Success Story: Yeti Cooler

YETI Partnership Shows Bruckman Can Deliver Exactly What You Need

If your coolers stand up to sun, rain, snow … even bears … all the parts should, as well. But if the latches and feet just aren’t tough enough, what do you do?

Let Bruckman handle it!

The folks at YETI pride themselves on producing a cooler that can stand up to anything nature can throw at it, but some parts produced overseas were letting them down. The T-latches stretched out of shape or just plain broke, and the feet discolored and stained boats and campers.

“They make a high-end cooler,” said Travis Turek, Bruckman Rubber president. “They were having all sorts of quality failures, so they came to us because of our quality.”

Bruckman and YETI were brought together by a third party who was also working on the coolers. That resulted in Roy Seiders, YETI owner and founder, visiting Hastings, Neb., in 2009 to tour the Bruckman plant.  The quality was just plain subpar.

Bruckman Makes the Material and the Part

“They were very impressed with what we could do, our quality, what we could offer,” said Donna Fowler, Bruckman Rubber customer service manager. “We formulated a material that had the strength they needed on the latches, and the feet would not leave any marks, would not discolor or anything like that.”

The YETI-Bruckman relationship has been very successful, spanning many, many years.

“After a while, they added the round foot for their littler coolers that they had, for the Roadie,” Fowler said, “and it’s just progressed from there.”

When YETI began making collegiate coolers, they needed latches that were the same high-quality but in the school colors of the various colleges.

“So we started working with getting the exact formulative color that they needed because they were also putting their seals that are on the inside the same color,” Fowler said. “We made sure those would also hold up just as well as the black latches would.”

 
Partnership Stands the Test of Time

What initially looked like a job making a few thousand parts has turned into a partnership lasting more than a decade and producing millions of parts.

“Since day one, they’ve been nothing but happy with what we’ve produced,” Fowler said of YETI. “If there’s ever any issues, they give us a call. We work with them on it. Any changes they want to make, any color changes they want to make, we’re just right there.”

That’s one of the benefits of working with a domestic supplier such as Bruckman. When working with an overseas supplier, it can take months to resolve an issue.

As with YETI, Bruckman Rubber can partner with you from the ground up to identify your need and deliver exactly what’s required when you need it! Whether you’re a large client or a small one, the answer is simple:

Let Bruckman handle it! Contact us today to discuss your needs.