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Swimwear brings a wave of
By Peter Wagner
success to the Haleiwa company
Star-BulletinTHE little Haleiwa factory is hidden in a basement beneath racks of wetsuits, Lycra sun shirts and ladies swimwear.
Sewing machines whir, compressors spit and long spools of thread reel out like fishing lines.
"There's my first machine," said Ed D'Ascoli, president of Xcel Hawaii Inc. He was proudly pointing to a sturdy-looking sewing machine that he used to stitch surfing wetsuits together at his Sunset Beach home nearly 20 years ago.
D'Ascoli started Xcel in 1982 with $1,000 in savings and a $5,000 loan. The company this year anticipates $5 million in wholesale and retail sales of swimwear for surfers, paddlers and divers.
One of the largest employers on the North Shore, Xcel operates two retail stores on Oahu and has hundreds of distributors in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Chili, Tahiti and other Pacific Rim countries. "It just sort of happened," shrugs the affable 47-year-old surfer.In Haleiwa, about 30 workers cut, stitch and glue wetsuits and Lycra swimwear together. Another 15 are upstairs, in the retail store and office. Including retail stores and a distribution warehouse in Huntington, Calif, Xcel employs 60 people and has an annual payroll of about $900,000, D'Ascoli said.
Despite Hawaii's struggling economy, Xcel has grown 10 percent to 15 percent in each of the the past three years, D'Ascoli said. The company has seen only two of its 18 years without growth. D'Ascoli credits this success to out-of-state markets.
"The reason we've been sustained for so long is we are diversified enough to sell to the mainland and not be dependent only on the Hawaii economy," he said. "We spread it around."
According to D'Ascoli, Xcel is among the top five leading wetsuit manufacturers in the United States.
About half of the company's production -- about 120,000 units a year -- is done at the Haleiwa factory. The other half, mainly cold-weather surfing and diving wetsuits targeting mainland and international markets, are made to careful specifications in Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The Asian contracts are necessary, D'Ascoli said, because shipping costs between Asia and the West Coast are about half that from Hawaii to the West Coast.
"My savings just about pays the rent at the California warehouse," D'Ascoli said.
Xcel got off to a quick start in 1982 making wetsuits for military divers. The company today continues to custom-fit wetsuits for the military _ a slow process involving hand-drawn patterns. But D'Ascoli recently acquired a special computer to speed up the process.
"We'll triple our volume for custom fits for the military," D'Ascoli said.
D'Ascoli has kept Xcel a family affair, with his wife, Karen, overseeing retail sales and his sister, Kathy Grimshaw as chief financial officer.
His dad, Ed D'Ascoli, Sr., designed the lowrise building that houses Xcel and its factory on Kamehameha Highway in Haleiwa. The retired New Jersey resident last week was poking around the factory in work clothes and an apron.
"I'm the repairman," he said.
An Xcel-lent business
Company: Xcel Hawaii Inc.
