i am the only one

THE HISTORY OF CONTINUOUS FILAMENT FIBER FOR USE PRIMARILY AS SLEEPING BAG INSULATION, OUTERWEAR FOLLOWED

I will use January 1960 as a starting date. At that time if you could not afford a down bag you could buy a polyester filled bag and the filling i.e. insulation was chopped staple fiber.

By the mid to late 1960’s camping had become very popular and all of the companies that made down bags were doing very well. They did realize there was a larger market if they also made a synthetic bag but shied away from synthetics because they did not want to compete with the lower priced bags and they also did not know what to do with the polyester as in how to work with it.

In 1968 the Celanese Company started making the continuous filament fiberfill batting for the military for use in their sleeping bags and field jacket liners. It was much more expensive than the chopped staple fiberfill but you could not cheat. The batting was either continuous filament or it wasn’t. When it comes to chopped staple fiberfill suppliers to the government were blending the cheapest chopped fiber they could buy with some good fiber and no one could tell the difference.

Celanese then decided to expand their market to include selling their continuous filament fiber to the sleeping bag manufacturers and they trade named the product Polar Guard. At that time I was the sales director of the company that Celanese set up the equipment in to make the Polar Guard and the Celanese representative was a very good friend; Doug Hoschek. He used my diagram of how heat and cold move, drawn on a napkin at lunch one day and gave the napkin to his art department without my knowledge and that is how the hang tag was designed. He told me years later what he had done.

The first company that Doug was successful in making Polar Guard sleeping bags was Eddie Bauer. It was a failed product for them because they were at the time noted for down filled everything. The second company to come on board was Jan Sport a new company back then. They made down bags, Polar Guard bags and a down top Polar Guard bottom bag. As time went by they too dropped out of the sleeping bag business. Then a new company came along that really was the force behind putting Polar Guard on the market both in sleeping bags and outerwear; Snow Lion. They were a California company located in the bay area and to the best of my knowledge were the king pin company at their time. The problem they faced was the way they were manufacturing their products; they were sewing machine quilted. Doing so caused the continuous filament fiber to migrate through the stitch holes and once the fiber started coming out it never ended. The return factor was enormous. Their production manager Wayne Gregory refused to listen to me when I told him lamination would solve the problem he refused to listen. When I looked at the pile of returned sleeping bags; I said you send a new bag as a guarantee, great, what makes you think the new bag will not come back? BLANK. I believe that is the reason they went by the way side. Too many returns!

After Snow Lion got into the Polar Guard sleeping bag business almost every other outdoor down sleeping bag manufacturer followed suit. One company owner told me his Polar Guard sleeping bag sales were at least 60 percent of all his bag sales. That was probably the same throughout the industry at the time. They all made the bags the same way with quilting and all experienced the same problems, except North Face, they started making their bags with chopped staple fiberfill that was not bonded. It was sandwiched between two layers of scrim; it was the first of the shingle construction bags made. When I saw it I told Mark Erickson their designer guru that the bags would deteriorate when they were laundered, and not 4 or 5 time but with the very first laundering. He said “no- body would wash their bags”. I said your label says washable, have you ever washed one; NO was his response. He did take one home and had his wife launder it. When I was back in Berkley two or three months later I saw his test result and asked why he was still making them versus having me laminate the Polar Guard. He, just like Wayne new better than me. I believe the financial problems that North Face had back then were due to sleeping bag returns. They then started making a shingle construction with Polar Guard.

At some time in the 1990’s one and all of the companies like North Face who were using the Polar Guard moved their production to Asia. The Polar Guard brand closed and the company that took over the production started calling their product Climashield. For several years continuous filament fiber regardless of brand name was being shipped to Asia. During I believe the past 5 years literally every company that is American owned that sells sleeping bags that has a contractor make them in Asia has ended their use of continuous filament fiber; Climashield and replaced it with guess what, let me tell you, 100 percent of the cheapest chopped staple polyester fiber that can be made. Why you ask, because they do not want to buy Climashield and ship it to Asia.

These American companies function on the basis of marketing product and in my opinion do not have the slightest concern if what they are selling performs as they claim or not. The reality is that the bags do not function in any manner even remotely close to what they claim. This holds true for the down bags they bring in from Asia as well as the polyester bags. The young people who work at these companies have as much knowledge of polyester fiber for insulation as can fit in the space of a gnat’s rectum. They only know what they are told by older people in the industry who have exactly the same amount of knowledge they have. They have returned to the original fiber they all rejected years ago. Of course those who rejected chopped staple polyester fiber aren't around any longer. The youth of America knows everything or so they think.

As far as I know Wiggy’s is the ONLY manufacturer of sleeping bags in the USA who manufactures sleeping bags with the continuous filament fiber known as Climashield which is what I further process to become Lamilite. There is no other material on the planet that is it’s equal nor will there be.

So when you go into REI or any other retailer of sleeping bags remember to ask if the polyester fiberfill insulation is Climashield. If the sales person says yes please write down the brand and let me know so I can check myself, anything is possible. However, I will be shocked.