INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING, CONSUMER, AND PRODUCT- BULLETPROOF VEST

Cheap Shots: How Marketing Ploys For Bulletproof Vests Take Aim at Police --- Makers Cast Doubt on Rivals, Even Though Standards For Safety Are Uniform --- Worry Costs a Sergeant Sleep By Jeff Bailey . Wall Street Journal , Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]23 Sep 1999: A1.

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ABSTRACT (ABSTRACT) Officer (Angela) Watson was wearing a bullet-resistant vest, rated by the National Institute of Justice to stop most

9mm or .357-caliber Magnum bullets. Her assailant, however, fired a .44-caliber Magnum, a round exceeding her

vest's rated stopping power, from a six-inch barrel, which added to the bullet's velocity.

Actually, so-called bulletproof vests often knock down bullets beyond their rated stopping power. And there hasn't

been a single documented instance of an NIJ-certified vest failing to stop a bullet covered by its rating, says the

NIJ, an arm of the Justice Department. With a record like that, safety might seem a given in the body-armor market,

allowing manufacturers to stress comfort, price and service. And, indeed, much of their sales effort focuses on

those secondary concerns.

DuPont Co., the maker of Kevlar, saw its near-monopoly in bulletproof material threatened in the early 1990s by

AlliedSignal Inc.'s Spectra fiber, and fought back with a flaming dummy named Thermoman. To scare cops,

according to a 1991 lawsuit filed by AlliedSignal in federal court in New Jersey, DuPont's Thermoman mannequin,

dressed in a flame-resistant coverall, was fitted with a Spectra vest and heated up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit or so,

igniting the AlliedSignal material.

FULL TEXT Ohio State Trooper Angela Watson pulled over to check on a man walking along the highway on July 27, 1997, and

after she approached him on foot, he pulled a pistol and fired four shots at her.

Officer Watson was wearing a bullet-resistant vest, rated by the National Institute of Justice to stop most 9mm or

.357-caliber Magnum bullets. Her assailant, however, fired a .44-caliber Magnum, a round exceeding her vest's

rated stopping power, from a six-inch barrel, which added to the bullet's velocity.

Three of the shots missed. One hit her in the ribs. "When it first hit me, it just stung a little," the 28-year-old officer

says. Moving behind her patrol car, she returned fire, wounding the man, who then inexplicably shot and killed

himself. Officer Watson was surprised to walk away with just a bruise and a gunpowder burn. "The vest wasn't

even supposed to stop that round," she says.

Actually, so-called bulletproof vests often knock down bullets beyond their rated stopping power. And there hasn't

been a single documented instance of an NIJ-certified vest failing to stop a bullet covered by its rating, says the

NIJ, an arm of the Justice Department. With a record like that, safety might seem a given in the body-armor market,

allowing manufacturers to stress comfort, price and service. And, indeed, much of their sales effort focuses on

those secondary concerns.

But the body-armor industry can't seem to kick a bad habit: warning customers that, if they buy a competitor's vest,

the choice could prove fatal.

DuPont Co., the maker of Kevlar, saw its near-monopoly in bulletproof material threatened in the early 1990s by

AlliedSignal Inc.'s Spectra fiber, and fought back with a flaming dummy named Thermoman. To scare cops,

according to a 1991 lawsuit filed by AlliedSignal in federal court in New Jersey, DuPont's Thermoman mannequin,

dressed in a flame-resistant coverall, was fitted with a Spectra vest and heated up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit or so,

igniting the AlliedSignal material.

It made for frightening video, and was sent out to some police departments, the suit says, even though a police

officer facing such a threat would have suffered fatal burns long before his vest caught fire. The company settled

the lawsuit but won't disclose terms.

Some of the small cut-and-sew companies that actually assemble bulletproof vests, meanwhile, have shot holes in

one another's products on video and in actual demonstrations before police officers; and, they have trafficked in

studies full of technical data purporting to question the bullet-stopping powers of a competitor's vest. The result is

a pile of lawsuits, and a seamy picture of the intersection between safety and profits.

The targets of these ploys are typically the police officers assigned to choose their departments' vests. They often

lack the technical training to separate a cheapshot sales pitch from a legitimate question of life and death. "I

actually laid awake nights worrying about being given that responsibility," H. Lee Lawrence, a Houston Police

Department sergeant, said in a deposition taken in a product-disparagement lawsuit between rival vest makers.

It's one thing, of course, for the makers of Coke and Pepsi, or Pampers and Huggies, to claim their products beat

the competition. But when safety concerns affect an entire industry, some say comparison marketing that exploits

that issue isn't such a good idea. "We would never get involved in something like that," says Barbara Paez, director

of marketing for chain-saw maker Husqvarna Forest &Garden Co., a unit of Electrolux SA of Sweden. In chain saws,

Ms. Paez adds, "safety is a very delicate issue."

While bad-mouthing the competition might win a particular vest contract, the small and insular body-armor

industry, with annual U.S. sales of about $80 million, can't claim overall to be a marketing success: only about 40%

of the nation's cops routinely wear a vest, DuPont says.

So, why does the low road beckon? "A lot of the grudges between companies are personal," says Jonathan M.

Spiller, president and chief executive officer of Armor Holdings Inc., a Jacksonville, Fla., company that owns two

longtime vest makers, American Body Armor and Safari Land Ltd.

Many of the grudges, it seems, are either held by or against one man, Thomas E. "Ed" Bachner Jr. While working at

DuPont, "I led the team that circulated" the Thermoman video, Mr. Bachner says.

He believes fervently that bulletproof vests should be lighter, some NIJ standards be damned, so that comfort-

minded cops would actually wear them.

Mr. Bachner's other fervent belief is that many others in the body armor business have conspired against him and

the company he now works for, Second Chance Body Armor Inc., Central Lake, Mich. Second Chance has kept

product-disparagement lawsuits going against American Body Armor and Safari Land for four years in federal

court, at considerable expense, even though Mr. Bachner says Second Chance's sales have boomed since the

alleged mudslinging by those companies began.

"It's difficult to show damages for a company whose sales have tripled," he says, refusing to disclose those sales.

But he adds: "We're suing their butts."

Something short of a visionary, perhaps, but Mr. Bachner, 54, certainly qualifies as a man with a really strong point

of view. And that's sometimes enough to change an entire industry. His passion may account for much of the

conflict in the body-armor business, but it also has helped drive vest weights down to as little as 2.6 pounds from

about four pounds a decade ago. Second Chance has aggressively developed and marketed everlighter vests.

In Massachusetts in 1994, the state appropriated $10 million to buy vests, giving state and local police officers

their choice among several brands. Second Chance was getting "the lion's share. They sold like 85% of the state,"

says Paul Barry, owner of Doughboy Police Supply in Dorchester, a Safari Land dealer.

So, according to a Second Chance lawsuit filed in federal court in Maryland in 1995, an American Body Armor

dealer, Richard Armellino, made a videotape, shooting what was clearly a Second Chance vest. "We have a

penetration here," Mr. Armellino says on the video. Second Chance asserts in the lawsuit that it was "a dirty shoot,"

using a steel-jacketed bullet the vest couldn't be expected to stop, and says the video scared off some buyers. "It

killed our business in the state police barracks," Mr. Bachner says.

Mr. Armellino calls the Second Chance suit "ridiculous," but declines to elaborate.

In Houston, meanwhile, a contract to supply armor to that city's police went to Safari Land in 1995. Second

Chance, in a lawsuit also filed in federal court in Maryland, alleges Safari Land representatives gave to Sgt.

Lawrence and others reports disparaging a Second Chance vest. It mightn't be thick enough in some areas to

prevent a harmful deformation, or dent, to the torso; it retained too much perspiration, a potential problem since

Kevlar loses some bullet-stopping power when wet, the reports claimed. A Safari Land sales manager, Mike

McCarey, asked Houston officials to keep the reports secret. "In fact, we prefer it to be excluded from the Freedom

of Information Act," he wrote. "Its release to the general public will give rise to incorrect perception of our intent."

Armor Holdings won't comment on the suits against its Safari Land and American Body Armor units. Mr. Spiller, its

CEO, says, "We don't denigrate other people's products." But, he adds, "That wasn't always the case."

Mr. Bachner was at DuPont, working in hosiery-yarns development, when Kevlar caught the eye of law-enforcement

outfitters. By the early 1970s, a few small companies were producing Kevlar vests, and the NIJ was developing

ways to certify their bullet-stopping capabilities.

Sales took off. Reports of police officers saved by their vests from gunfire began to surface. (Sales to people other

than law-enforcement officers aren't forbidden by law, though some vest dealers won't sell to most civilians.)

Mr. Bachner, a gun enthusiast and hunter, had by the mid-1980s worked his way through "bras and slips and

double-knits" at DuPont, he says, and was assigned to market Kevlar for ballistic applications. Kevlar had a near-

monopoly in bulletproof vests. And Mr. Bachner was able to personally examine most vests that were fired on in

the line of duty. He concluded the vests were over-protective, which also made them too hot and heavy and

discouraged policemen from wearing them.

The NIJ was unintentionally headed in the opposite direction. Moving to clean up some poor record-keeping, the

NIJ in 1987 brought in a new contractor to handle vest testing. The agency slightly altered the test, which involves

a series of six shots, and subjected all the vests on the market to retesting; 50 of 84 failed, with most being

penetrated by a bullet.

Many vest failures in the test happened after initial gunshots caused the vest to bunch, leaving the torso --

actually, a clay dummy -- partly unprotected from subsequent shots. Vest makers and DuPont argued that vests

don't bunch up when shot on real bodies, though proof of that assertion is hard to come by. To get certification,

vest makers say they had to stiffen their product, making it less comfortable.

Vest makers and DuPont were livid, asserting that cops were resisting wearing the heavier vests. Some in the

business "began circulating flyers" accusing the NIJ of "indirect responsibility for the murder of police officers,"

wrote David Boyd, NIJ's deputy director, in a history of NIJ technology development. The upheaval caused by the

test failures led to a general decline in civility, vest makers say, and an increase in product disparagement and dirty

tricks.

Slowly, however, vest makers found ways to lighten up their armor while maintaining NIJ-certified stopping power.

The ideal, says Steve Young, a Safari Land official: "A handkerchief that stops a howitzer."

Vest makers now claim the days of the dirty tricks are mostly over. Second Chance in recent weeks has even been

talking settlement with Safari Land and American Body Armor. However, a newgeneration NIJ test is scheduled for

next year. And even though vests already on the market needn't be tested, some manufacturers are saying they will

retest all their vests rather than watch competitors scare cops by telling them a particular model of vest hasn't

passed the latest NIJ test.

Says Steve Armellino, president of U.S. Armor Corp. and the brother of Richard Armellino, the American Body

Armor dealer: "They should have us all sign disclaimers -- an agreement not to disparage."

Credit: Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

DETAILS

Subject: Protective clothing; Police; Marketing; Standards

Publication title: Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.

Pages: A1

Number of pages: 0

Publication year: 1999

Publication date: Sep 23, 1999

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Publisher: Dow Jones &Company Inc

Place of publication: New York, N.Y.

Country of publication: United States, New York, N.Y.

Publication subject: Business And Economics--Banking And Finance

ISSN: 00999660

Source type: Newspapers

Language of publication: English

Document type: News

Accession number: 05715394

ProQuest document ID: 398735697

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Copyright: Copyright Dow Jones &Company Inc Sep 23, 1999

Last updated: 2017-11-02

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