Brent Kulp witnessed his parents’ manufacturing company TrafFix Devices Inc. expand from a bedroom-turned-office to a 60,000-square-foot corporate office in San Clemente.
Kulp, now president and chief executive, took over the business in 2020. His father Jack Kulp still sits on the TrafFix board where he’s happy to learn from his son about every new order and market entry.
When Jack and Sue Kulp founded TrafFix in 1987, the startup only sold three products in the highway safety category. As of March, TrafFix counts more than 200 items in its catalogue that are distributed both in the U.S. and internationally.
The company designs, manufactures and delivers more than 90% of its inventory in-house, which includes barricades, delineators, safety apparel, signs and other traffic control and crash attenuation items.
“We always looked to develop the products in-house, because we figured we could create a better mouse trap than what was out there,” Kulp told the Business Journal.
Kulp received the Business Journal’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award on March 20.
What started as a self-storage unit in San Juan Capistrano and a small distribution warehouse in Fairfield, Iowa has become four manufacturing locations from Adelanto, California to Tijuana, Mexico. The firm counts around 300 employees across its operations.
Kulp said the company develops additional highway safety devices based on what is missing from sales interactions with customers out in the field. After shifting to domestic manufacturing instead of importing, one of the first innovations was a barrier wall made of plastic instead of concrete and filled with water.
This item “exploded” in the last few years with widespread use in traffic and crowd control, Kulp said, noting that even restaurants started to use them for outdoor setups during the pandemic.
As TrafFix gained more capital over the years, the company was able to break into the crash attenuation space and afford developing products that require intense testing such as crash barrels filled with sand or a mobile crash cushion that attaches to trucks during lane closures.
The business is responsible for over 200 patents with Kulp, himself, holding about 25. He said that residents can see TrafFix’s products all over Orange County.
“We put a lot of value in intellectual property patents,” he added.
The now 220,000-square-foot Iowa facility has another expansion in the works, according to Kulp.
“These devices come at a very, very small price compared to what they do in terms of saving lives on the highway,” he said.
From Wine Sales to Traffic Control
Kulp was selling wines to grocery store chains at Gallo Winery in Northern California before his father asked him to join the sales team at TrafFix a year after it was founded. Once he attended a trade show with the founding partners, Kulp started as the Western region sales manager.
He remembers his grandmother typing up the leads they met at various trade shows in the beginning.
Kulp was later promoted to vice president of sales and marketing in 1998 covering the entire U.S. while leading the firm into international markets also.
Once he was appointed CEO, Kulp aimed to grow the company’s outreach by expanding into the security and public safety category. Since 2020, TrafFix has focused on designing new products to better protect people at public events such as festivals and farmers markets from reckless and dangerous drivers.
He also established more sustainability initiatives within its manufacturing facilities focused on power efficiency, recycling materials and automation.
Efforts included incorporating solar power at the Iowa facility and redirecting over 13 million pounds of rubber from landfills to its manufacturing at the Adelanto factory. The recycled material, such as ground up tires, now makes up the bases of several products.
“We are continuing to look at that and figure out better ways to use power more efficiently, to not be so reliant on the grid,” Kulp said.
TrafFix has reported double-digit growth in revenue under Kulp’s direction. While not disclosing exact sales, Kulp confirmed that the company falls between the $50 million to $100 million range.
“The need for safer highway is more apparent than it’s ever been,” Kulp said.
