Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

Endeavor Composites arrived in Detroit for the annual MOVE: Mobility Reimagined Summit and left as the organization’s Startup of the Year for 2025!

MOVE is America’s #1 converged mobility event, bringing together the best innovators from various industries who are tackling tough mobility challenges.

“Immense gratitude to the judges, deep respect for our fellow competitors, and appreciation for everyone who supported our journey,” Endeavor Composite’s Founder, Hicham Ghossein, said in a celebratory LinkedIn post.

We sat down with Ghossein to learn about his journey to Knoxville, the inspiration behind Endeavor Composites, and its growth over the years. 

How he started.

At its core, Endeavor repurposes post-industrial fibers into new markets, making high-quality composites affordable for the masses. 

Sports fans may have seen carbon-fiber baseball bats or parts of race cars that are designed intentionally to be lightweight and strong.  

Ghossein is a big extreme sports enthusiast. He noticed the high-quality fiber hoods on cars and other fancy parts, but when he learned of the manufacturing process and all of the generated fiber trim waste, it troubled him.

“It’s so much waste that it could fill up the entire Covenant Health Park stadium downtown up to the rim every year. All of that goes to landfill, and it’s an expensive material,” Ghossein explained. “So, I saw a business opportunity to collect all those trims and make this new kind of fabric that can be solidified into composite parts.”

After moving from Lebanon, Ghossein got his Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He decided to attend the school because of its notable composites program, and the Smoky Mountains reminded him of his home.

But, he said, the reason he decided to stay in the area was because of how rich the resources are for composite innovators in the region.

“In addition to the university, you have the UT Research Foundation, Innovation Crossroads at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, IACMI – The Composites Institute, the Institute of Advanced Materials Manufacturing (IAMM), and all of these organizations showed me that this is a place where we can grow,” he said.

Ghossein became an entrepreneurial fellow at the Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Manufacturing Office/ Innovation Crossroads Program (Cohort 3) at ORNL. During this program, he worked on scaling up and commercializing a carbon fiber nonwoven technology that allowed the production of turnkey preform solutions for innovation in advanced composites manufacturing.

How’s it going?

In the past six years of operations, Ghossein has grown Endeavor Composites from just one person (himself) to a team of 11. 

“We’ve doubled our revenue every year, and that’s because Knoxville supports us. We have to thank everyone from UTK to ORNL to the Knoxville Chamber, PYA, and so many others,” he said.

In addition,  Endeavor has doubled its manufacturing footprint on a single tabletop to about 10 acres per month of fabric production.

For a visual, that would be enough fabric to cover 50 football stadiums every month, which otherwise would be in a landfill.

Endeavor Composites is fiber agnostic with industry agnostic applications. They can build just about any part – from naval to aerospace, sports equipment, drones, rovers, you name it, and Ghossein and his team could probably build it.

“I want people to know that we are made in the U.S.A., of course, but more importantly, we are made in Knoxville, Tennessee,” he said.

Read more about Endeavor Composites.

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