Flaming good protection: Fire-resistant fabric ignites success of S.L. company

The idea for creating CarbonX kindled in the mind of Mike Chapman, an engine builder in Woods Cross. He had seen friends burn in race-car accidents, and, after finding out about oxidized polyacrylonitrile, he worked with a pair of Taiwanese engineers to make it usable as clothing.

Thatcher and a pair of friends had formed a venture-capital company and got involved in 2003, investing in the company and getting fired up to see it succeed. "It was a matter of having the tenacity to go out and knock on doors to do the demos," Thatcher says.

That grassroots-level product pitch worked as the company took on DuPont's Nomex, the industry standard for decades. CarbonX also competes with treated cotton products made by companies like Westex and synthetic fibers like PBI made by Celanese. Other competing fibers are modacrylic, Basofil, FR Lenzing and P-84.

Chapman melted away scepticism of CarbonX by conducting demos on the shop floors of steel mills, for company safety directors and for people at the race tracks, working the bottom of the distribution channel rather than the top. Those folks were sold on the product, and subsequent use of CarbonX by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Hendrick Motorsports sparked more interest.

"It's that kind of credibility that has helped us — guys on the ground, talking about it," Thatcher says.

Other companies with well-known brands joined in. Oakley produced a racing boot in 2004 with CarbonX lining, foot bed and insulation. An Oakley glove followed a year later, and now base layers and a line of race suits are part of the Oakley line. Mechanix Wear is producing gloves with CarbonX, and Bell is using CarbonX lining in its helmets.

"We've put our brand strength behind their brand strength," Thatcher said. "They recognize they have brands to protect and often are very slow to adopt new technologies, but in each case, we have offered each of these manufacturers a way to differentiate themselves from the mass market."

That's kept privately owned Chapman busy. While the company has only 10 U.S. employees, Chapman is part-owner of a spinning plant in Taiwan that has about 25 workers, and knitting and weaving the CarbonX fabric occurs there and at Beverly Knits in North Carolina.

Thatcher declines to disclose financial figures but says the company more than doubled revenue from 2006 to 2007. The company "is significantly profitable, and we have a strong cash flow position," he says. Revenue ballooned by about 10 times between 2003 and 2007.

"We've continued to put good years together back to back to back," he says, "and the last 18 months in particular have been very, very good."