Local business designs part of U.S. Olympic team opening ceremony jackets

Butler Technologies feels like it’s already won gold in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.

They are busy inside the Butler-based company, working on all kinds of advanced, high-tech screen printing, but a plastic, flexible American flag that they helped design and manufacture is what's putting them on the world stage.

“This was a printed heater,” said owner Nadine Tripodi. “We knew it had to be flexible and wearable.”

Tripodi and her general manager, son Tristan, are proud to bring the heat to the Winter Olympics, but for the longest time, they had no idea who their customer was.

“We were working on the project for months before we even had an idea the end use was for the Olympics,” Nadine Tripodi said.

The company's design is in the parka for every Olympian and Paralympian. You might not see the flag because it's on the inside of the coat, but the Tripodis and all 62 employees who worked on it know it's there.

To say they are honored is an understatement – to be an American company chosen for such a patriotic and visible event means so much to them.

“To think of all the printers in the country, we were chosen to be the ones to help this project,” Nadine Tripodi said.

They were already interested in watching the Winter Olympics on Channel 11, but now it's taken on a whole new meaning.

“It will be a lot of fun to say, ‘Wow, we made that – that was made in the United States, part of it made in Butler, Pennsylvania, and we contributed to that,’” Tristan Tripodi said.

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Cox Media Group