Sep 1, 2022 Autacusa 75th Anniversary Party

By Pam Johnson • 02/02/2022 07:30 AM EST • 02/02/2022 07:30 AM EST

On Autac’s website, there’s a photo from 1976 of a little girl keeping pace with a towering figure.

Sharing that photo means much more than memories for Killingworth’s Marie-Louise Burkle, the little girl. In 2022, Marie celebrates her 20th anniversary as CEO of Branford-based Autac, the company her father founded in Hamden in 1947. The man in the photo is Marie’s dad, Robert N. Burkle. And if you’re counting, this year also marks the 75th anniversary of Autac, an international manufacturing firm producing custom-manufactured retractile cords, often referred to as “curly cords.”

After the Whitney Blake Company (founded in 1899 in Hamden, now in Vermont), “we’re the second-oldest coil cord company in the world, owned and maintained in the same family for 75 years,” says Marie, whose gift for witty conversation is matched by her outgoing personality. “I always like to say we still have daddy’s cookbook and all of his recipes and philosophies about running a business, which I think is what separates us from the more corporate side.”

Autac is a “boutique” manufacturer of curly cords, a description Marie happily coined to help put across the unique caliber and quality of her company’s products.

“I was a 31-year-old female when I took over the company in a male-dominated industry,” she says. “I had to have a little fun with it! So my elevator speech for Autac is, ‘If you look at shoes, and you look at wire and cable, anybody can make shoes, anybody can make wire and cable. But there’s a difference between Manolo Blahnik and Payless. We’re Manolo Blahnik.’”

Customers across the country and the globe come to Autac for coiled cords in various applications and specifications to be used in professional sectors, including medical, dental, food, agriculture, gas, mining, defense, aeronautics, police, fire, and automation.

At Autac Inc, Autac’s logo includes the phrase “Re-Trak-Tul Kords” underlined by a bit of rounded curly cord.

“These are coiled cords that can extend and retract and keep that curly shape,” says Marie of Autac’s products. “Anywhere you think you can put wire and cable if you’re either trying to decrease the amount of slack you have lying around or if you have something that’s a moving item, these coil cords come into play.”

The Branford Beginnings

Since 1977, Autac has been manufacturing curly cords shipped worldwide from its facility in Branford. Before that, Autac was based, for a time, in North Branford, after moving out of Hamden. That vintage photo on the Autac homepage shows Marie and her dad, who passed away in 1977, surveying open land where he would build Autac’s current Branford facility.

“I was his sidekick from when I was 3,” says Marie. “I spent a lot of time with him. I was close to 6 when he passed away, so I was very fortunate. When you’re that young, that little time gives you a lot of maturities.”

Her dad’s work ethic was also ingrained in her.

In the 1970s, “I remember going to Rotary meetings with my dad in the old Augur’s bar, surrounded by smoke, bourbon, and all these men talking business. It still sits in my head,” says Marie. “So, from when I was kid, I’ve always been of a single mindset: ‘I’m going to grow up, and I’m going to run my dad’s company and make him proud.’”

After her father’s passing, Marie and her mom moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. For a time, the company was managed outside the family but still owned by the family under a trust. Marie attended Cape Code Technical High School in Harwich, Massachusetts, which set the stage for her future in college and beyond, she says.

“I went to vo-tech high school and took business,” she says. “That just set me up for such advantages as a college student and as an adult. It just ingrained a lot of things in you at a very young age that I’m still very, very grateful for.”

Marie earned a degree in entrepreneurship from Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island in 1995. Her professional affiliation with Autac began in 1999.

“I came back at the behest of the trust in 1999 to do kind of a forensic consulting of the company and put together a plan for the forward motion,” says Marie.

From her first role as a forensic business consultant, Marie became Autac’s marketing and public relations director in 2001 and was appointed CEO in January 2002. Her work includes procuring sales, marketing products, and services, handling human resources, and maintaining and growing vendor relationships, all while leading her team by example.

In 2009, due to complications of Lyme disease, Marie had to cut back from her full-time role as CEO of Autac until she was well enough to return to the position fully in 2015. Marie is very willing to share that she suffered from the disease because she feels its devastating impact “isn’t discussed nearly enough.”

While working her way toward better health, Marie, a self-described “organic nerd from way back, who loves to learn stuff,” bolstered her knowledge of herbs and Chinese medicines, which also figure into Marie’s secondary business, Dragonfly Holistics, which offers natural solutions for home and body. All products are made on Marie’s Killingworth farm, also her home.

An animal lover, Marie says she started at the farm with a few horses and now enjoys having a “menagerie” of animals living there. Among its many charitable contributions, Autac throws much of its generous support behind the Dan Cosgrove Animal Shelter.

Weathering the Pandemic

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Autac has been designated an essential or “Tier One” manufacturer by the federal government.

“We’re a tier-one registered manufacturer with the White House, so we were able to keep going,” says Marie of Autac’s ability to weather the pandemic since early 2020.

Marie and her team also made some calculations that have helped Autac successfully navigate the many bumps in the road delivered by the ongoing pandemic.

“Because we’re small, with such a tight team, and because I’m such an uber-nerd, there were just a lot of things we saw coming and made the preparations, even if they weren’t to come to fruition,” she says.

She based some of those preparations on how the company had been affected post-9/11 and by the recession of 2008.

“I thought about what worked well for us then and to avoid the pitfalls,” she says.

As an added benefit, Autac is an industry that “tends to trend about a year ahead of everything else, from an economic standpoint,” says Marie, which also helped.

Through her first 20 years as CEO of Autac, in addition to her responsibilities, Marie has been a member of Wire Association International, Wire and Cable Manufacturers Alliance, and Connecticut Business and Industry Association, as well as numerous other professional organizations. She completed the Women’s Leadership Program at the Yale School of Management in 2018 and held several other certifications.

“I was someone who knew nothing, and I was proud enough to admit that,” she says of getting her start in this industry and learning experiences along the way. “There was a lot we were able to pull from that to make our processes more efficient.”

Marie encourages her small team of employees, many of who have been with her since 2015, to also learn more by taking classes and going for certifications offered by organizations with which Autac is affiliated, as well as those provided by the state or made available via state grants she secures. The Autac website features some amusing, interesting, short bios shared by each team member and their photos.

“They’re awesome and brilliant and fabulous and smart and creative,” says Marie of the group.