh Helke and his wife relocated to the State College area so she could accept a teaching job at Penn State University.
As Helke sought a new location for his burgeoning climbing business, he learned about nearby Phillipsburg and its history as a sewing mecca. He also found out about Moshannon Valley Regional Business Park, developed by the Moshannon Valley Economic Development Partnership, which assists entrepreneurs to start new businesses in the area. The park is home to a solar-powered regional EPA office and Diamondback, a truck top manufacturer started by two Penn State University engineering students that uses only American-made parts. It’s also powered by the sun. The solar-oriented environment, and wealth of sewing knowledge in the region, proved to be factors that shaped the
future of Organic Climbing.
“Our landlord connected me with some of the owners of some big sewing factories in town that had recently offshored, but still had some employees phasing out,” said Helke. “We developed our first Pa. team off this.”
While the company’s crash pads, accessories, and chalk bag products are first and foremost about climbing, Organic Climbing’s merchandise development strategy evolves from both perceived market need and a goal to maximize the company’s strengths.
“Six or seven years ago, we started talking about, how do we maintain the brand—the integrity of Organic Climbing—but use our skilled sewing abilities to diversify a bit,” said Evan Gross, operations manager.
The result was the creation of a second business, Nittany Mountain Works, with a focus on bicycle paniers. Today, the company’s brand motto is, “From Camp to Campus,” and anything that fits into those niches is fair game.
Amping it up
Nationwide, we see companies implementing a circular design to their products: Colorado-based apparel company Smartwool collects old socks—no matter what the brand – to fill cozy dog beds, saving them from landfills; Pharrell Williams’ clothing line RAW for the Oceans recovers plastic collected from the shoreline and turns it into wearable fashion, like graphic t-shirts, kimonos, and jeans; Timberland joined forces with tire manufacturer and distributor Omni United to produce footwear using recycled tires. These are just a few of the ways manufacturers are allowing us to keep using the products we love—without harming the environment.
At Organic Climbing, innovation and diversification spawned from the same conservation goal—to keep leftover raw materials from filling up landfills. The strategy unfolded from the idea that everyone has a dog. Leftover foam from crash pads is now chipped and made into dog beds. Another invention, which evolved from the goal of using leftover fabric scraps, is a win for customers and employees, too.
“When we’re stacking 25 or 30 layers of material at a time, and using a fabric saw to cut through it, you wind up with a lot of scrap material,” said Gross. “Most places end up just tossing it. We found that because a lot of our colors are pretty bright, and sort of unique, we’ve taken the off-cuts and then do one-off accents [on some of our products.]”
This shift allows online customers to choose colors and fabric swatches for bicycle bags and backpacks they order. And the company’s 30 full-time employees embrace the newfound freedom and creativity. The largest strips of fabric go on the biggest crash pads; the smallest strips outfit tiny chalk bags. Aside from that, the proverbial world is the sewers’ oyster.
“It’s been cool to see,” added Gross. “A lot of the new sewers especially take to the creative aspect that brings to their job. It boosts sales, develops a bit more of passion for the products, and it’s applicable to just about every product we produce – there’s that accent element both to make it unique and also manage our scrap waste. For our wholesale accounts, we end up just allowing the sewers to sort of be the artist—to decide what colors go that day, and what [the product] will look like on the outside.”
A conservation-oriented mindset drives the company in other ways, too, as illustrated by attempts to bump up the use of recycled materials companywide.
“We wanted to get away from virgin fibers or virgin plastics,” said Gross. “We worked with an up-and-coming company in the outdoor fabrics market—but a very established company in sail cloth—for probably three years to get a material that we were satisfied with as a hundred percent post-consumer recycled material.”
Gross estimates that 90 percent of the products made by Organic Climbing and Nittany Mountain Works are made up of at least 50 percent recycled goods.
“The materials the pads are encased in is all 100 percent post-consumer recycled,” confirmed Gross. “Innovation is about being environmentally conscious and how do we continue to improve that angle. But there’s always solving the day-to-day product problems and also looking at the market and saying, what’s needed, not just simply making another widget or another product for the product’s sake.”
While Organic Climbing products account for 90 percent of sales, the two companies’ product lines are vast, and include 17 different crash pads in varying shapes, sizes and thicknesses; chalk bags; backpacks; bicycle paniers; and more. Products are sold internationally, with distribution in Canada, UK, Germany, Spain, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Sales total nearly $3 million annually. Products can be found at outdoor retailers, like REI, bike shops, climbing gyms. Gross estimates 40 to 50 percent of sales hail from the company’s website.
“We’re always opening new accounts, and looking at creative solutions,” said Gross. “Whether it’s through managing our sustainability and managing our scrap waste, or continuing to evolve, you know, how can we make this product less environmentally toxic, how can we be more responsible with our production?”
Good energy behind it
In 2018, the decision was made to build a new facility at the business park. Solar was a big part of the vision. The entire building, including sewing machines, is powered by a 5,000-square-foot solar array on the plant’s roof.
“We ended up getting a low interest loan for half our new building from Pennsylvania Industrial Development Association for 2 percent interest,” said Helke. “We had previously been planning an SBA [loan] at more than double that interest rate. I was able to put [the savings] into solar—enough to power the place.”
Helke has embraced solar power to the fullest extent.
“We run a surplus each year of power generated, after averaging it out over the year,” added Helke. “Some winter days, when panels have snow, we are pulling off the main power grid. Many days we don’t use all we make and sell some back. That’s our goal—so we are not using fossil fuel-made power.”
Some help in achieving that goal could hail from the federal government. Last November, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced $145 million in funding for 700 loan and grant awards through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) to help agricultural producers and rural small business owners make energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy investments to lower energy costs, generate new income, and strengthen the resiliency of their operations. This funding is made possible in part by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act – the nation’s largest-ever investment in combatting the climate crisis.
“I hope, if I can save some more money, to get a REAP grant to do the other half of our building with more solar to put into the grid,” said Helke.
Improved employee experience
Beyond solar at the new facility, Helke and Gross sought to improve working conditions for employees by creating a manufacturing site that bucked the stereotypical cramped, dark spaces associated with factories. Wildflowers and trees adorn the factory’s backyard, and indoors, a surplus of windows let in natural sunlight.
“So when you walk around here, one of the biggest things you’ll notice is this wraparound series of windows that looks out to a white birch [tree] stand,” said Gross. “Every one of our sewers has this view of beautiful trees, beautiful outdoors, and it’s just sort of relaxed. Walk out back and the flowers are in full bloom, and the pollinators are going wild. We eat lunch outside, and it’s a wonderful existence that the new building allowed for.”
In addition to a more comfortable work space for employees, there’s also a desirable work model that arose from Gross and Helke hearing a segment about shorter work weeks on NPR. Focus groups were organized to allow the staff to weigh in on transitioning to a four-day work week.
“We just didn’t feel that the 40 hours was really going to work with single parents or people who want to see their kids off the bus, and really maintain that work-life balance,” said Gross. “So we ended up dropping a half hour at the end of the day, bumping down to a 38-hour work week, four days a week. We didn’t really notice a shift or production drop. Everybody’s just loving it.”
Employee satisfaction is high at the company, according to Helke. “Post-Covid, as many of my first crew neared retirement, many of their kids or family connections have made their way onto our team. So it’s multi-generational and that means a lot to us.”
The whole package
Innovation, employee fulfilment, and engineering more ways to be a good corporate citizen seem to be at the heart of the operational philosophy of Organic Climbing and Nittany Mountain Works—tenets that could be adopted by other companies to help change the face of manufacturing in the U.S. and, potentially, worldwide.
“We’re a small company with big ambitions,” said Gross. “But also a significant presence. I mean, to see our crash pads, chalk bags, bike gear really across the globe and all coming out of Phillipsburg, is just an awesome thing. It’s really a grassroots sort of, hey what are we doing today and how can we do it better tomorrow.”
