Item 1. Business
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Overview – Lakeland Industries is a global provider of quality safety products that protect the world’s workers, first responders, and communities during the most critical situations. The Company’s products, which are governed by rigorous safety standards and regulations, are used to either protect the wearer from their environment or protect a product or process from the wearer in a broad range of markets around the world, including chemical, clean room, energy, fire service, manufacturing, and utility applications. Lakeland’s product portfolio includes firefighter protective apparel and accessories, high-end chemical protective suits, limited use/disposable protective clothing, durable woven garments, high visibility clothing, gloves, and protective sleeves.
The Company’s strong market position across its focus product categories and markets is supported by continued and increasing investment in its global footprint, particularly owning and operating its own manufacturing facilities acquiring complementary companies or products that expand and enhance product offerings and/or geographic customer territories, and investing in sales and marketing resources in countries around the world. We believe that ownership of manufacturing is the keystone to building a resilient supply chain and providing high-quality products to our customers. Having seven manufacturing locations in seven countries on five continents, coupled with sourcing core raw materials from multiple suppliers in various countries, affords Lakeland with superior manufacturing capabilities and supply chain resilience when compared to our competitors who use contractors. Additionally, our focus on providing customers with best-in-class service includes the strategic location of our sales team members. Lakeland has 95 sales employees located in 24 countries selling into more than 50 countries globally.
Lakeland is committed to protecting the world’s workers, first responders, and communities while creating shareholder value. Key elements of our corporate strategy include:
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Creating a high-performance culture driven by our corporate values,
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Investing resources in high-growth geographies and product categories,
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Building a premier global firefighter safety brand through product and marketing enhancements,
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Driving profitable growth in high-end chemical and limited-use/disposable protective clothing through product development, strategic pricing initiatives, channel diversification, and operations optimization, and
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Acquiring companies that improve Lakeland’s competitive advantage in focus markets.
On November 30, 2023 the Company acquired New Zealand-based Pacific Helmets NZ Limited (“Pacific”) in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately NZ$14,000,000 ($8.6 million) including assumption of debt, subject to post-closing adjustments and customary holdback provisions. The acquisition enhances Lakeland’s product portfolio, particularly within fire service protective helmets. Headquartered in Whanganui, New Zealand, Pacific is a leading designer and provider of structural firefighting, wildland firefighting, and technical rescue helmets.
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For purposes of this Form 10-K, (a) FY refers to a fiscal year ended January 31; for example, FY24 refers to the fiscal year ended January 31, 2024 and (b) Q refers to a quarter, for example Q4 FY 24 refers to the fourth quarter of the fiscal year ended January 31, 2024.
Segments – The Company has seven revenue-generating reportable geographic segments under ASC Topic 280 “Segment Reporting”: USA Operations, Other Foreign, Europe (UK), Mexico, Asia, Canada, and Latin America. Segment information is presented in Note 13 – Segment Information of the consolidated financial statements in Part II Item 8 of this Form 10-K. Because our consolidated financial statements are stated in U.S. dollars and much of our business is conducted outside the U.S., currency fluctuations may affect our results of operations and financial position and may affect the comparability of our results between financial periods.
Products – We design, manufacture, and sell a multifaceted line of safety products to protect the world’s workers, first responders, and communities during the most critical situations. The following is a brief description of each of our product categories.
Firefighter Protective Apparel and Accessories
We offer a complete line of NFPA and CE compliant structural firefighter (turnout gear) and wildland firefighter protective apparel for domestic and foreign fire departments. Our turnout gear is available both in standard stock patterns and customer configurations. Through our acquisition of Pacific Helmets we design and manufacture structural firefighting helmets, wildland firefighting helmets, and safety helmets for rescue, paramedic, and other applications. Additionally, we offer firefighter accessories including particulate-blocking hoods and fire gloves. Effective February 5, 2024, through our acquisition of Jolly Scarpe S.p.A. and Jolly Scarpe Romania S.R.L. (collectively, “Jolly”), we now manufacture and sell a comprehensive range of firefighting and safety boot models. See Note 15, “Subsequent Events,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.
High-End Chemical Protective Suits
We manufacture and sell heavy-duty chemical protective suits and protective apparel from our proprietary CRFR, ChemMax® 3, 4, Interceptor and other fabrics. These suits are worn by individuals on hazardous material teams and within general industry to provide protection from powerful, highly concentrated, toxic and/or potentially lethal chemicals and biological toxins. These suits are protective against toxic wastes at Superfund sites, toxic chemical spills or biological discharges, chemical or biological warfare weapons (such as sarin, anthrax or ricin and mustard gas) and chemicals and petro-chemicals present during the cleaning of refineries and nuclear facilities, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in industrial applications, and protection from infectious diseases such as Avian Flu and Ebola. We believe that we offer the most complete and cost-effective line of chemical protective garments available on the market today. Garments are certified to both NFPA, CE, ISO, and other international standards allowing us to offer products composed of these fabrics worldwide.
Limited Use/Disposable Protective Clothing
We manufacture a complete line of limited use/disposable protective garments, including coveralls, laboratory coats, shirts, pants, hoods, aprons, sleeves, arm guards, caps and smocks. Typical users of these garments include integrated oil/petrochemical refineries, chemical plants, automotive manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, construction companies, coal, gas and oil power generation utilities and telephone utility companies, laboratories, mortuaries and governmental entities. Numerous smaller industries use these garments for specific safety applications unique to their businesses. Additional applications include protection from viruses and bacteria, such as Ebola, AIDS, streptococcus, SARS, hepatitis, and COVID-19 at medical facilities, laboratories, and emergency rescue sites. Clean manufactured and sterilized versions of our MicroMAX NS product, trademarked CleanMax, are used in aseptic laboratories to protect both the wearer and the product from cross contamination.
Durable Woven Garments
We manufacture and market a line of durable, launderable woven garments that complement our firefighting and heat protective offerings and provide alternatives to our limited use/disposable protective clothing lines. These products provide us access to the much larger woven industrial and health care-related markets. Woven garments are favored by customers for certain applications because of familiarity with and acceptance of these fabrics. These products allow us to supply and satisfy a broader range of our end users’ safety needs.
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High Visibility Clothing
Lakeland’s High-Visibility Division manufactures and markets a comprehensive line of reflective apparel that meets the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) requirements and multiple national standards around the world. The line includes vests, T-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, coats, raingear, jumpsuits, hats and gloves.
Gloves and Sleeves
We manufacture and sell specially designed glove and sleeve products made from Kevlar®, a cut and heat-resistant fiber produced by DuPont, Spectra®, a cut-resistant fiber made by Honeywell, and our own patented engineered yarns. These gloves offer a better overall level of protection and lower worker injury rate and are more cost-effective than traditional leather, canvas or coated work gloves. These gloves allow workers to handle sharp or jagged unfinished sheet metal safely, and are used primarily in the automotive, glass and metal fabrication industries.
Customers – The majority of our sales are made through distribution. For the year ended January 31, 2024, no individual customer represented more than 10% of our sales.
Sales and Marketing - Domestically, we employ a field sales force, organized in four vertical sales groups (industrial, fire service, critical environment, and utilities), to better support customers and enhance marketing. We further leverage our in-house sales team with independent sales representatives to a global network of over 2,000 safety and industrial supply distributors who buy our products for resale and typically maintain inventory at the local level in order to assure quick response times and the ability to serve their customers properly.
Internationally, Lakeland has sales representatives in 23 countries outside the U.S. and sells products in more than 50 countries. Our sustainable market advantages continue to be our knowledge of global standards, the quality of our product offering and the fact that we manufacture our own products. We aim to provide our customers with the highest quality products and excellent customer service.
Competition – The global safety products market is broad with many verticals based upon product type and end-use. We compete in a subset of the larger safety market primarily focusing on firefighter apparel, chemical suits, and limited-use/disposable protective clothing. Over the long term, we believe global demand for safety products will continue to grow as the procurement of PPE is non-discretionary and often mandated by industry standards and government regulations which are increasing in global adoption.
The safety products market is highly competitive and fragmented, with participants ranging in size from small companies focusing on a single type of PPE to several large multinational corporations that supply many types of safety products. Our main competitors vary by region and product. We compete on the basis of our product quality, product availability, cost of ownership, brand recognition, and customer service. We believe Lakeland is favorably positioned in its focus markets as a result of our high-quality offerings, global footprint, and brand recognition.
Patents and Trademarks – We own 14 patents with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We own 76 trademarks. Our active U.S. patents expire between 2024 and 2037. Intellectual property rights that apply to our various products include patents, trade secrets, trademarks and, to a lesser extent, copyrights. We maintain an active program to protect our technology, filing for patent and trademark protection in multiple countries where our product may be “knocked off” or where significant sales of our products exist. Information regarding risks associated with our proprietary technology and our intellectual property rights may be found in Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K under the heading “Risk Factors.”
Raw Materials and Suppliers - Our policy is to qualify multiple vendors for our fabrics and bindings whenever possible. We frequently distribute our purchases among the top two or three suppliers, based on pricing and delivery schedules, in order to keep multiple suppliers qualified and proficient in the manufacture of the raw materials that we require. Materials, such as polypropylene, polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, spunlaced polyester, melt blown polypropylene and their derivatives and laminates, are available from 30 or more major mills. FR fabrics are also available from a number of both domestic and international mills. The accessories used in the production of our disposable garments, such as thread, boxes, snaps and elastics, are obtained from unaffiliated suppliers. We currently use more than 25 suppliers located in the U.S. and internationally to supply our key fabrics. We have not experienced difficulty in obtaining our requirements for these commodity component items. Due to the high cost of freight for our nonwoven fabrics, we also seek to find multiple sources that are local to our manufacturing to emergency demand and shift manufacturing between our locations with greater ease.
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Human Capital - As of January 31, 2024, the Company employed approximately 1,750 people worldwide, of which approximately 1,700 were full-time and approximately 50 were part-time. Approximately 90 were employed in the United States and 1,660 were employed outside of the United States. Approximately 1,200 employees, or 70% of our global workforce, are covered by collective bargaining agreements or works councils. Overall, we consider our employee relations to be good. Our culture is important to our success.
Health and Safety. The health and safety of our employees is of utmost importance to us. We conduct regular self-assessments and audits to ensure compliance with our health and safety guidelines and regulatory requirements. Our ultimate goal is to achieve a level of work-related injuries as close to zero as possible through continuous investment in our safety programs. We provide protective gear (e.g. eye protection, masks and gloves) as required by applicable standards and as appropriate given employee job duties. Additionally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we invested heavily to help ensure the health of our employees. Through the use of education and awareness, provision of necessary PPE, and changes to our manufacturing sites and screening, we strive to make our workplaces a safe place for employees during the workday.
Hiring Practices. We recruit the best people for the job without regard to gender, ethnicity or other protected traits, and it is our policy to comply fully with all domestic, foreign and local laws relating to discrimination in the workplace.
Diversity and Inclusion. Recognizing and respecting our global presence, we strive to maintain a diverse and inclusive workforce everywhere we operate. Almost 50% of our employees worldwide are female and, in the U.S., non-Caucasian employees account for more than 50% of the employee base. Our diversity and inclusion principles are also reflected in our employee training, particularly our policies against harassment and bullying and the elimination of bias in the workplace.
In addition, to support mental health and emotional well-being, all associates and their dependents worldwide have access to an Employee Assistance Program ("EAP"), at no cost to them. This includes access to visits with mental health care providers through the EAP.
Compensation. Lakeland’s compensation philosophy strives to provide total compensation for all employees at the market median, utilizing base salary, cash incentives and, in some cases, equity grants to achieve this goal. We further strive to provide above-market compensation opportunities for associates who exceed goals and expectations. This approach to compensation is designed to help Lakeland attract, retain and motivate high-performing individuals who foster an innovative culture and drive business results.
Additional information about how we value our associates' well-being, including our Global Human Rights Policy and our Global Workplace Health and Safety Policy, can be found in the Corporate Governance section of our corporate website. Nothing on our website, including our policies, or sections thereof, shall be deemed incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or incorporated by reference into any of our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Government Regulation – We are governed by regulations that affect the manufacture, distribution, marketing and sale of our products, including regulations relating to various environmental, health and safety matters. These regulations differ among and within every country in which we operate. We are not involved in any pending or, to our knowledge, threatened governmental proceedings, which would require curtailment of our operations because of such laws and regulations. Changes in regulations, guidelines, procedural precedents and enforcement take place frequently and can impact the size, growth potential and profitability of products sold in each market. See “- Environmental Matters” below for additional discussion of environmental regulations.
International and Domestic Standards. Globally, standards development continues to challenge Industrial protective clothing manufacturers. The pace of change and adoption of new standards continues to increase as standards for more hazards are added and deficiencies in existing standards are corrected. Complex and changing international standards play to Lakeland’s strengths when compared to most multinationals or smaller manufacturers. Lakeland currently sits on committees and/or works closely with groups involved in writing many international standards such as the American Society for Testing and Materials International (“ASTM”), the National Fire Protection Association (“NFPA”), International Safety Equipment Association (“ISEA”), the European Committee for Standardization (“CEN”), ISO, the China National Standards Board (“GB”) in China, and the Standards Australia and Standards New Zealand (“ASNZ”).
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Globally, not only are the standards continuing to change, but the focus of standards activity is shifting. In response to the increasing use of certification processes as a technical barrier to trade, standards writing bodies in the U.S. and Europe have concluded efforts to update and define conformity assessment (ANSI/ISEA 125 and the PPE Regulation respectively) within their own spheres of influence. Unfortunately, these are not “international standards” and can be easily ignored by other countries that wish to impose their own conformity assessment systems on importers. The result is an increasingly dynamic standards environment where not only are the standards changing, but the minimum requirements for conformity with the certification process itself are changing.
A number of developing nations are now becoming active in development of their own standards based on existing international standards. This presents a new challenge in that not only are we faced with multiple test methods and standards, but we have the potential for multiple certification processes. While this adds to product development and sales expenses, the additional cost is only incremental. The real challenge is in navigating the certification process itself. This is a significant impediment to entry for companies seeking to expand sales distribution globally.
In many cases products preferred in one market are not acceptable in another and multiple conformity assessments are required for the same standard certification. This is both technically challenging and costly. By virtue of its international manufacturing and sales operations, Lakeland is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this complex dynamic.
Environmental Matters . We are subject to various foreign, federal, state and local environmental protection, chemical control, and health and safety laws and regulations, and we incur costs to comply with those laws. We own and lease real property, and certain environmental laws hold current or previous owners or operators of businesses and real property responsible for contamination on or originating from property, even if they did not know of, or were not responsible for the contamination. The presence of hazardous substances on any of our properties or the failure to meet environmental regulatory requirements could affect our ability to use or sell the property or to use the property as collateral for borrowing and could result in substantial remediation or compliance costs.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made chemicals that have been used in industry and consumer products worldwide since the 1940s. PFAS have been widely used to make products more resistant to heat, oils, grease, chemicals, and water. Therefore, PFAS may be found in everyday consumer goods such as food packaging, nonstick cookware, stain-resistant fabrics and carpets, some cosmetics, water-repellent clothing, and some firefighting foams. PFAS are now the subject of increasing regulatory attention. Both the EPA and the European Union have proposed draft regulations regarding PFAS, which include restrictions, data gathering and/or phase-out requirements. In the United States, a number of states have also developed regulatory standards, product reporting, and/or phase-out requirements.
Certain fabric components of firefighter turnout gear manufactured by our suppliers contain PFAS to achieve water, oil, or chemical resistance. Although we understand some suppliers have investigated PFAS-free alternatives that may become available in the future, no manufacturer of firefighter turnout gear is currently able to meet the current NFPA safety standards without using certain fabric components that contain PFAS. Some of our suppliers have notified us that they add PFAS to their fabric components to achieve the NFPA performance requirements. The Company has been named as a party to a number of lawsuits filed by firefighters related to PFAS. These cases are consolidated in In re: Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation , MDL No.: 2:18-mn-2873-RMG (District of South Carolina, Charleston Division). These matters are at an early stage with numerous factual and legal issues to be resolved.
Although we have not in the past had any material costs or damages associated with environmental claims or compliance, and we do not currently anticipate any such costs or damages, we cannot guarantee that we will not incur material costs or damages in the future as a result of the discovery of new facts or conditions, acquisition of new properties, the release of hazardous substances, a change in interpretation of existing environmental laws or the adoption of new environmental laws.
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Seasonality – Our operations have historically been moderately seasonal, with higher sales generally occurring in March, April and May when scheduled maintenance on nuclear, coal, oil and gas fired utilities, chemical, petrochemical and smelting facilities, and other heavy industrial manufacturing plants occurs, primarily due to moderate spring temperatures and low energy demands. Sales decline during the warmer summer vacation months and gradually increase from Labor Day through the fall with slight declines again during holidays, such as Christmas and the Chinese New Year. As a result of this seasonality in our sales, we have historically experienced a corresponding seasonality in our working capital, specifically inventories, with peak inventories occurring between December and May, coinciding with lead times required to accommodate the spring maintenance schedules. Certain of our large customers seek sole sourcing to avoid sourcing their requirements from multiple vendors whose prices, delivery times and quality standards differ.
In recent years, our historical seasonal pattern has shifted due to increased demand by first responders for our chemical suits and fire gear, our growing sales into the southern hemisphere, and our development of non-seasonal products like CleanMAX. While we doubt that we will ever fully eliminate seasonality in our business, we continue our efforts to diminish its impact on revenues, operational results, working capital and cash flow, by focusing on sales into non-seasonal markets like clean rooms, electric utilities and the fire service markets.
Available Information - Our Internet address is www.Lakeland.com. We make the following filings available free of charge on the Investor Relations page on our website as soon as they have been electronically filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"): our annual reports on Form 10-K, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, our current reports on Form 8-K and any amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as well as our proxy statement. Information contained on our website is not part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K or our other filings with the SEC. The SEC maintains an Internet site at www.sec.gov that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information regarding issuers like us who file electronically with the SEC.
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Information about our Executive Officers
The following is a list of the names and ages of all of our executive officers indicating all positions and offices they hold with us as of April 10, 2024.
Name
Age
Position
James M. Jenkins
59
Acting President and Chief Executive Officer, and Executive Chairman
Roger D. Shannon
59
Chief Financial Officer and Secretary
Hui (Helena) An
50
Chief Operating Officer
Joshua Sletten
33
Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy
James M. Jenkins was appointed Acting President and Chief Executive Officer on February 1, 2024. Mr. Jenkins was appointed the Company's Executive Chairman on August 30, 2023. Previously, he served as Chairman of the Board from February 1, 2023 through August 2023 and as a director since 2016. Mr. Jenkins also served on our Board from 2012 to 2015 and was a member of the Audit and Corporate Governance Committees. Mr. Jenkins is currently the General Counsel and Vice President of Corporate Development for Transcat, Inc., a provider of calibration, repair, inspection and laboratory services. Before joining Transcat, Mr. Jenkins was a partner at Harter Secrest & Emery LLP, a regional law firm in New York State, where his practice focused on corporate governance and general corporate law matters, including initial and secondary public offerings, private placements, mergers and acquisitions, and securities law compliance.
Roger D. Shannon has served as our Chief Financial Officer since February 1, 2023 and Secretary since February 1, 2024. Mr. Shannon was Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of Charah Solutions from June 2019 to October 2022. Mr. Shannon previously served in various roles, including Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President of Finance, Treasurer and Head of Corporate Development at ADTRAN, a publicly traded provider of next-generation networking solutions, from November 2015 to June 2019. Mr. Shannon also served as Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer for Steel Technologies and various senior finance roles at the Brown-Forman Corporation, British American Tobacco, and accounting positions at Vulcan Materials Company, Lexmark International and KPMG.
Helena An has served as our Chief Operating Officer since April 6, 2023. Ms. An previously served as our Vice President of Procurement and Asia Manufacturing since 2018. Ms. An has been with Lakeland for over 25 years in various procurement and manufacturing leadership positions.
Joshua Sletten was appointed Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy on April 6, 2023. He has been instrumental in the development and execution of the Company's global strategy toward higher-value products and revenue growth. He previously served as Vice President of Corporate Development since June 2021. From July 2019 to May 2021, Mr. Sletten was Vice President, Mergers & Acquisitions for Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC, an investment banking firm. Mr. Sletten held various mergers and acquisitions roles in private equity and corporate functions from 2013 to 2019, including The IMAGINE Group, General Mills, and ShoreView Industries, LLC.
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