February 6, 2013 Leave a comment
Excel Dryer, Gagnon says whatever greater savings his company might enjoy by manufacturing the entire Xlerator overseas, it’s not a choice he’s willing to make.
“[It will] never happen on my watch. I’ve expanded this facility twice; I have no intention of ever relocating the manufacturing offshore,” he says. “We’ll be smart enough to make it here in the United States.”
Fifteen years ago, Denis Gagnon bought a company that made a product nobody really liked: hand dryers. But he quickly managed to turn Massachusetts-based Excel Dryer into an innovator with the Xlerator — a high-speed dryer that cut drying time from more than 30 seconds to less than 15.
The Xlerator, assembled at a plant in East Longmeadow, is “Made in USA Certified” — meaning at least 75 percent of the product is made of U.S. content. The foundries that cast most of its metal components are American, and the control boards are assembled locally. Excel polishes and electroplates the dryer covers in-house, and, in teams of four, builds the components into a working dryer.
Today, Excel Dryer has 12 times the sales revenue it had in its pre-Xlerator days. It’s kept 38 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. through some creative research and development, including a shop of…
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