By Juan Forero, Washington Post, May 28, 2013
BOGOTA, Colombia—Miguel Caballero’s business, making bulletproof clothing for the fashion-conscious, has grown over the years as presidents to police chiefs to oil sheiks from as far away as Qatar have become loyal customers.
Dubbed “the Armani of bulletproof clothing,” the Bogota-based company that bears his name sells trench coats, sweaters, leather jackets and blazers, along with more standard fare, bulletproof vests. But now Caballero, ever on the lookout for new customers, is zeroing in on an untapped market: American schoolchildren.
With his new line, MC Kids, Caballero offers backpacks and jackets for kids, including some in girlie pink and stamped with fluttering fairies, that are also outfitted with bulletproof plating to stop the slugs from an Uzi. Caballero, 46, said that in his 20 years of business, there had never been a demand in Colombia for bulletproof children’s clothing.
But the United States is a different market: a country where there are about as many firearms as people, Caballero pointed out, and where mass shootings have simply prompted some to stock up on weapons and seek other forms of protection.
“The rest of the countries in the world try to disarm, but in the United States they say, ‘Let’s protect ourselves,’” he said. “So in that light, that’s a business opportunity.”
About 300 of the children’s rucksacks, retailing for just under $300, have been sold in metropolitan Denver by Caballero’s U.S. distributor, Elite Sterling Security, said the U.S. company’s founder, A.J. Zabadne.
Elite Sterling is now trying to interest school districts in that area—where memories of the Columbine school shooting and the massacre at the Aurora movie theater are fresh—to buy Caballero’s bright-red safety vests. Those would be bought in bulk and stored in classrooms until “a ballistics emergency,” as Caballero puts it.
“We’re pushing this for classrooms—a sort of tactical vest,” Zabadne said by phone from Denver, noting that some schools have shown interest but no orders have been placed. “And we’re hoping that some schools will realize the utility of having this item in a classroom in case something goes wrong.”
Other companies have also begun to sell similar items, including Massachusetts-based Bullet Blocker and a company in Salt Lake City, Amendment II.
Some parents and educators, though, were flabbergasted when they heard of plans to outfit kindergarteners with the kind of armor plating used by police officers and soldiers.
“I said, ‘What?’” said Hector Sanchez, principal of the Cesar A. Batalla Elementary School in Bridgeport, Conn., 22 miles from Newtown, where a gunman killed 20 first-graders in their classrooms in December.
“This is the state of affairs when we get to the point that we would have to buy bulletproof clothing. It’s scary,” said Sanchez, who said a national system of background checks on gun buyers would have been “a common sense” response to the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence in Washington, said it’s a “a complete indictment for our gun policy that we’d put bulletproof clothing on our children instead of stopping the bullets in the first place.”
Here in Colombia, Caballero said he is not exploiting a tragic situation but rather offering a partial solution. He said that in the week after the shootings at Sandy Hook, he received e-mails from 40 people in the United States asking for help protecting their children.
“We’re not in the war business,” said Caballero. “We’re in the business of defense, and in that sense we propose solutions.”
Caballero’s modern 48,000-square-foot factory on the western outskirts of Bogota has gotten a reputation for producing unusual products. More than 300 employees produce bulletproof inflatable vests, riot shields and the standard vests used by the bodyguards of political figures—hot-selling products that have helped Caballero record $20 million in sales last year, up from $2 million a decade ago.
But the company’s fame has come from producing garments that don’t look like armor. There are T-shirts that can stop a 9mm round, a bullet-resistant blanket and tuxedos for those worried about an attack at the midnight ball. Tailor-made products, like the bullet-resistant kimono bought from Caballero by Hollywood action movie figure Steven Seagal, can cost thousands of dollars. Leaders across the region, including the late Venezuelan populist Hugo Chavez, have worn Caballero’s outfits.
Caballero, a theatrical whirl of energy, likes to display the effectiveness of the material used in his clothing, a proprietary weave lighter than that used in the Kevlar vests made by Dupont. So on Saturday, with a .38-caliber revolver in hand, he fired a shot into the bulletproof leather jacket he had a foreign reporter wear for a demonstration.
“Didn’t hurt at all, did it?” Caballero said a moment after pulling the trigger in front of his workers, who had stopped sewing in order to cover their ears.
Caballero and Zabadne, the distributor in Denver, said they see other possibilities for civilian bulletproof apparel.
“I cannot say what,” said Caballero, sounding coy about the new line that will be made public in September. “We will do a new collection for the U.S. market, only for the U.S. market.”
Others at his company, though, hinted that the plan was to market bullet-resistant T-shirts—which can be worn under a dress shirt—to school teachers.
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