The Gerbing eXtreme Element XE heated gear is still one of the best purchases I've made since the 70s.
There's been a lot of rumors about the company and I'm certainly not going to say which are true and which are just rumors however, I did find this post on another forum. I am reposting it here in hopes that it clears up some of the confusion for members of this forum. This post is from April 1, 2015....
Hello! I wanted to jump on this thread as there seems to be a little confusion on who Gerbing LLC is as a company. As some of you might know, my name is Michael Tex Mawby, and I am the President of Gerbing Motorsports (a division of Gerbing LLC).
Gerbing's Heated Clothing Inc (GHCI)....as started by Gordon Gerbing in 1976 went bankrupt in 2012 under the stewardship of Jeff Gerbing (Former CEO), who is one of Gordon's sons. The people I worked for purchased certain assets of GHCI during the bankruptcy proceedings. Why were we interested in the Gerbing brand? Well part of our ownership is McCarthy Capital. McCarthy owns Cabela's.....and GHCI had been private labeling manufacturing all of Cabela's heated gear for sometime. So when the folks at Cabela's were notified that GHCI had filed for bankruptcy protection, they knew that all the heated products they expected to be delivered to their stores that Fall were never going to be delivered....so they made a play for certain assets of GHCI.
Gerbing LLC did move all operations to North Carolina. It only made sense since Jeff Gerbing leased an 80,000 sqft Manufacturing Plant there in 2011 while he still owned the company. However, after the bankruptcy, it didn't make sense to us to have a plant on the East Coast and Administrative offices and a warehouse on the West Coast. We wanted everything to be under one roof, and in one state. If Jeff would have had a plant in Washington State I'm sure we would all be working from out there now instead of in North Carolina.
I also made the decision to close our retail store in Olympia, as it wasn't profitable to operate it without the Administrative offices to cover the overhead. I decided after two years of running it at a loss to shut it down. We have a number of fine retailers in the Olympia and Seattle area that stock our products if you want to still shop locally for Gerbing products. All repairs are now handled only at our Stoneville, NC plant.
Gordon's Heated Clothing is a company started by Jeff's other siblings. Some of them told me personally at Americade 2014 it was because they felt like they didn't get what was rightfully theirs (inheritance) from Jeff. What is confusing to me is why I have read in a post here and also on the Gordon's Heated website that Gordon almost lost his company due to health reasons. That simply isn't true. Gordon sold his company to his son Jeff....and years later, Jeff bankrupted the company and had to close the doors for good.
So the former company, GHCI offered a lifetime warranty on their heated pads. We also offer that same warranty not only on our products, but also on the products that Jeff and Gordon sold some of you many years ago before we purchased certain assets from GHCI. Anything that isn't a Microwire pad and that is out of warranty, we still fix it for our cost, meaning the cost of the component we are replacing plus the labor. Shipping has always been and still is the responsibility of the consumer.
I hope this helps to clear up any confusion and dispel the inaccurate rumors that are on the internet forums.
I am available to any of you here via email. I can be reached at: michael.mawby@gerbing.com
We have a vibrant redesigned brand filled powered by the best heating technology on the market. There are a slew of new products we have in store for you all....launching August 2015. I am excited for you all to see them as we here at Gerbing have been working very hard and are very proud of our accomplishments.
Wishing you all a safe and happy riding season.
Rubber side down!
Cheers,
Michael Tex Mawby
President, Gerbing Motorsports