Jake Elder trains on how to apply protective film made by Xpel Inc. at the company’s headquarters in San Antonio.From outside a nondescript industrial building about a mile north of the AT&T Center, you can’t see that the corporate headquarters of Xpel Inc. is an exciting place — the engine of a company that has become a Wall Street darling while growing faster than perhaps any other San Antonio enterprise over the past decade.
Today, Xpel sells PPF as an aftermarket accessory, working with car dealerships that sell its PPF by training their technicians to install the film products on vehicles, a process that requires some finesse. It also sells the film to distributors in other countries, and Xpel recently signed a deal with Rivian — which makes high-end electric pickups — to offer PPF for customers buying trucks direct from the factory.
The software nature of the business is what brought Pape, who has a computer science degree, on board as the 12th employee to join Xpel in 2004, but a combination of bad decisions and economic challenges would prompt him to leave four years later.“You go back to the decision to say ‘We’re going to sell this software and completely ignore the film,’ it was just the wrong decision,” he said. “The company struggled because the software business … was not sufficient to build a real company around.
Ryan Pape is CEO of Xpel Inc., a fast-growing company that makes protective films for vehicles and buildings.McCauley left in 2008, and the following CEO held the role for about nine months, Pape said. Xpel was in such disarray at the time that Pape left the company in 2008.But a few months after his departure, the company presented him with a challenge.
“Within a year, it was more like 90 percent,” Pape said. “That sequence of events set us up for the growth that we had.”