reprint

One of my customers wrote in response to my last article that the thermal q insulation used by mountain hardwear for their bozeman 30 bags was actually made by primaloft. The following is a reprint of an article I wrote when the product was first introduced.

another jimdandy insulation

Posted by Jerry Wigutow on Oct 7th, 2015

MORE INSULATION PROMISES

Mountain Hardwear (MH) is now introducing a new fiberfill insulating product called “Thermal.Q Elite”.They at MH claim that this synthetic insulation is and I quote “the warmest synthetic insulation available”. When I researched this material I found out that it too is basically a product of Primaloft as is the Thermoballs used by the North Face Company.

Once again a chopped staple polyester fiber fill is being renamed in an effort to extract funds from unsuspecting individual consumers for winter garments that are actually good for winter use in places like south Florida during the month of January.

The specific reason that you are not seeing or hearing so to speak from these companies about the use of continuous filament fiber is because it is only made in the USA. Once I visited the Columbia headquarters offing to sell them my Lamilite for use in footwear since they own the Sorel footwear brand and they just looked me straight in the eye and told me quite matter of factly that if the raw material were not available in Asia they were NOT going to buy it from a source in the USA and ship it to Asia. Since MH is owned by Columbia even if someone working for MH wanted to buy it they couldn’t.As for North Face their parent is VF Corporation and they function the exact same way.

What I do not understand is why these companies consciously choose not to use the continuous filament fiberfill trade named Climashield or Lamilite which is made with Climashield since they actually know it is a product that makes whatever they are using obsolete, of course that also includes down. I believe the powers to be at these firms have no particular regard for their customers since they are providing the market place with garments or sleeping bags that simply put do not perform in the temperature ranges they claim. I wonder if they ever read the testimonials that people have provided me about the products that I make or if they read the newsletters and commentary I write. If they did they might learn something about the insulations that have been made available over the past 55 years. They would have learned that chopped staple fiberfill came into the market place in 1960 and continuous filament came into the market place in 1968. Since then the continuous filament has gotten better and better. The company that makes it has improved the continuity of the product far beyond what it was like when the company I worked for started making it. However, the quality of chopped staple fiberfill products has deteriorated dramatically since I first sold it prior to 1968.

Those who are exposed to these poor fiberfill insulated products used in finished products such as jackets primarily, sleeping bags or even hand wear are the unsuspecting purchasers of poorly insulated products.

If fashion is your thing then just buy what looks good to you, but when and if you find you are not kept warm I believe you should go back to the store and tell the store owner. If enough people return these products for lack of performance maybe, just maybe the store owners will go back to the garment suppliers.

Buyer be ware!