| Formerly | Kaasco International, Inc., Kaasco Inc. |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1974 in Everett, Washington, United States |
| Founders | Larry Kaas and Allan Kaas [1] |
| Headquarters | 13000 Beverly Park Rd., , |
| Owners | Jeff and Stacey Kaas [2] |
Number of employees | 200 [2] |
| Website | kaastailored |
Kaas Tailored is an American furniture and upholstery manufacturer based in Mukilteo, Washington. The company primarily creates commercial furnishings and aerospace furniture. [3] [4]
Kaas Tailored was founded by cousins Larry and Allan Kaas in 1974 under the name Kaasco International, Inc. [1] The company operated out of an old barracks building at Boeing's Paine Field. [1] [5] The cousins later had a falling out, and in 1980 Larry Kaas reformed the company on his own, naming it Kaasco, Inc. [1] In 1981, Nordstrom placed its first order with Kaasco, and the company began providing furniture for Nordstrom's shoe department. [6] In 1984, Kaasco began producing for the aerospace industry, [1] and in 1985, Larry Kaas bought out his business partner. [7] Larry Kaas' son, Jeff Kaas, joined the company in 1989 as the director of marketing. [8] Kassco moved to Mukilteo, Washington in 1992, after Tramco, an aircraft maintenance company needed to expand at Paine Field. [1] [5] Around the same time, the company became one of the first to give away free scraps of stuffing and fabrics to local artists involved in the Snohomish County industry-to-art movement, which focused on sustainability and recycling. [9] The company was the biggest contributer to the movement, after one of its receptionists noticed the large amount of wasted materials, saving Kaasco over $3,000 in landfill fees in 1992. [9] [10] In 1995, Kaasco became the primary supplier of curtains for all of Boeing's commercial airplane models. [11] Jeff Kaas eventually became the general manager, growing the company from eight employees to sixty-eight employees by March 1997 and getting named Boeing Supplier of the Year in 1996. [7] [12] At that time, the company was producing leather seats for first-class sections of Boeing airplanes, furnishings for Marathon Coach luxury recreational vehicles, and in-store furniture for Nordstrom and Niketown. [7] [13] In 1997, Jeff Kaas took over the company, and that same year, Kaasco received an award from Boeing for quality performance due to a one hundred percent on-time delivery record. [1] [11] In 2000, the company was renamed Kaas Tailored after the name caused confusion with Costco. [1]
In the 1990s, Boeing, a client of Kaas Tailored's, adopted the Lean manufacturing philosophy and encouraged other companies to adopt the philosophy. [1] In 1999, Jeff Kaas toured Toyota Motor Company factories in Japan which were using The Toyota Way. [1] Kaas Tailored adopted kaizen principles at its factory. [1] [14] Kaas Tailored began providing tours to other companies such as Nordstrom, Starbucks, Boeing, Providence Medical Group, Amazon and Microsoft. [14] [1] In 2017, the company began providing consulting services for other companies such as Nordstrom. [6]
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kaas Tailored was one of the first manufacturing companies to pivot from their usual operations to producing personal protective equipment. [6] Kaas Tailored worked with Providence Medical Group to lead the "100 Million Mask Challenge." [15] [2] The company switched from making furniture to making masks and face shields for Providence Medical Group hospitals [2] [16] and Swedish Health Services. [17] Kaas Tailored also sent a prototype to a company in Holland, who began making masks for its local hospitals. [2] Jeff Kaas also coached health care systems in South Africa, Albania, Ireland, and the Netherlands in his model for manufacturing personal protective equipment. [14] The prototype and instructions were also posted online along and sent to companies in 25 states so that others could join in to produce masks. [2] [18] Nordstrom worked with Kaas Tailored to begin producing masks at its factories as well. [6] [19] [20] [21] [22] Kaas Tailored worked with partnership companies, Alaska Airlines and Boeing to ship personal protective equipment, [6] and partnered with the Washington Aerospace Training and Research (WATR) Center at Edmonds College, which produced face shields. [23] The company manufactured about 4,000 masks per day. [24] In the last two weeks of March 2020, the company manufactured more than 100,000 masks and 30,000 face shields. [6] [14]