Check out this episode of The Hornady Podcast where our team members Tarek Saab and Derrick Ratliff share all about Kaspar Companies newest venture-Kaspar Outdoors.

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Kaspar Companies proudly supports the sacrifice and dedication of our nation’s servicemen and women. Our commitment to hiring and supporting veterans and their families is demonstrated through Project C.A.M.O., our military friendly onboarding and continued support program. Kaspar Companies actively recruits veterans, and Project C.A.M.O. exists to help ensure all new military hires and their families are provided the best path to success as they transition back into civilian life at Kaspar Companies.

Programs within Project C.A.M.O. include:
Military Connected Competency Program (for Civilian employees)
Veteran Onboarding Program
M.E.R.G. (Military Employment Resource Group)
Point of Contact (P.O.C) Program
Career Development Opportunities
Free Onsite Mental Health Counseling

Our leadership team is committed to creating a work environment that promotes veteran friendliness and support. If you have any questions regarding Project C.A.M.O or any of the programs, please reach out to our HR department by email. (hr@kasparcompanies.com)

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Kaspar Companies and Kaspar Texas Traditions Strengthens Board of Directors with Appointment of Claire Dornak

SHINER, TX, July 4, 2019 – Kaspar Companies and Kaspar Texas Traditions, a family-owned company with seven different subsidiaries spanning manufacturing to precious metals and truck accessories today announced the appointment of Claire Dornak to its Board of Directors effective immediately.

“I am excited to work with Claire and look forward to the ideas and experience that she will bring to the table,” said Jason Kaspar, Chief Executive Officer, Kaspar Companies. “Her entrepreneurial spirit and passion for transformation and growth combined with her finance acumen are key attributes that will have an immediate impact on the board.”

Dornak currently serves as a Tax Director in Global Tax Operations AIG. She has split her time the last several years between Houston, New York City and London. Her previous roles include Tax Technology Consultant for Ryan, Inc., a Senior Tax Consultant for GDF Suez Energy North America and , Head of U.S. Indirect Taxes and Global Operations Strategy for American International Group (AIG). In addition to her traditional career in finance, she simultaneously pursued an entrepreneurial path as an investor and partner of a national where she raised capital and pursued an acquisition roll up strategy across multiple states. Her success is reflected by the company being awarded a place on Inc’s list of 5,000 Fastest Growing Companies . Claire graduated from Texas A&M University with a Master of Science in Management Information Systems and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting and pursued a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Rice University.

Dornak will be joining David Kaspar, Doug Kaspar, David Jamail and Terry Rathert on the Board for Kaspar Companies.

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About Kaspar Companies

Kaspar Companies, a 121-year-old, fifth-generation family business headquartered in Shiner, Texas, started with a single wire basket and has since grown to be the parent company of seven subsidiaries: Ranch Hand, BEDROCK Truck Beds, Horizon Firearms, iota Outdoors, Kaspar Manufacturing, Texas Precious Metals, and Silverback Homes. Kaspar Companies has evolved and expanded into diverse industries while remaining grounded in the founding principles of quality, American workmanship and honest business practices. Visit

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Al’s kiddos are in for a week of their lives this summer as they were chosen to travel to Pine Cove Camp near Columbus, Texas, for an amazing week long experience!

As announced at Town Hall, we held the drawing for the two weeks of Pine Cove scholarships on Monday, May 13th. We had 34 entries and Al Castaneda, Ranch Hand’s Paint and Packaging Lead, was drawn.

Pine Cove is a premier summer camp that is Christ-centered, Others-focused, and Seriously Fun. Pine Cove offers refreshing and reenergizing family camps, youth overnight camps, and youth day camps at their 11 camp locations in 3 regions across the United States and hosts more than 80,000 campers per year.

Thanks to the generosity of the Don G. Kaspar Foundation and Pine Cove for making this opportunity available to one of our Kaspar Companies’ families.

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Jackson Courtney – student employee at Ranch Hand
Son of Jerry (Ranch Hand Marketing) & LeAnn Courtney
University: University of North Texas
Intended Major: Music Composition

Essay Requirement for Application:
Describe how a teacher, coach or parent has impacted your life …
Of all the teachers I have ever had, the one that had the biggest impact on me was my eleventh grade physics teacher. Up until that point, I had never really had a good science teacher of any kind. At least not one that made me want to do well. Science, to me, was always a boring subject. I just could not bring myself to care about the differences between acids and bases. It did not really make a difference to me. I was a band nerd, and was more concerned about going home and practicing.

However, for some reason when I was in eleventh grade, something just kind of clicked with my teacher. My class was not the most attentive group of students, but he brought a passion to his teaching that had a huge impact on myself and my peers. His method of teaching had a way of making me want to be better. I could hear the passion for what he taught in his voice. That passion rubbed off on me, and made me a better student. The passion that he brought to his teaching is the kind of passion I want to bring to everything I do in life.

Trace Herndon – student employee at Bedrock
Son of Bryan and Marcy Herndon
University: Tarleton State University
Intended Major: Ag Business

Essay Requirement for Application:
Describe how a teacher, coach or parent has impacted your life …
My father has taught me countless things from building fence, driving a tractor, and countless other things that will help me in the field that I want to work in. The experiences with my father have shown me what the phrase hard work really means and by doing so it has shaped my life for the better.

My father has taught me countless things from building fence, driving a tractor, and countless other things that will help me in the field that I want to work in. The experiences with my father have shown me what the phrase hard work really means and by doing so it has shaped my life for the better.

My father has taught me countless things from building fence, driving a tractor, and countless other things that will help me in the field that I want to work in. The experiences with my father have shown me what the phrase hard work really means and by doing so it has shaped my life for the better.

Throughout my young life I was supported in all the things I did by all of my family members. When I would come to a town to a rodeo in a town near them they would all come and visit and watch me. Although they all showed me continuous support no one has shown me the love and support that my mother and father have shown me throughout my life. My parents unwavering support throughout my life has taught me how important supporting your loved ones is. I am extremely grateful for all that my parents have done for me. They have given me all that I needed and more. They have showed continuous support in no matter what I was pursuing. They attended every sporting event, NHS induction, and rodeo that I was involved in. My parents have always pushed me to the best that I can in everything that I do. Even when I don’t believe in myself, they believe in me.

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BY DERON REED AND DAMON BAKER

As the week of August 13-17 drew to a close at Lean Focus Business System University’s Leadership System Boot Camp, Kaspar Companies’ leaders took home some critical lessons to all nine of its subsidiaries, in both the theory and application of lean manufacturing principles.

Lean Focus CEO Damon Baker leads and conducts the LBSU Boot Camp, which convenes regularly at Pampered Chef in Addison, Illinois.

Led by CEO Jason Kaspar, KCI is committed to three core values: stewardship, versatility, and family. Those values were exemplified well by all thirty participants during the week-long event. Not only did everyone graduate with flying colors, they showed— lesson after lesson—what leadership, teamwork, and winning look like in an environment that is fully committed to the lean journey.

The “language of lean” covers a lot of territory, but, in essence, boils down to improving organizational team problem-solving skills. While Kaspar Companies has been on the lean journey for the past 18 months, this is their first rodeo using Lean Focus’s problem-solving methodology. LBSU’s Boot Camp course offerings are divided into three broad categories, each with specific courses chock-full of real-world problems: Problem-Solving (PS2), Daily Management, and Strategy Deployment.

Indeed, one of the problems with any organization that does not practice lean management principles is that their organizations suffer from being in a constant firefighting mode. Typically, a firefighting culture will rely on management “experience” to solve problems whereas a problem-solving culture will depend on factual evidence and root-cause analysis in its logical decision-making processes.

“An organization that is characterized by widespread firefighting to conduct day-to-day operations will not dedicate the necessary time to truly solve problems in a sustainable way that delivers improved performance,” Damon Baker (Lean Focus CEO) said.

Indeed, LBSU’s Boot Camp imparts a great deal of hands-on experience to organizations such as Kaspar Companies and Pampered Chef, organizations which are fully committed to their lean journeys. In turn, such companies utilize Boot Camp principles on-site, putting them into immediate action and earning timely results.

Jason Kaspar, CEO of Kaspar Companies, is a self-confessed voracious reader and financials man with Wall Street experience. He likened Kaspar Companies’ previous Lean exposure to treading cautiously through the darkness. Kaspar appreciates the highly-organized and intentional nature of LBSU’s Boot Camp experience.

“I finally put all the pieces together in July of 2017 and put into motion what was designed to be a more intentional strategy … Company-wide, everything that was formulated in an embryo stage was kicked off in February of 2018. Since then, we have been following a defined cadence, and I consider the business system a subset of our overarching strategy … The launch of the business system at the Boot Camp was the foundation-building event.” Kaspar said.

“When we got back, we looked at four things that we want to accomplish over the next 60 to 90 days,” he continued. “Those four things are systematic Lean Daily Management (LDM) boards across subsidiaries, an A3 problem-solving initiative, a Kaizen calendar ‘resourcing exercise’ so we do not over-extend everybody, and an offshoot of an Obeya Room — an experiential room where all the information would flow from all the different subsidiaries to a headquarters.

“I have never heard of a systematic problem-solving process (such as LBSU’s approach), and I loved the way, from a training perspective, mock trials were employed using the LDM boards,” Kaspar added. “I give kudos to Baker because a lot of consultants for a lot of organizations set them up for failure, whereas the Boot Camp’s overall openness and very pragmatic approach tailored to our specific problems was very helpful and added value to our experience.”

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As we continue down the Lean manufacturing path, the executive leadership team realized that in order to add value, we needed to remove a lot of old stuff. Following two smaller, and quite successful, clean-ups on the Ranch Hand floor and the C&C Wire Forming area, the executive team decided to take big action. And Operation Clean Sweep was born.

Monday, June 4th, was a day of reckoning for Kaspar Manufacturing. This was the very first campus-wide clean up to ever take place. Some areas here at Kaspar Companies have not been touched in over 50 years. Original tools that have not been used since the Wire Works days were found in bins covered in old dirt. Boxes of paperwork, folders and files had been sitting in storage for decades and hundreds of stacks of cardboard boxes in the shipping area were covered in dust. Tiny trays full of unused screws, nails and “what the heck is this for?” widgets needed attention. In fact, entire pieces of machinery were relegated to dump bins, luckily large enough to hold it all. The task was enormous, and according to Jason Kaspar during the morning kick off meeting, “It’s our first and hopefully it will be our last, because the idea is that we do a clean sweep and then maintain. The whole reason behind this, at the end of the day, is to make our lives easier.”

Following some motivational speeches and several boxes of energy inducing donuts and large containers of coffee, Kaspar Manufacturing employees clad in blue Clean Sweep shirts put on their gloves and glasses and hit their designated work stations. Sweeping, hauling, carting; lots of pushing, pulling, tossing and evicting of a few spiders led to collecting 47.25 tons of trash made up of carbon steel, stainless steel and aluminum. And maybe you’re wondering, what is 47.25 tons? One way of visualizing 47.25 tons is to imagine the size of seven and one quarter adult African elephants. This gentle giant is estimated to top out at 13,000 pounds or six and a half tons. That’s a lot of pachyderm and certainly an impressive amount of trash. With 102 participants we also managed to eat approximately 192 donuts, drink about 100 cups of coffee and stayed hydrated with about 400 bottles of water, juice and Gatorade.

Stephen Bindus wrapped up the day by thanking the whole team for their efforts, admitting that, “We still have more to do; it isn’t over but we gained ground and we can’t lose that ground.” And speaking of ground, the team managed to tackle and clean 194,754 square feet of it during Clean Sweep.

The mood was hopeful and the looks on those tired faces expressed satisfaction. The takeaways from Operation Clean Sweep ranged from anticipation and worry to renewal and accomplishment, a reward in the form of a token to Howard’s, and a more pleasant work environment where people can thrive.

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Kaspar Companies is on the road to Lean Transformation. We drive it every day.
The reason why? Improvement. Not just eventual improvement but improvements each day, every step of the way.

To make this steady and consistent improvement, we have to embrace new ways of working and communicating. Right now that means new leadership, a new manufacturing philosophy, and a new profit sharing mentality.

It sounds like a large plan. It also sounds like tough, time consuming, head-scratching, uncomfortable work.

It is. There is a lot to undertake.

Implementing new ideas, trying out new procedures, having tough conversations, developing new tools and processes; it all involves stepping out of your comfort zone. Stepping out of your comfort zone can be challenging and filled with emotion.

And, it’s good for you. It’s good for the company.

Does that sound like a familiar message? It’s good for you.

We’ve been taught this lesson since childhood.

Simply open a classic childhood book like Green Eggs and Ham and you realize, we’ve been encouraged to embrace change since we were kids. And all along we wrestled with the natural urge to resist change.

Kaspar Companies has been doing things the same way for a long time. After 120 years in business we must be doing something right. Employees have contributed to the history and the success; 107 employees at Kaspar Companies have been here for over 20 years! The average time spent as an employee at Kaspar Companies is 10 years and more than two handfuls of folks have been here for at least 40 years. That is a lot of time spent operating in a certain way. Change just might be our biggest challenge to date.

The good news is that change is already happening. Our CEO, Jason Kaspar believes it’s a multi-year, even multi-decade long, work in progress. And the initial shift happened only recently, Jason explains, “The start always has to begin at the top of the organization. Our first kaizen was in January of 2017. It was still about exploration, but we saw tremendous results. Then, in April 2017, the strategy for change became a full pursuit.” For Jason, survival is a powerful motivator, and when it comes to change for Kaspar Companies, Jason believes, “Kaspar Companies doesn’t have a choice. We have reinvented ourselves several times since 1898 and I feel like we don’t have a choice but to pursue this Lean Transformation and change if we want to be in business a decade from now.”

It’s ok to disagree with the changes happening around you. We hope you will. And when you do speak up, we look forward to hearing your suggestions and your solutions. Show us your version of Eugene McLean’s lean machine, and we promise to listen.

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Kaspar Companies will be awarding two $500 scholarships again this year! If your child is a high school senior enrolling in higher education, please fill out the attached application.

Please turn in entries by Friday, April 6th to be considered. Supervisors, please print the email and attachment for employees in your department.

Congratulations to you and your student!

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