Why the Military Gets Crap All of the Time

The First Article I Ever Published

I received this article from a customer in January 1992 and decided to publish it since it correctly said what I knew about Goretex but could not put into words.

Today I received in the mail two old catalogs from a customer with all of the literature that was sent with the catalogs and it contains my newsletters from January 1996 to July 1996. I will publish each of them one at a time.

While my signature appears at the bottom of this newsletter it is only referring to the writing below item #6, every word prior to that was the Marathon employees’ words. The information was an education for me. The only information I was knowledgeable of was the U.S. Army field test. If I remember correctly the test took place in the Aspen Colorado area and it was a guy who supplied mittens to them also for testing. That is all I recall.

The original rain garment made with goretex laminated fabric was made at the Marmot factory in Grand Junction, Colorado in the early 1980’s and Kok was the person who made it. They were ultimately made by Raven industries for the Army even though they tested as noted in item #3 even though they tested so poorly.

The The telephone number shown above my name is wrong. It is an old number; the new one is 1-866-411-6465.

Solicitations

Last week I started receiving requests for quotes from numerous companies wanting to know the price for a MITTEN STEAM SUIT for the Navy for use on submarines. In the past two months I received orders from the Navy for about 15 pair, but this order was for 100 pair, so they went out on competitive bid. I do not look at the bidding any longer, so I had no knowledge to its existence.

Any way I quoted each company that came to me $110.00.

The bid specifically called for my product which has a National Stock Number 4220-01-502-1036.

The bid number is/was SPE8E6-20-P-0780 The award number is 008270843

One of the bidders wrote to me asking if I gave the same price to all bidders, I said yes, why? I then received a copy of the award. The award went to Wolfpack supply LLC with a bid price of $94.00 per pair. Wolfpack never called me for a price. What wolfpack is offering is not the same as what I make according to my NSN. What wolfpack does not know is that my mittens are non-combustible. Of course, the DLA Troop Support buyer is only looking at a price and has no knowledge of the fact that I worked with Navy Natick 20 years ago developing this product.

Wolfpack is just one more firm that has a GSA contract which gives them license to provide the government at the cheapest price product that does not work and in this case is a danger to the men who have to wear these mittens.

Six months ago, the Marines phonied up a bid for Muk Luks and gave it to outdoor research, before that there were several sleeping bag deals that have produced a series of bags that have never performed as needed.

I shall not reminisce history but here we have a potential problem where men handling steam pipes can get severely burned but the buyer will probably never know about it. So goes trying to do the right thing for the government.

This testimonial came to my utube site. thank you Brian but remember there are no down bags of equal to any temperature rated Wiggy bag!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brian Wilson I received my third Wiggy's bag today. The two I owned were stolen. I thought for the first 40 years of my life that camping equalled freezing all night. Wiggy's bags are amazing and worth every penny. There might be some down filled bags that are as warm as wiggy's and lighter too...if they are dry. Wiggy's you can count on keeping you warm in the worst sitiatuons.