[ThesisLabs]

An awesome comment was posted on our Instagram account. I know not everyone is on there, but I'm sure a lot of you will agree with this. I felt it would make sense to post this here as well:

A great comment below by @tmodonnell on our Instagram account @thesislabs.

@tmodonnell:
Reading through the Kickstarter and I see it mentioning being the highest tech garment current manufactured. I didn’t notice any features exclusive to this product though. If there are features exclusive to this jacket I would make a better point of outlining it, all of the materials are currently available through other brands and the abrasion resistance of 8 seconds is also available for well under $2000. Maybe I missed something?

Our response:
@tmodonnell Thanks for the awesome critique – without this nothing would ever improve. I hope you don’t mind if we also put this up on the Kickstarter.

You’re right. If you’re only looking at a list of features there are a few products with superior protective ratings and other products offer similar technologies. The difficulty lies in packaging all these safety features in an aesthetically refined manner. Our design respects the heritage of the sport while providing only the best and latest technologies.

There’s a reason most gear looks the way it does – the designs are engineered rather than designed with economy as the core objective. In contrast, our products follow a build first, price after strategy. Our percentage margin is the lowest in the entire consumer goods industry.

In comparison, to achieve our slim silhouette, the product requires a level of precision manufacturing more typical to the engineering industry, leading to a quality control standard that rivals most luxury brands. The products are all made by hand. A single master artisan produces the item from start to finish to ensure proper fit between the 60+ panels. Yet almost none of this is visible from the exterior.

One example is the fully-functional shoulder gusset, which adds so much difficulty in manufacture, the feature no longer exists outside of the most expensive luxury brand offerings. Without this, we would have to lower the arm-holes and expand the overall shoulder area to provide movement – a sloppier visuality. The curved seam of the arms which houses the external armour zippers need to meet the shoulder at a very precise location while the seam dodges the elbow’s articulation point. The slightest error when attaching these pieces would render the final product unusable – this isn’t even taking into account the three interconnected interior “Core” layers and armour pockets.

This is the type of project which, through patternmaking to manufacturing, challenges even the most highly skilled artisans. We spent months searching and were incredibly lucky to find the team at Manufacture New York who were willing to take the journey with us to produce these garments.

Chris Lee,
Co-Founder @ Thesis Labs