According to the Winston-Salem Journal, body armor manufacturer KDH is laying off 280 in January at their Eden, North Carolina plant due to the end of Government orders.
KDH manufacturers the IOTV for the Army as well as the IMTV and Plate Carrier for the USMC.
This lay off is hoped to be temporary as KDH works to bring in LE business, but the slow down will affect almost two-thirds of their work force.
Tags: KDH
I feel terrible for stitchers who are being told at Christmas that there is no more work.
But KDH took the quick payout by entering the market with cheap-to-manufacture junk over licensing quality (and likely more complicated to produce) designs. Yeah, I know that they were chosen by acquisition pogues who either forgot (or never knew) time on the tip of the spear, but it doesn’t change the fact that KDH OBVIOUSLY entered the market with JUNQUE that leveraged NET PROFIT over quality. My WIFE took one look at that ESBI stabilizer strap on my Magnum PC and asked if it would be a snag hazard.
I hope their leadership eventually feels some pain too. If they want LE contracts, good luck on that. I know a lot of Reservists and Guardsmen who are cops on the civilian side, and KDH will never make it to their first 5–or even 10 choices–there are too many other vendors out there who have proven a willingness to refine their designs to balance ergonomics and production cost. I know that this just means they will buy (or sell) their way to a better brand position…
Thus begins the great contraction…
Oh, it started awhile ago.
It’ll continue for a good while still, too. The market and the players in it are likely to be very different over the next couple years.
They already are. Consider ATS. Even just a few years ago, no one knew who they were and now they are winning contracts.
So does this mean the army is going to finally start fielding body armor that doesn’t suck at life and if so what does it look like.
I’m pushing real hard to get my SFAT to order LBT plate carriers, I also have asked to be allowed to wear my personally owned PIG (with issued plates) with the FirstSpear tubes cummerbund. I’m hoping that being a much smaller group that we will be allowed more leeway than normal. I’d almost be willing to go fight naked than wear that abortion of a PC that KDH fielded with the fastex clips holding the cummerbund on.
More likely the Army has warehouses full of it in:
(a) Multicam–a color scheme proprietary to an area of operation with a firm change-of-mission date.
(b) UCP, which WAIT, WHAT, we’re not buying any more UCP gear? Could the end of that fiasco be near?
Regarding item b, hopefully soon. The CSA is supposed to be briefed this week regarding camo.
Still though do you really think that the Army has already stocked enough POS IOTVs and SPCS in whatever the new camo is to outfit the entire army for god knows how many years
We can give that UCP stuff to “partners” in a heartbeat. AWESOME as an IFF tool for “coalition” ops.