welcome to rebel

Our name gives you a hint that we’re not your father’s wet wipe manufacturing company. We do a lot of things differently around here. The Rebel difference starts with people and equipment.

Having good employees is mandatory if you want to make it in this business. Other converters see their operators as a disposable commodity. We  see them – and treat them – as a precious resource. So, they stay with us longer. Our crew has exceptional longevity and experience. Many have been with us making wipes for 10 years or more. They like it here. So will you.

We never use the stock equipment everybody else uses. It undergoes extensive custom upgrades. The tweaks we make are proprietary, so I’m not at liberty to go into the details here. Suffice to say we tweak our production technologies to make them faster, more precise,  more consistent and more reliable.

Just a few other key points I should mention . . .

• Big or small, once you are a Rebel customer,  your wipe business is our wipe business.  We pull out all the stops to help you grow. That means we protect your products and  ideas. We’re not going to try to sell them to Amazon or a Big Box. Also, we don’t push your order to the bottom of the schedule just because it’s smaller. Our production philosophy is strictly FIFO – first in, first out.

• Rebel is arguably the largest supplier of fill-it-yourself dry rolls in the U.S. If you already blend your own solution, hire out everything else to us. The product will arrive ready for you to finish. It’s a great way to lower costs. We can even help you reformulate your dry product for wet wipes. Purchase dry rolls in bulk or pre-loaded canisters. We’ll work with you to reduce your labor and materials overhead, save on freight and speed up inventory turns.

• We are EPA/FDA-registered to produce any federally regulated wipe product, including wipes categorized as medical devices. If your product requires federal process validation, we’ve got that covered too. Rebel is federally cleared to seal and handle wipe canisters containing flammables.

• If it’s possible to go overboard in the pursuit of quality, we plead guilty. All key personnel belong to the American Society For Quality, which by the way happens to be headquartered right here in our great city of Milwaukee.

• We don’t sell any products under our own label, so as not to compete with our customers.

• We provide outstanding value but won’t always be the cheapest, because we exclusively source prestige brands. “All things to everyone” is not something we’re chasing.

• Because we’re independent, family owned and family operated, we pivot fast. Rebel can move quickly because there’s no corporate chain of command. No private equity group or overseas home office looking over our shoulder and second guessing us. Decisions can be made around the Foosball table right now today, without need for a Gantt chart.

The buzzword nowadays for that kind of company is “nimble.” We don’t use it ourselves, but I guess it’s as good a word as any to describe us. Please look around the website to find out more.

-Mike

Flying High

People encountering Rebel Converting’s corporate branding for the first time will be struck by the flamboyant bald eagle emblem which decorates company buildings and vehicles. How it got there may surprise you.

The eagle graphic is an homage to Michael “Eddie” Edwards, plasterer by trade and part-time amateur ski jumping enthusiast. His story was fancifully told in a 2016 movie starring Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman. It all began back in 1988, at a time when Edwards was the only ski jumper competing internationally (if unsuccessfully and only sporadically) in all of Great Britain. That meager resume became the means by which he finagled a spot on the team representing the United Kingdom at the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada.

There, much to the annoyance of Olympic elders,  he was reborn as a new folk hero, “Eddie the Eagle.” During his brief shining moment on the world stage, contending gamely yet alas in vain against the preternatural ski flying demigods of the Nordic lands, conjuring exsistential triumph out of abject failure, Edwards endeared himself to millions as possibly the most cheerful, indomitable and enthusiastic loser who ever lived.

A young Mike Kryshak was among the mesmerized onlookers. The fascination stuck with him when he later founded Rebel Converting. “What I admired the most in him was the way he refused to listen to all the people who said he didn’t belong, he shouldn’t be there.”

Edwards found joy in the moment, Kryshak said. Never mind that he came in last in the ski jumping meet. “Don’t allow yourself to be defined by how others look at you,. It’s an important part of the culture here at Rebel.”