BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:

In the global marketplace, more and more American consumer product companies find it more profitable to manufacture their goods with cheap labor in foreign export economies. But not businessman Harry Kazazian, who lives in Glendale.

Kazazian, the owner of outdoor apparel and accessories manufacturer Exxel Outdoors, is no stranger to outsourcing: He produces a variety of camouflage military apparel and hunting gear in China.

But he insists that it’s better for business to manufacture at least one enduring Exxel product — the standard sleeping bag — in the U.S.

Chances are if consumers buy one of those rectangular, nylon sleeping bags with flannel interior and polyester filling — as opposed to the down-stuffed “mummy” bags preferred by serious outdoor enthusiasts — it was made by Exxel in Halleville, Ala., he said.

“We sell more sleeping bags than any other producer in the country,” Kazazian said. “We may not make the most in sales, since our sleeping bags are less expensive, but in terms of units, we’re No. 1.”

Kazazian, who grew up in Hollywood and had post-college rock ‘n’ roll aspirations, fell into the manufacturing industry when his uncle — an immigrant from Lebanon — needed an English speaker to help with the family business, he said.

That gig mushroomed into a fast-paced apparel sales operation of his own, in which Kazazian bought and sold military-style clothes out of his Hollywood garage. Though still a small business at heart, sales were growing in the early 1990s — due in part to increased demand for camouflage gear during the Gulf War in 1990 — and Kazazian bought a warehouse and factory in Laredo, Texas.

It wasn’t long before Kazazian added hunting, fishing and general outdoor apparel to his inventory and followed the path of so many other American companies south of the border to Mexico for production.

So when Kazazian read in a newspaper article on a return trip from Mexico that the Brunswick Corporation — one of Exxel’s main former competitors — was cutting its outdoors division, he negotiated to acquire that portion of the company, he said.

He paid $6.8 million for Brunswick’s 250,000-square-foot Alabama factory and all its assets, but the plan was to liquidate the operation and move it to Mexico, he said.

“But then looking at the books, we thought maybe this can work staying right here,” Kazazian said.

Around the same time, Kazazian was getting fed up with doing business in Mexico, where learning the business regulations of a foreign government took its toll and the business found itself caught in the middle of a labor war.

So instead of scavenging the Alabama plant, Exxel reinvented it: They scaled back the local workforce from 125 to about 100 and brought in custom-made automated machinery, said Barbara Garrison, who worked at the plant when it was owned by Brunswick and now serves as vice president for Exxel.

“After Harry acquired it, he almost immediately saw that we could manufacture sleeping bags here at a lesser expense that what he had in Mexico,” Garrison said. “The way we were able to do it is, we had such a small layer of management, and Harry .?.?. was much more willing to work on a lower margin that what the Brunswick people had wanted to do.”

Moving Exxel’s sleeping bag production to Alabama, Kazazian closed his Mexico operation and moved apparel manufacturing to China.

“We do the best we can,” he said. “Making the sleeping bags with local labor, we’ve found it to be cheaper than the cost of freight from China, but not all goods are going to be like that.”

The bags, available at most outdoor sporting goods stores and major chain retailers like Wal-Mart and K-Mart, range from about $9.99 to $29.99, Kazazian said.