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January /
February
2002
Man
cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth
unarmed. His
brain is his only weapon. Animals
obtain food by force. Man has no
claws, no fangs, no horns, and no great
strength of muscle. He must
plant food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a
process of thought. To
hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons-a
process of thought. From
this simplest necessity to the highest
religious abstraction, from the
wheel to the skyscraper, everything we
are and everything we have comes
from a single attribute of man-the
function of his reasoning
mind.
--Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead
INSULATION
I have been in
the business of selling insulating materials to outerwear
manufacturers
since 1961. I still do sell my Lamilite insulation to
several companies
around the world. In these 40 years I have seen every
form of
insulation that the fiber companies have come up with and all of
the
variety of materials called insulation made by companies other than
the
fiber companies.
Insulation in clothing is to keep the heat produced by
the human
body next to it for as long a period as possible and,
conversely, to
keep the cold from drawing the heat from the body for as
long as
possible. And the best way to use the insulating medium is to
have as
uniform a thickness as possible. This means no quilting or
any
construction that resembles quilting. The best materials are those
that
make air movement as limited as possible. Convection is air that
is
moving, therefore, the smaller the air is chopped up by the
insulating
medium (restricted in its movement) the better it will
insulate. The
material that does the chopping can be cotton, kapok,
polyester, or even
steel wool (#000). If they are all the same
thickness, with
approximately the same density they will all provide
the same amount of
insulation. As Gerry Cunningham wrote: “Don’t let
anyone tell you the
latest * inch thick ‘Satellite Foam Jim Dandy
Astronaut Jacket’ is twice
as warm as a one-inch thick down-insulated
jacket. (If you replace down
with Lamilite the result is the same.) It
isn’t. It is only one fourth
as warm, and the hottest sales pitch won’t
make it any warmer. If you
want warmth, you must have
thickness.”
A SUCKER IS BORN EVERY
MINUTE
Today there are companies serving the outdoor
marketplace that are
touting materials for the “Jim Dandy” jacket. The
North Face Company and
Maldin Mills have teamed to bring an electric
jacket to market. Maldin
has placed small metal filaments in its fleece
that conducts electricity
to create heat. Two four-ounce rechargeable
batteries power it. Price
$499.00. It is suggested that this garment
can be used in a variety of
conditions, from cold to colder. Years ago
I worked with a company that
produced battery-heated socks, gloves,
vests, and snowsuits. If the
technology was so good, why has the
concept disappeared? Because it
didn’t work. The fact that two
well-known companies are marketing the
concept today does not change
the facts. The concept proved then that it
didn’t make a good product,
and these two well-known companies will find
the same result. Heat
retention will not be there, because there is very
little thickness.
The creators of this jacket have no knowledge of how
insulation
works.
How about Gore and their new Airvantage Adjustable
Insulation
product. It is a jacket that has a series of tubes that
are
interconnected. The air is blown into the jacket from your
lungs.
Unfortunately, when you blow air from your lungs it contains
moisture.
Therefore, when the temperature drops below the freezing
point the
moisture, which has condensed, will freeze, and you will
build an “ice
box” around your body. The moisture will never be able to
escape. Gore
claims: “The performance concept at work maximizes dead
air, which ups
insulation value and lowers heat loss. Inflating the
Airvantage system
increases dead air space while deflating the system
reduces dead air
space.” The only dead air space is in the head of the
person or persons
that created this product. Again, the creator has no
knowledge of
insulation. Without some form of filler there is no
insulation.
Gore business unit leader Bruce Troutman says, “ With
Airvantage,
Gore is changing the scope of the company and going after a
market of
clothes that adjust with the temperature.” The Gore company
claims that
“the Airvantage membrane is engineered to create durably
airtight,
breathable chambers, (emphasis added) and uses the same base
technology
used in Gore-Tex fabric. The air pocket system consists of
two
connected textile laminates and various pockets that can be
inflated.
As a result, after air has been added, the heat retention
capacity is
considerably higher. This allows the user to regulate the
heat
insulation and release heat depending on how he or she
feels.”
Gore has gall; imagine airtight material that is breathable,
not
waterproof and breathable any more but airtight. A contradiction on
top
of a contradiction. Maybe Troutman is interested in changing the
scope
of the company because they are not selling their waterproof
breathable
very well. They should be a fly on the wall of my office, so
they could
hear what people tell me, read my mail, etc., and finally
realize that
people know the Gore-Tex product is a hoax. This new
concept is nothing
less than and more of a hoax, and a potentially
dangerous one.
There are two layers of material that have the Gore-Tex
film
laminated to them and they are fused together in a maze pattern,
so the
tube created has a beginning and an end. The space between the
tubes
created is no different than quilting, which is made by stitching
the
fabrics together. All the stitches are cold spots. The same is true
of
the flat fused areas; they are cold spots. The tubes are filled
with
air, and nothing else, so there is nothing to stop the warmth
from
moving out of the spaces where there is no filling material. At
least,
with quilting there is a filling material.
If one was to wear
one of these jackets, and was out in
temperatures below the freezing
point on, say, a camping trip, they
would be in a potentially dangerous
situation if this garment were their
primary outer garment. The garment
has no ability to retain any of the
wearer’s heat.
Gore also has a
product called Wind Stopper; which is Gore film
laminated to fleece. In
their advertising they state: “Blows away the
concept that warmth must
come from big bulky clothing. Keeps you 300
percent (emphasis added)
warmer out there.”
I read an article about the Gore company, where the
president and
CEO Chuck Carroll states in the article that they
“maintain an emphasis
on product integrity.” According to the Oxford
English dictionary:
“Integrity: The condition of having no part or
element wanting”. I
believe all of these Gore products leaves a great
deal “wanting,” like
an ability to perform as advertised.
Remember
the “phase change materials,” the micro encapsulated
bits of wax? Well,
one of the companies marketing this concept is trying
another venue to
make money with their product. Instead of selling a
material that is
placed inside of a garment, they are applying their wax
beads directly
to fabric as dots. They call this Thermocules. I called
for a
definition of the word, since it does not exist in any dictionary.
I
was told it was for advertising purposes. The new method of using
the
wax according to Brad Poorman, VP Outlast NA “will actually cause
less
sweating and less over heating. The product creates an air layer
so it
acts like a microclimate.” If you are wearing a jacket made of
the same
materials, only without the little dots of wax on the fabric,
don’t you
have the same layer of air between your body and the lining
of the
jacket? If you were involved in the same activity that causes
you to
sweat, wouldn’t it be the same? What is pertinent is putting the
wax on
the fabric versus having an extra layer to place in the garment
reduces
the cost of manufacturing. It does not make the product work,
as it did
not work in its original form.
Then we have Frisby
Technologies with their “phase change
material,” which uses the same
beads of wax as the product above. The
difference is that Frisby puts
their wax on substrates and lining
materials. Virtually all of these
materials are flat goods, and are
supposed to give better insulation
than the lofty, bulky fiberfills.
They don’t work either. But, we see
how Frisby operates when we read the
statement of their chairman and
CEO, Greg Frisby, as he describes their
new development as “an
important tactic (emphasis added) in the
company’s strategy to offer
the most comprehensive selection of
comfort-enhancing materials to
manufacturers seeking to add
technological innovation to their
products.”
I do not believe the tactic will work, simply because the
products
don’t.
I am very sure some products using the materials I
have mentioned
will be purchased assuring the ongoing existence of “a
sucker born every
minute.”
COMMENTARY
I
have mentioned these companies by name and I can assure you that
there
are many more in the textile business perpetrating a sham. They
know
the truth about these materials. They have large amounts of
money
invested in the development of these materials and are looking
for a
return on that investment. If they have to resort to clouding
the
information that is published (advertised) about their materials,
they
do it. The manufacturers who use the materials further perpetuate
this
deception, so they (the manufacturers) knowingly join the
practice. The
manufacturers have given up thinking as they try to
develop new
products, and that has been going on for quite awhile. They
(the
manufacturers) have been relying on the fabric suppliers to
develop new
products. The manufacturers chose not to examine the
materials they are
being shown; rather, they just accept the
information and the
advertising dollars, don’t rock the boat, and go
with the flow.
The lack of thinking on the part of the manufacturers
is
interesting. They rely on the mills to develop a material that has
some
theoretical capability. The mill representative will offer
the
manufacturer expert advise on how well the material has performed
in
laboratory experiments. It is now up to the manufacturer to make an
item
and put it in the field. When it is found that the material
doesn’t
quite live up to what has been said about it, and when this
information
is presented to the mill representative, that’s when the
fudging starts,
and the dollar amounts for advertising start to appear
in the
conversation. And as we know money talks and … you can fill in
the rest
of the thought.
Now, if the materials actually worked in
the finished garments as
advertised by the mill and the manufacturer,
then why do so many people
question the product? Tune into any of the
talk forums on the Internet
serving the outdoor market and read the
many comments questioning if
these fabrics really work. In virtually
all cases the materials are not
working. There are participants who
have a significant number of
suggestions for others to try that almost
worked for them. I question
why most of these people don’t return the
product to the store for a
refund. Are they too proud to admit that the
jacket or sleeping bag
didn't work, and that since it came from a
well-known maker it can't be
the product, but must be that they are
using it incorrectly?
The management of all these firms are morally
bankrupt. They have
demonstrated that they will deceive the end item
purchaser over and
over again.
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