EP 69 - Nova Jacket Line Deep Dive

Tayson: Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to the Live Ultralight podcast. Today, we have a product podcast, so you go over one of the favorites, one of the deep Dives, one of the stories behind why we made a product and just all of the details that go into making a product. And today it's going to be, I'm know it's going to be very popular one because Our jackets have done very, very good historically. And this is going

Tayson: to be no exception. In fact, this jacket is just impressive at every angle and at every level. So I'm very excited to go through the design of the new Nova jacket line that includes the Nova ul and the NovaPro as per the usual. We've got Brigham here on the podcast to walk us through this as well. So welcome Brigham. Thank you.

Tayson: You ready locked and loaded to dive into this always Okay.

Tayson: I figured we'd start off by just touching some of the quick highlights. So you guys know what's to come and then we'll go into kind of the backstory. So with the Nova line we are launching two jackets, those two jackets are basically going to replace the LoftTek Adventure jacket, so the million dollar jacket as a lot of you guys know that piece. I'm going to be more or less replacing that and then also the regulator

Tayson: down jackets. So there's gonna be two different weight categories. Two different Temperature categories. But that's, that's essentially with the Nobel line of jackets is going to do and as pioneered by two different Innovations one, we've been calling the Nova zero Stitch Fabric and the other one is the down, LT insulation. So, they're gonna be big things to watch for both of those. Have a lot of innovation that went into them, have a lot of performance benefits.

Tayson: And so, stick around to hear what those are and how they work and what they're going to do for you when you're wearing this piece. So, with that, I guess I wanted to back up to some of the backstory specifically with the Loft, Tech Adventure jacket and all the success that we have had with that piece. So, 2018, we actually released that on a crowdfunding platform called Kickstarter. We're raised about 750,000 dollars and where I made

Tayson: a bet and lost and had to shave off my beard. So, that's another fun one to go look up in the archives, but we then took it and put on a different pre or crowdfunding platform where we're doing pre-sales while it was being produced. And so, before we ever started shipping this product, we actually sold over a million dollars worth of this jacket. And the primary reason, the primary selling point you could save. And with this

Tayson: jacket was the insulation, loftech LoftTek is a synthetic to loose fill synthetic. So most most synthetics come out in sheets that are kind of bonded together. Whereas, this is a loose, so it looks and acts kind of like down where If flows you can blow it and it would just cover the room, it's not connected in any way except for the individual fibers are connected kind of in small plumes. I guess you could say kind

Tayson: of like down as anyways that piece looked like a down jacket. It acted a lot like a down jacket, but the insulation would collapse when it got wet. Because historically the big downside to down is that if it gets saturated and wet, it can collapse. And then really, the biggest problem from there is trying to get it to dry out if it completely collapses down as extremely difficult to dry out in the field. So, That piece

Tayson: did extraordinarily well, and a lot of that Innovation where I guess a lot of the pushing for me to develop that came from. So my own use of down in the field and not having any faith in it being really concerned about it. It collapsing and not puffing back up and there's particularly one time that I was out in Colorado for about seven days. It was snowing the whole time. I was hiking around and I was

Tayson: so nervous about that down, you know, getting moist and collapsing. And losing its value that. I ended up really not wearing the jacket hardly at all, unless it was like in my tent and then I came back from that because it was freezing cold, like, the whole time. I actually got frostbite on my feet, but really just really cold out. And I just never used the jacket because these fears, I had Which we won't get into

Tayson: the nuances of that. But could have been the down that I had the lack of faith in it, etc, etc. But at its core, there are concerns and fears with, with down insulation, and there's things to to work on with that. And that's really where the success of the Loft tech jacket came into play. Well since releasing The Loft tech jacket, we have been we haven't just stopped working around here. I don't think Bergen thinks that

Tayson: for a second he's always got a million things on his board and so we've continued to develop and innovate for improvements and that's exactly what this Nova jacket is going to be. It's going to give those of you that love the Loft jackets. You are not going to be Disappointed in this jacket, it's going to give you those moisture benefits of, you know, lack of failure and moist environments, quick drying if it ever did get moist

Tayson: Etc. But it's going to give you a whole lot more than that. So that's the backstory of where this piece is coming. And we've been working on this piece for a handful of years and it's a lot of fun to finally be able to start sharing the details. So With that introduction. What did I did? I miss anything they're bringing them. Or are we ready to dive straight into? The first R&D sides of this piece I guess.

Brigham: I don't know. I think that sets the stage pretty well. Okay.

Tayson: so to be honest, when we, when we started development of this jacket, it was how to say, I say we didn't we knew that we didn't want to just move away from LoftTek by any means because it was it really solves such a good problem and a lot of people were responding to that message, they clearly understood it wanted it and then there's there's feature sets to that will get into the people like about those

Tayson: jackets, things like pit Zips and stuff. So that was like a, I would say like a design parameters. We started to look at some of these as we couldn't just Delete, the Loft tech jacket. Right, we had to solve the same concern as we developed a new jacket and make sure that people still had that faith in in that. But we wanted some of the things we wanted to improve upon. I would say we set out

Tayson: on this was, we wanted it to be. A higher fill power piece of possible, right? Because that was that's one of the tough Parts about working with something like a synthetic is down is just a truly unique substance and it just has not yet been duplicated by man in any way, shape, or form. As far as the amount of warmth for weight the And just the overall durability. Compressibility, all these things that down really offers in

Tayson: that in that type of category has not yet been duplicated. So when we're working with LoftTek it's kind of limiting as far as how far we could push that fill power. So if we wanted to make a jacket that was lighter warmer but still offer those benefits. That was really the question in hand as we started to get into this. So I guess what side of the development do you want to tackle first, you want

Tayson: to go straight to the down LT side?

Brigham: Well, I would maybe I'd frame it a little bit. to just say, That we wanted to make a better jacket. I'd say that was a goal meaning if it wasn't going to be better than the Loft tech jacket and there's no point, right?

Brigham: And there's, you know, so we didn't want it to just be like better in one category, it had to be substantially better. So we wanted it to be warmer lighter more compressible. And there's, you know, Various ways of accomplishing that. So that's yeah kind of what kind of Set It Off and turns of kind of give us the goals and the objectives to work on and Then. Yeah as far as where to begin I mean yeah

Brigham: we could go come out from a different few angles.

Tayson: So let's just dive straight at the insulation. That's probably that's realistic. I think where we started very first was. Was with the concept of was the fabric. I don't know. I thought that

Brigham: it was good. Yeah, honestly.

Tayson: I think, I think, at least, in my mind, the Was crunching before we started to move into some of these other things. But so let's let's start with that. So As we used the LoftTek piece, it was incredible. But what happened over time two is, we started to use hyper dry down and hyperdry is a wax based DVR coding for down. And the results from it really impressed me. So that's what we're running in like

Tayson: our sleeping bags. And so we have the regulator and maybe some of you install. I can add I did with the regulator, whereas out in the rain, and just kind of showing how well it did. But really that, that really, really impressed me how well, that down with that treatment could do in the rain. And so from there, it became kind of like, okay, really, really impressive. But again, we still need to make sure it can't

Tayson: fail and that's where we started to think about blends. And, and potentially blending, our previous Loft taken installation with a down and seeing what might happen there. So we started doing a handful of tests on blending different proportions of down different Phil powers of down different percentages of LoftTek and those either followed as a while you know that we had a previous hybrid insulation that was pretty much loftech with a little bit of down. That's

Tayson: no longer the case of noun, LT. Dan LT is majority down. Almost all down type of insulation, with just a little bit of this LoftTek. As we went through that process, we went from testing, you know, our hybrid stuff was like an 80/20 LoftTek 80% 20% down. And then we went into the R&D thinking, all right? 50/50, and, you know, these different percentages working down because the goal would be how little LoftTek can

Tayson: we use? So we're using almost as much down as we possibly can but still get the benefits of what LoftTek can do, which would be to keep it from failing. And essentially as we started to test it, we were really impressed with the results. We found of LoftTek would hold up that down. Even when you were holding on a water compressing, it underwater soaking the water into the fabric and into the installation doing that

Tayson: over and over again, that little bit of LoftTek would keep enough Loft. That the water would be able to drain out of the baffles out of the insulation and then that hyper dried down as is impressive and it's own nature. And so It just stayed lofted. I mean, I I mean and so we went through all these different variations. And essentially found a percentage blend where we were able to produce an insulation that was would

Tayson: test out at an 800 fill power or over an 800, fill power level. But had synthetic blended into it to offer that. You know. Full moisture, I guess you could say from failure, especially. in fact, I think one of the things one of the days that was the most telling is when we did that type of a test, we took You know, hyper like a pure hyper dry down. Took other down and we took our the

Tayson: blend that we were we were worked up to to that point. And we did that test where we just completely compressed them, you know, compress them underneath water. Let the water soak into the fabric soaking into the installation and did that for. I feel like I was doing it at about five minutes at a time, trying to get it as wet as possible. Then we'd pull him out and measure the Loft difference is and this isn't

Tayson: super scientific. We'd have to look back at notes. But roughly what we saw was that Down could completely fell. Hyper dry down was staying at like 50% Loft and this blend was somewhere between like 70 and 80% of its normal Loft. And then from there, we took them outside and put them in the Sun for a few minutes and this down LT blend, just Like it, just dried out so fast on this back to Total functioning

Tayson: levels way fast. The hyperdrive did pretty damn quickly, but then the down, you know, where it's completely compressed. Like was not even in the ballpark, like it didn't even dry out like you almost have to. Mechanical system to such as a dryer. Right to get that piece to dry out because it's just a full collapse, you know, when it collapses fully or even a class down to like 10% Just no airflow. The water is clinging on

Tayson: to everything in there so it's not draining out and and made a massive difference. So, essentially in our testing, what we found is that Down, I'll tee. It wasn't failing when we saturated with water and retained a ton of its Loft and then try it out incredibly fast. And don't get me, wrong, LoftTek insulation, you know, if it was wet just because the heaviness of the moisture too, it's not going to be like it dry.

Tayson: If it's 100% Loft and then you get wet, it's not going to be 100% off. They're still going to be some level of Loft. Lost, you know, maybe it's 20%, maybe it's roughly the same as this down, I'll T, but more or less. What we saw is that it would be close to what the same level of this down LT is, but this blend kind of the magic of this blend. Is that it's able to just

Tayson: push that fill power level, so much higher, which then allows us to create a warmer lighter piece. um, what I miss I guess from from your perspective of developing that that insulation

Brigham: Yeah, just to kind of go a little bit. More specific on. Like what? How did we test this? How did we test? What did we do to test this? So we had Our down supplier mix up varying or just differing ratios of down and synthetic had them Blended up just like they would do for like mass production and we just got like three or four different ratios from them. And then, you know, we set we took

Brigham: that insulation and we sowed just like some simulated baffles into like the same type of fabric that we would put in a jacket. And then we kind of started from there with

Brigham: You know, soaking it and smashing it, and completely, you know what? It took together to collapse. And then kind of just recording our observations really and then that helped us hone in on the ratio of down to synthetic that we found that we got the most bang for our buck really where we like taste and said we're trying to get the most down with as little synthetic as possible with the capability of basically being Infallible or

Brigham: impervious to, you know, failure. So meaning that if you were to physically completely smash it, once you release the pressure, it

Brigham: would automatically start lofting itself up. So we found that that ideal ratio and that's where kind of down LT comes from and then yeah, just

Tayson: to know with that is That development. It might sound like simple almost like oh man you just you know you're doing these different issues but like it was a it was a drawn out process. And one of the main reasons why is I don't know if there's one or more than one but I'm but this can, this blending takes a very special piece of equipment that is only with our supplier in the USA and so Essentially,

Tayson: anytime we wanted to do this, we were kind of sourcing materials had to go through one particular piece of equipment, done by one guy who had to do it at that time or it was a pretty, you know, because it was a different ask, like not. There's something that's done regularly. It's not done ever with this particular synthetic. So this was a completely new thing for them and so they were working through their own systems of.

Tayson: Okay, how do we blend this? How does this work? And so that also added to some of the the production or the R&D time of this is you know, not only are we working through our, you know, ideas that they're working through their ideas of how to even

Brigham: get this together. I think that's, that is an interesting part about the development, is this, we're not just like, requesting like, you know, some SKU number of and off the shelf insulation. We're basically co-developing Insulation with an insulation supplier, doing something new to them and new to us and then just communicating back and forth and, you know, we knew exactly what we want and they have the ability to make it for us, even if they don't

Brigham: understand why, you know really because right as long as they have the capability to make what we want, we know what we want out of it. So yeah like I said it was kind of co-developed with our supplier and yeah once we nail down that ratio and then we you know we had it put in a jacket.

Tayson: Yeah so yeah so we worked through all this and by the way too for full production we still have the same limitations of having to Get this insulation Blended and one specific machine and so on so forth. So that's just kind of an interesting part that's still ongoing for us because it is such a unique insulation piece. But anyways, yes. So we get that, we get the, the Blends kind of dialed in and we started to

Tayson: work on the fabric side. On the fabric side, we had been using and we had some ideas of what we wanted to use, which was probably the same thing like our LoftTek pieces using, you know, 20 10 year nylon outside and attending on the inside. So, and so forth. And but With our fabric supplier that we were using, they had some other options going, and I don't know if they suggested, we suggest that you might

Tayson: remember this but they had developed a different technology for a different way to weave together fabric. In a but not in the class or category that we wanted it. So essentially, they had This. Stretchable. Fabric. That was a heavier Fabric and had a lot of spandex in it. But what they were doing is they were taking each individual fiber yarn piece and they would weave it together so that the baffles were created at the same time,

Tayson: the initial fabric was being woven together. That's really hard to explain how that works. So Brigham, how would you explain that? Just take it two perspectives on this.

Brigham: Yeah, so they think of them like weaving a fabric and most fabric that you think of comes off. It's a it's a single layer of fabric the way they weave this fabric is the fabric is essentially two layers of fabric. So as all the hundreds of thousands of Yarns are converged and woven together, On, you know, onto on a big sheet, it comes out, being two layers of fabric. Imagine just like the two layers of fabric

Brigham: on any puffy that exists out there except this is all one piece of fabric. So it's two layers of fabric as one sheet of fabric that goes on to one roll. and it's Woven I guess like at a different angle or something to wear at certain intervals. It weaves the two layers together so they are they Converge on each other. And they close off baffle. And they do this kind of in two different patterns, one that's

Brigham: just completely, straight across the whole heat of fabric. So as the two, Layers of Yarns convergent or woven together. Then they release again. So then you have basically two layer fabric that converges to basically one at a point and then opens up. So you've got two layer fabric with gaps of space in between at like different intervals so those baffles that are created are the same as what you would see on a pretty much any puffy

Brigham: jacket out there today that they accomplished that by taking two separate layers of fabric and then when they're making the jacket, they stitch them together to create baffles or spaces to fill with insulation. So it's it's something that we've never seen before. And yeah, the first time that we saw it was at the factory in Vietnam and it was this fabric that they had that was like a stretch woven fabric. That's the first time we'd seen

Brigham: anything like that. But then Fast forwarding to, you know where we are. Where we? Developed this insulation and then you know, when about this type of fabric, where it was the phenomenal thing is that you don't have stitched baffles, right? So it's just the nature of the fabric because it's got these gaps in

Tayson: these spaces. Yes. So many that are watching the video like because so if you go to YouTube you can watch this on little light podcast. Channel. But I'll kind of hold this up to the camera so you can see it looks just like say our Loft tech jacket baffles like the same height thickness and from a distance, you couldn't tell. There's no stitching, any of those baffles, but go on, right? So,

Tayson: Um, yeah. So now you have a fabric that is a

Brigham: two-layer fabric with baffles that are not sewn in, we

Tayson: requested you Brigham to do a little bit of counting to turn into an accountant here and count some beans for us, but what did you discover how many less holes, needle holes from not having to sew those baffles versus having them woven straight from the fabric. When it's being woven, how many less? How much? How many less holes? I'm saying that wrong are in that jacket. Yeah,

Brigham: well yeah, one day I decided I wanted to count how many Stitch hole are in, like, Just as easy as to use our own jacket at The Loft tech Jack and has like 12,000. Some odd Stitch holes in it in the size medium. And then I counted the number of Stitch holes in these in the Nova jacket. Whether it's a pro or a ul and there's like Plus or minus 100 stitches about 1500 Stitch. Hole. So

Brigham: you know around 11,000 less Stitch holes in these jackets versus, you know, a stitched, baffle poppy jacket, so that's important. Why does it matter?

Brigham: So, like, so think about what you're talking about. It's a jacket, right? It's a, it's a shirt. People generally avoid snagging their, their shirt, or their jacket, their clothing, they generally avoid wearing holes in their jackets. Well every puffy jacket that you buy from the store starts out with tens of thousands of holes, poked in it and granted they're they're intentionally poked through there and they've got threads sewn through it. But When you think about it,

Brigham: it starts to make sense. So, less holes in your jacket is probably better. Just like less holes in your pants is probably better and just like, it's a concern. When you have a hole in the knee of your pants, if you think about it on a smaller scale, like, Less holes is better. So this is exponentially less holes in a jacket. So what that does is it totally improves the wind resistance. So every hole in the

Brigham: jacket is a place for wind and water to get in and for body heat and insulation to get out. So it makes a very weather resistant jacket that ends up just the fabric alone, makes it a warmer jacket and it makes it incredibly more durable. So if there's 12,500 Stitch holes, well, there's stitches going through every one of those thread going in and out of all those holes. The most common thing that snags and we know

Brigham: this because we sell jackets with fish holes, right? We have a warranty department, like the most

Brigham: common thing is snagging those Stitch holes or those threads in between the stitches. It's very common. And it's So now that is basically completely eliminated. The only stitches on the jacket are where various pattern pieces or panels are sewn together. Like we're the arms are sewn to the body and so on and so forth. So you can't snag a stitch

Tayson: talk a little bit about like and you probably can't quantify this, but like if you were to just think about this, Every time you poke a hole in a fabric it's compromising that fabric at some level or a strength or something, right? Yeah.

Tayson: Make sure. I don't know, I don't know. Like, we don't have figures or numbers to explain that. But like if you just think about, like you've got a perfect like so say, it's a piece of paper, right? You were to like, pull on each end of that piece of paper. I can you feel the strength that paper? Now, if you're to go along that piece of paper and punch needle, size, holes, all the way across that

Tayson: paper, like it's compromising the quality, the strength of that paper per site. Now, it's different. It's different, but I'm just showing like for an example, think of it, kind of like that, where every time there's a needle hole that goes through that fabric, it's reducing the overall strength of the fabric. It's reducing just the, the Integrity of that fabric, with every little punch.

Brigham: Absolutely. Think of think of your house. The walls of your house have insulation in them now. if let's say every If you've got a 9 foot wall on the side of your house, in the living room and every 12 inches. You poke a one centimeter hole in that wall? Every. Three inches. So your entire wall has an array of holes poked through it. Yeah.

Brigham: The question is, is that wall? 100% as strong know. And If it's winter time, what's happening to the heat in your house and what's happening in the summertime or whatever and the wind? So another I think kind of or underestimated benefit of this is Preventing dirt and other impurities from getting into the insulation. So, think of how lightweight down plumes and clusters are there incredibly lightweight. They're not tolerant to holding up. Like that's a good foreign

Brigham: object like in the form of mold and dirt. So thousands of holes in your jacket now eliminated makes it way harder for dirt to get into the insulation and dirt and oil are basically like the number one degrader of fabric. It's not like the abrasion from you know the occasional brush up against the wall. It's literally like if in a field you piece like right for a backpacking thing, like dirt on fabric is the like it's

Brigham: a huge contributor to the breakdown of fabric and same thing. This is a

Tayson: good topic actually like to get into that. So let's kind of let's hold up and just dig a little bit deeper on that. What I think what you're getting at is once you get dirt in the fibers, right? All that's doing is it's just moving and grinding every little journey against all those individually yarn that make up the fabric. So

Tayson: I don't know, you know, probably if you're listening this podcast, probably not a big climber, but like climbers are Crazy about not getting dirt in their ropes, like they never want their ropes to hit the dirt. It seems like and and stuff like that because that's what's going to break a net. You get dirt in there, it starts grinding and essentially tearing up at a tiny tiny miniscule. Level those Yarns that make up that rope and

Tayson: same thing you're saying with the fabric. Yeah,

Tayson: so okay. So I really like that. I just wanted to make sure people kind of got what you're seeing there because that that is a really interesting point, but also keeping that down keeping the dough clean clean is a massive factor and you're talking about high fill power Downs, doesn't take a lot of pressure on that down to

Brigham: Speed The Loft. Yeah, so so whether it's You know, fibers of a fabric or fibers of down, insulation. The accumulation of dirt and bass call it impurities, or just call it dirt. It. Financially increases so like the dirtier gets the faster, it gets more dirty. So so a nice clean piece of down. You want to prevent dirt from touching that down as much as possible so as soon as down starts getting or as soon as dirt

Brigham: starts getting in contact with the down, the more likely more dirt is going to is going to adhere to that down because what it really adheres to is other dirt. So Just extends the lifetime, the usable lifetime of the down. It just makes the down more effective. More effective for a longer period of time. You want to just keep it clean. That's why we Advocate washing your down products. So this Fabric and insulation system really when

Brigham: it comes together, it creates a jacket that is Much more weather resistant whether that's wind or water. It's warmer. It's more durable. It's it's cleaner. Keeps the insulation cleaner which is all just basically exactly what we want to do which was make a better jacket at one that wasn't just a little bit better but substantially better. So

Tayson: and before we get too far off this, I want to share a little bit about this about the water aspect, but I think the big thing about the Nova you know zero switch fabric is, is the fact that you almost have to wear this in the field to fill the difference. So With wind for instance when the wind is blowing you can tell you can tell in the field absolutely. The difference in their LoftTek piece

Tayson: versus this piece and the Stitch holes that that wind is blowing through. So that's that's I just want to and a lot of these things like you will, you will find their benefit in the field like you're trying to conceptualize and help you understand it. But like when you wear it you'll get it. Yeah.

Tayson: And then the other thing is with the water. This is not a rain jacket, so don't confuse me with the sense that I'm saying, this is a range jacket, it's not purely for R&D purposes. I took this out during a rainstorm here in southern Utah. And for about 45 minutes, we were outside in active rain and it wasn't just a drizzle like it was raining. For 45 minutes we're walking around moving stuff around the yard plane

Tayson: and plane essentially outside. And at the end, we came inside, I took the jacket off and I looked at the inside and it wasn't wet anywhere, which was crazy to me that it hadn't got through. And here's the reason why because it doesn't have the stitching in the Stitch holes typically what happens is when that water seems to hit the fabric it then we'll kind of Glide across. They do have your finished till it hits the

Tayson: stitches. Stitches then kind of holds some of those droplets in place, and then they have that opportunity to go straight through those needle holes into the inside of the jacket. So on and so forth, right? Because two, you're puncturing that needle hole on the inside Fabric and the outside Fabric and so it opens up opportunity at that scene to get into the down, just like you're mentioning as well. So it has incredible resistance to water, and

Tayson: a little bit of rain, or a little bit of this, a little bit of that, which is really impressive. So, not only is the down, not going to fail under that, but also the fabric works together with that down to make it incredibly moisture resistant, and that just impressed the heck out of it because I've had down jackets out there, had LoftTek jackets out there, I've had whatever and you get wet on the inside, even

Tayson: that ad Again, you probably haven't seen this ad but there's an ad out there for a regulator jacket where I was walking around a neighborhood for like 30 or 40 minutes. And then at the end, I filmed in that and even though the loft of the down was lofty and it still looked really lofty in that scenario. I was wet underneath, I was very wet underneath because it was coming through those seams and and that's a

Tayson: huge benefit of this fabric it. And again, it's like one of those things like it's hard to explain all the benefits. You get out of this fabric until you

Brigham: just use the fabric. Yeah. And

Brigham: so yeah I mean really I think Seeing it, holding it in your hands and then using it, it really kind of just explains itself. But then all, just when you when you just think about it and think about other things that you

Brigham: commonly use in life, like If you have a water balloon water balloon. You don't like poking holes in your water balloon like holes in products are generally not good unless they're meant to not hold anything. Well a jacket is supposed to hold insulation and body heat. So you know it totally makes sense that in like a regulator jacket. It's got thousands of holes poked through it. So like it only makes sense that water can literally just

Brigham: go through a hole. so,

Tayson: Tons of value in this. I guess so. To recap wind water. It's more durable. Keeps the installation cleaner. Those are like the highlights, I would say and then this does.

Brigham: Yeah. I know, I would agree that really, those are really the kind of the strong hit points, and then, but going back to the water. I mean, just to give people an idea of what, you know, it takes you said, like, you went out in the rain for like an hour which in and of itself. Like that's a very realistic thing. We do unrealistic things in a quote, Very unscientific lab setting like a bathroom tub or

Brigham: something. So, but to give you an idea of how like we were just trying to like fight like what's the failing point of this jacket like and it's

Brigham: basically near impossible to Manipulate. And like, Force. Like fabricate a failing point

Tayson: with the jacket. So in regular settings is like, well, yeah, even in, yeah, even in

Brigham: a simulated Force setting. When we basically, Tried filling up a tub with water and stuffing the jacket under their first of all, if that's all you try to do the jackets going to pop out of the water because it's just gonna float, because no water is getting into

Tayson: it, but it's very hard to get water in those.

Brigham: It's almost it's, it takes forever. Like, you know, that one day you were squeezing it as hard as you could before you submerge it and water and then it still wouldn't suck in water. Once you let go of it. So you have body weight on the jacket, smashing it, I mean pushing it very forcefully, because Even in those conditions, like the jacket. The materials and the insulation are working against you like they're literally physically pushing outward

Brigham: while you're trying to smash the jacket into the water. So

Brigham: and In the end. What happened is, you still didn't get it to complete failure because you physically just didn't have the body weight to to force it. But when you did pull it out, stuck it out and within like five seconds, Eyeball could pick up the jacket puffing back up, like it was like it was pretty mind-blowing.

Tayson: That that was the day. I feel like you really got sold on what was going on too. But like yeah, I mean for context too. When I would take a different piece without the Nova Fabric and do the same thing, it would sometimes like I'd still have to compress it, put it under the water and then you, essentially try to let it uncompress underneath the water and it would suck the water into the insulation and whatnot.

Tayson: And that could happen very quickly because like, I would essentially fill the tension, stop pushing out on my hands and at that point you just kind of pull the jacket out or let it sit in there. But there wasn't really pressure required whereas with the Nova It's like trying to suck that, that moisture in. And it just you're working against that fabric which is definitely super super hard and and then like you say when you get

Tayson: it out there we kind of compress it shuttering any water out and then just boom pop right back out. So it is it like that they all work together and one thing I wanted to come back to though as we started talking about the Nova fabric, we started to talk about this concept of how to build the fabric. We didn't talk about the fact that this is a custom fabric for us because so what we would

Tayson: you did say is we found out that there's this fabric technology. Other people are using it in a different piece, but then we went to our Fabrics. Fire and said, Hey look, it's really cool piece. They sent us actually a jacket with that sample and whatnot. And we're like, but it doesn't work for us.

Brigham: Yeah, I mean, the only we had to make our first prototype in the only Fabric in the world that was available and it was just a one kind that

Tayson: they had and still to this Dad believe. That's the only Similar fabric to. This is the one. Yeah.

Tayson: Like, it's like a 30 denier spandex filled piece. Yeah.

Brigham: Um, yeah, yeah. So that's so we. We had a prototype made but we still like we got the Prototype and and it just wasn't the fabric. Wasn't what we want. We wanted the fabric the weaving technology but like we wanted a lighter fabric, a lighter weight jacket overall. So we asked them if they had anything different and they said no like this is the only, this is the only fabric we make. So, you know, in some

Brigham: discussions we kind of told them what we were wanting to do. And we basically, they said, well, we can, we can try making whatever you want so we told them what we want and Made the first roll of fabric ever in what we've

Tayson: written a while and they basically they basically what they have to do is they have to go adjust all their machines

Brigham: have to recalibrate all the weaving machines because you're it's a different composition of yarn now. So they had to really kind of toy with it and and do what a Fabric Mill does and go through all their R&D, just to develop the fabric the way that we wanted. And so then, yeah, we we iterated through some, some they would make some samples and send it to us and say, hey, is this what you're looking for? Then

Brigham: we would approve it. And then, yeah, it took some, they had to calibrate and then, yeah. So we got a fabric that is completely specified by us.

Brigham: And accomplishes what we want. And now it kind of completed the package for, for what we want it

Tayson: yeah, so let's talk for a little bit now about just like using the jacket in the field and some of the tests things we've got to do with the jacket. Those of you that followed Along on our YouTube channel, you would have seen the Hardline Challenge. And a lot of us were using versions of the jacket during that, during The Highline Trail in the skyline Trail and a few of these You said yeah.

Brigham: Well before we do that, we haven't really covered that. There's two different jackets, okay?

Brigham: That they all use. The same. Base fabric technology and the same insulation, so they're all down LT jackets so the Nova ul and the NovaPro. But they have a different appearance obviously, because the the baffle structure is different between the Nova ul and the

Tayson: NovaPro. So yeah we hadn't covered that yet. So yeah so I mean the best way to put it is the down or excuse me. The Nova UL is the Lighter, Jackie you out. Meaning, sending kind of for ultralight and those are watching that would be this piece and if you don't, if you're not watching, Imagine The LoftTek Adventure jacket. And like the baffle size and the look very, very similar to that less Stitch

Tayson: holes because we don't have to put in so many baffles because it's more stable insulation, but that is like the spacing of it. And as far as the weight of it, it's actually about a half an ounce lighter than our current Loft tech jacket and it's warmer. So a little bit more Loft. Same type of baffles and round a half, an ounce lighter. Very similar in weight though.

Brigham: Yeah, I mean, on my scale, it's an ounce and a half lighter. Oh, is it? Yeah, yeah,

Tayson: listen to this guy. I thought that's what you

Brigham: told me. No, yeah, it's it's, it's announced and a half lighter than the Loft, tech

Tayson: jacket. But like Tayson said, the noble UL. It's a it's what would be considered a sweater weight puffy

Brigham: jacket. It's got horizontal baffles. where whereas the the NovaPro is a much warmer, you know, jacket winter, weights, puffy jacket that's got about 50% more down, filling in it and So, yeah, that NovaPro is

Tayson: going to be, what would take the place of like our regulator piece. So, if you're aware of that piece, the baffles are bigger larger for more Loft and more insulation. 50% more installations put into it, talk about the iTube configuration a little bit, maybe why we did that. And what it I mean one, it looks sweet. Like everyone that sees that jacket is just like, that's so cool. Those of you that watch our YouTube channel like

Tayson: have been asking and commenting like what is that jacket? And it's not. So it looks really cool but like maybe talk for a second about what it is and why it's there.

Brigham: Yeah. So it's I mean, it's it's like, Their horizontally oriented baffles that are staggered and disconnected. So, let's just say each baffle. Section is like an inch and a half long. Then there's like an inch and a half Gap, and then there's another baffle section and then the row below it. They're staggered. So what it does is it creates a bigger area to fill with down. So it's more suitable for a warmer jacket because the spaces

Brigham: are much bigger so you can stuff more down as so that made a lot of sense for us to go with the warmer jacket. Using this type of baffle weave. and yeah, so what it does is it holds the down in place really well for this weight and warmth class of down. Yeah it just it just looks really cool but it's the same non Stitch baffle woven together, two-layer, fabric as they both use that same weaving technology.

Tayson: Yeah, it's it's really interesting basically, gives it kind of a grid. Patterned title look would be one way to kind of explain it. You know, where one, where the baffles on like say the UL or like four centimeters on the on the regulator are all down jacket, were like six centimeters now you're looking at like, eight, centimeter type baffles, but then offset, like they're 8 centimeters here, and then there's a baffle in the middle. And so,

Tayson: essentially, the net effects should be close to out of the regulator. But then you kind of get some side. Benefit of kind of where it weaves in here, which is hard to like. Put into words or measure the scientific benefit but I think from use that there's some there's some benefit as far as just less total lineage in the jacket. Yeah.

Tayson: Yeah that I would agree with that

Brigham: and one thing I will just not another thing. I'll point out is You know, one of the other one other Solutions are people doing out there to like take the holes out. Well one of them is that you'll have welded baffles so like that's

Tayson: that's a good we need to talk about. So for sure there

Brigham: will be puppy. Jackets out there or insulated jackets out there. That one are accomplished, the same thing of you know, they see. Why are you poking holes in your jacket, right? So they'll weld them together. While that does take the holes out. Big cons. There's a pretty mechanical Propensity or potential for eventually like that. Well, Losing

Tayson: its adherence, right? So there's not there's that I would say there's a few others too one. You can only weld certain Fabrics. So if I'm not mistaken, most of them, I don't quote me on this totally just when I looked into it and passed. Most of the welded Fabrics are heavier. They have to have some kind of like TPU on the inside or coding that's going to do the Welding which is then an additional coating and

Tayson: adds to additional weight in the piece. So that's a negative. Also the biggest thing for me too is Baffles are necessary but you don't want excessive baffles, right? And those welded baffles require like This is going to sound like not very much like the, but there are going to require like half a centimeter or more of a weld contact.

Brigham: So if you were like, that might not sound like a lot

Tayson: but it really adds up to be a lot of space in a jacket specially. So if every half of every weld is half of a centimeter thick compared that to ours, which might be like 10th of a centimeter at 20th of a centimeter you know, something tiny and minuscule. Like that there is absolutely a warmth value that changes hands to from that. And again especially as you add that up over the course of the whole jacket,

Tayson: you might be talking about like, five inches of Gap space or way more than that honestly. Yeah,

Tayson: not five inches. Sorry. I was thinking five centimeters, but let's say probably more like 10 centimeters of excessive baffle areas that are just welds, so insulation, not insulation. Yeah. So

Tayson: so you might see some of these, you might ask that and you'll, you'll figure that the other thing. I would say two with that is you'll see what the welded pieces. There's welded pieces that are a lot of money. There's a lot, there's but there's a lot of what I've been seeing lately is a lot of people that are using the welds are using it to cheap and costs like it's not really a performance factor. It's

Tayson: a we can build welded jackets cheaper, it seems like so I'm seeing a lot of them pop up and the I don't know if in Walmart or Costco or somebody's places that sell massive amounts of jackets at really good prices. I've been seeing some of these welded type jackets in up there, but there's also really high end ones as well. So you might see that that must be a factor along the line somewhere is that they

Tayson: can they can pump out a lot of those for a good price to, whereas, this is, I think a little bit more of an extensive process and but it ends up being way, more performance driven fabric too. That's a really good touch point and now I'm totally lost somewhere. We are with the

Tayson: fourth round two jackets. Yeah. So those are the differences in the jackets. Is there any other? Maybe maybe really quickly? Let's run through the features and then, let's talk about Trail time in these jackets. So, yeah, it's gonna have the same feature set as some of our other jackets, which is two-way adjustable Hood. So you can tighten it around your face. You can tighten it on the back of your head. So that, as you move your

Tayson: head around, it turns with you, it's going to have adjustment on the Hem. So, inside the pockets, you have chords that you can pull on to tighten the bottom of it, that's on a critical in the field. Just so, you know, like some of you Never use that. But when you are in the field tightening that jacket down around the bottom, half of you keeps a lot of warmth in.

Brigham: Yeah, you kind of don't you you know when you need it. Yeah, when you need it, you know. In a word feeling cold air blow up the bottom of your jacket.

Tayson: Yeah, so you've got the Hem adjustment on the arms of the jacket. You're going to have thumb hole Loops for layering primarily. So you can, you can use that to layer on. If you're pulling a rain jacket on, let's say over the top of this or something like that you have that ability a big one that maybe let's take just a second. On that pit Zips. Yeah,

Tayson: almost no one has pit tips. It's one of the highest rated talked about things on our jackets. What's going on with that? Bring why do people not fits and why do we have this? Yeah, it. Well,

Brigham: it's funny because in the last two days I spoke in individually to one person that was on both sides, meaning yesterday, there was a personalized. I don't really see the point in pit Zips. I don't I don't want them. I don't care that they're there, I don't use them. And then today, I was talking to somebody and she was like, I love the pit Zips. It was, it was somebody that has this jacket and you know,

Brigham: she just totally loves them and I just I even told her I said that's just it's just so interesting because there's they're really like people are just like I really don't want them and then people that really want them and

Brigham: like Tayson said, we've chosen to put them in both these jackets. So the Nova ul and the NovaPro both have the same Percent, including the pit zips. I don't know. I I think it's Like having the option to just release some heat. In this scenario that it's not always perfect timing to take your jacket off. You know, even if it's like a mental thing where you just want to get Done with the days mileage, right?

Brigham: It's just like can I just get this last two miles done? Even though I know I'm sweating? I don't want to stop and take my pack off because that means, I have to stop my feet swell up and then then I'm going to want to like use the bathroom and then I want to snack and then it's 20 minutes before I'm on the, on the trail again, just that kind of scenario where it's like, it's just

Brigham: we choose to have it so that if you want to extend the the Comfort level meaning if it's could be the difference between you getting uncomfortably hot and just okay, but I'm gonna deal with it, you know? Unzip and I'm gonna unzip my pit zip and the difference between sweating and not sweating and yeah, that's that's why we chose to put them on there. Yeah,

Tayson: I mean the cons are it could add a little bit of weight. It definitely adds some cost in production. But really, that's like the biggest con's. But the pros besides, like, maybe an ounce penalty of weight or something like that, maybe an ounce. The pros are you can regulate, which is really important. When you're talking about these, this warm of pieces, right? These pieces are warm, they're lofty. They're meant to be puffy warm insulating pieces. And

Tayson: so, anytime you're dealing with that, the ability to regulate those temperatures makes a huge difference because I just think about like driving in the car and sometimes like if I've got a jacket on it feels so hard to regulate the temperature. If one person's got a jacket on the car, one person, doesn't I Don't know really hard always to pick the perfect temperature us, as humans seem to like to pick a perfect temperature and the ability

Tayson: to use those pits. It makes The big difference, it means you can actually move in these jackets a little bit. Or you can extend it or you can you know just adapt it to what you need. A big thing is to avoid sweating, you know, you don't want to sweat inside your puffy jacket. That's not, you know, a great thing anyways. But you know, if you can avoid sweating or extend, the extend, the use of that

Tayson: piece. So, on so forth. So pit steps are something you won't find in a lot of other people's jackets. You do find them in our jacket and We love them. We use them. I use the tips I really do. So what we ever build Jack without them? Possibly. Yeah. But these jackets have them and weave loved them ever since we launched him in the Loft, Tech Adventure jacket. So all right so then I think the last

Tayson: feature set I'll mention is just that one of the pockets, has a two-way head on it, like inside outside so you can stuff it into its pocket and you have the ability to sit back up and Basically store it that way. So yeah.

Tayson: And I will, there is a drop kind of pocket now behind the pocketing, right? Which I don't think was actually there before. So you can kind of like if you wanted to, you could drop something behind the pocket that you used to not be able to sew just a minor thing. But other than that, you know, we're using YKK

Brigham: zippers. I think, is zippers everything

Tayson: that we'd normally do in our products. So, yeah,

Brigham: the only other thing with these jackets is the introduction of women's specific sizing and

Tayson: fit and we should set up so yeah.

Brigham: Feedback on all, our female testers has been great. And any, like we've gone through a lot of different iterations of women's sizing and fit on these and made tweaks. And we've had really good, really good feedback. So like with the Loft tech jacket, it was generally unisex maybe based off a man's bill but these are there is a men's fit and a women's fit. So for both, the Nova ul and the NovaPro Yeah, it's

Tayson: it's big. It'll really help a lot of. I mean, if you look at a lot of the feedback that we've got, there's a lot of women that buy the jacket. and have asked for it so it's it's time and it's and it's a good time to do it with a brand new jacket as far as colorways, there's going to be See if I can name them all off, top my head in the UL, there's going to

Tayson: be the blue that's here on the table, there's going to be a Green version of it. That's Like all of yes, and then a dark gray, so darker than our previous one. Yeah.

Tayson: and then in the pro model, we have black We have. smoke color, which is kind of a lighter gray, like, A cool looking jacket. For sure. It's like a lighter gray,

Brigham: some, mint, you know, lighter gray color called Smoke

Tayson: on a smok. And the Third option is blue. Yep. Blue.

Tayson: So same. Same blue. I think is in the well, so so minor differences there. But yeah, I think that they're all going to be really. They're all look really, really good. Sharp Okay, I think we've got that out of the way. Let's just Kind of wrap. This whole podcast up with this, maybe talking about some Field Time, some of our uses, some of our Takeaways, so yeah. I don't know. Brigham, what comes to mind when you

Tayson: think about just different trips? Maybe Highlights lowlights. Whether that be like on The Highline Trail or other trips that you've taken, I don't know. Like, I don't know, I guess for one thing about The Highline like I was just such a Bistro

Brigham: and it's like very recent too, I mean Like, we started really wearing these prototypes last winter.

Tayson: but in terms of yeah

Tayson: bags or moving, mostly, we're always gonna be out. so

Brigham: in in recent memory I think some of the more telling trips as well would have been some of our summer trips like Kind of more, probably two of our more. Noteworthy trips. Like one of them is the Highline Trail and like we got A day or day and a half of nice weather. And then the rest was Very wet and cold. And, you know, we're like in Fast and light minimalist or hardly ever going to be out of our sleeping

Brigham: like we're in like, you know, shorts and t-shirts really lightweight clothing and we got just, just Drenched. For hours on end. And so, I mean, it was a really humid environment on top of the rain and the snow. So, I mean, it was just like the Really felt like it was a great Proving Ground for the jackets and what we wanted them to do. Whereas like everybody was wet, everybody was cold. And everybody used them differently.

Brigham: Like some of there was a couple of guys That were using them like right out of the gate in the morning like while hiking, I was rain and sweating and under a backpack under range jacket. I mean, really that's like you started out wet. You were sweating in it, you were compressing it under a backpack, and a rain jacket. And then, you know, sometimes you take it off, take the rain jacket off and keep that on.

Brigham: And then, you know, some like some people didn't wear it like us much out like in the weather, but

Tayson: as soon as they were wet,

Brigham: they were throwing that on, right?

Tayson: So I don't think you were underneath your range jacket. I remember, right? Which, I don't know how because it's freezing, but for sure me and Tyler were wearing it. Starting off the date, underneath the rain jackets. Do you remember if Derek had one or did he have a Ventus?

Tayson: I think you may have only taken advantage.

Tayson: Yeah, because he never took his Ventus off the whole day. I remember that. But

Tayson: me and Tyler. Started off the day with our Nova's underneath rain. Jackets soaking wet, right? Because we went to bed getting rained on and woke up. The next day getting basically sleet on says rain. But as a turning to snow and everything is just everything is wet. So me and Tyler have our Nova UL jackets on and then rain jackets on and we start hiking and we hiked for, I'm not sure exactly when he took his

Tayson: off, but I hiked The better part of the first part of that day. I think I might have taken it off around lunchtime or just before lunch time. With the Nova UL underneath a range jacket so it's getting moist you know from the humidity. It's getting moist from sweat. It's getting moist from that rain jacket. I don't know, I can't remember if it might have made. I was getting used the night before and might have had some rain

Brigham: every day inside of our tents was wet from our wet clothes for breathing. Compensation, from breathing Everything around us was wet. So

Tayson: this piece is just getting a lot of real world you know, moisture in contact with it. And I will say this two things. One, So nice to know in a situation like that, that this piece is going to work for you. Like to have that faith. That like it's not going to collapse. It's not going to fail. It's gonna stay lofted and better. Yet if it did get wet, let's say it did get really wet. I

Tayson: know it does not take very much body heat or sunshine to completely dry that piece back out because let's say it gets compromised from 100% Loft to 80% Loft to regain. That 20% Loft that you lost just Don't take that much time or heat or sunlight, right? So there is a ton of just of faith in it. And then honestly, throughout the whole Trail, I cannot remember like specially that day or was just raining. We started

Tayson: hiking in it, pulled out at night. I don't remember. Even thinking looking at the jacket putting it on that was compromised in the slightest. It really just didn't appear that way, didn't feel that way at all. And I didn't I didn't even I didn't put it in the sun, I was,

Brigham: yeah. Like I didn't even have to.

Brigham: I never, I never aired mine out like at all like it was either. on my body, or being stuffed in a Dry sack that's are impermeable. So it was like Damp from being wet inside the tent, and from my wet body. And I was just Smashing it with, damp Nova UL in a bag and then I can for 10 hours. And yeah,

Brigham: pulling it out. And I think that I did feel like that was a really good proof of it was kind of like the the Capstone project really because a lot of the testing have been done but This. So, For anybody didn't really isn't aware of this trip. Like we were, we got hit with a freak August winter storm. Where It was getting down, well, below freezing at night and not getting above. 35 or 40 in the

Brigham: day and either raining or snowing the entire time. And if you're if you're close and body or wet like that is a very Usually dangerous condition. So The the importance of having. An insulated jacket that did its job, which was kept your body at a safe temperature. Like, I don't I like, when we Came off the mountain that one night. There was a day we had to kind of turn around and not go over this pass,

Brigham: you know, this 12,000 foot pass because of the weather and the lightning like, we were flirting with hypothermia, we were in hypothermic weather conditions where, you know, if You're in that situation and you get back to your tent, you can't get warm. You know, it's potentially dangerous. I thought that was a really awesome test for that jacket.

Tayson: It's in those scenarios you realize how real it is, right? Because I think. I don't know where I want to go with this, but we need to have another podcast about base layers. Number one, Base layers. Just recently been kind of top of mind for me. And man the importance of your base layers, knowing what they're supposed to do the purpose of a base layer and having a dry set of clothes base layers, mainly to sleep

Tayson: in some of those things are just huge, just huge. Like that's like what could keep you out of hypothermic commission's. But as far as the checkered related, yeah, massive piece of Mind knowing that that jacket could handle all of the things we threw out at for those, those two days of that freak storm and

Tayson: snow and rain and wind and no sun. I mean just hardly any sun to dry anything out, man. That's the type of scenario where you just glad that you have this installation. This fabric versus every other installation in fabric out there just Game Changer and a huge confidence booster. For sure, that's probably the best infield study. I've used it on a bunch of other stuff. Obviously, when using it, for over a year, But if you watch

Tayson: some of the YouTube channels, you might be able to see some different prototypes over time. Obviously, when we did the step before Highline, we did this tester Mountain, through hike about 62 miles it. Rained the whole time people were using the jackets, you know, going in and out of them depending on the day I'd imagine Derek probably wore his whole time because he's always a lot colder than the rest of us but we've definitely used them

Tayson: in intense scenarios. They performed amazing in the field on the mountain. You know, whether walking to your car, you are going to notice things like with this jacket such as the window doesn't cut it. You know. It doesn't cut through the seams. Such as if there's a little bit of rain, you're not going to be freaking out about it again. It's not a rain jacket, it's just incredibly resistant and has a lot of abilities there. You

Tayson: know, such as in your hands using it you're going to notice how many times you bumping your elbow up against some of abrasion or wall, that could have snagged a stitch but you Can't, it's not there on this jacket. There's just in your hands. You're just gonna love this jacket. Like we're we are to say we're excited about this jacket would be an understatement it's one of the best pieces. Developed. In company history. In my opinion

Tayson: it should get a lot of attention. I think it will get a lot of attention you know. Obviously we're still small companies so it's not like we've got Big magazines and stuff in our back pocket to talk you know scream from the top of the hills about the pieces. But I think there's just just like our event is it's getting a lot of attention right now. I think this piece is just going to build on that

Tayson: because it is truly an exceptional piece and more. So just like for you to talk about at the very beginning Brigham we build a better jacket and we built it off of the backbone of an already really successful Loft tech jacket in my mind. So I'm excited. I'm very very excited. I think you guys are gonna love the Nova line at jackets. Is there anything else? I guess that comes to mind when we're wrapping this podcast

Tayson: up about Designing, this piece.

Tayson: no, I I think we've done

Brigham: a pretty pretty thorough job of talking it through and giving the little bit of the story in the details. So, yeah, we were definitely, definitely excited about it. Yeah, it's already. you know, we it's already become a like, I would say, a staple item in You know,

Brigham: most of our backpacks for our trips. For those of us that

Tayson: we've got, we've got you that we've got initial samples too, in the feedback. We've got on. Sending those out have been incredible. It's been fun. It's fun to show people, the lack of the stitching. it's like when Dan Becker is out here and we're showing them like there's no stitches there and he's just like, He's like, scratching his eyes almost like what? I don't see where where he just couldn't understand it because it is just so

Tayson: unique in that aspect. But so, let me ask you a couple questions, maybe, to help people understand which jacket to choose, Highline what jacket did you take? That's the Novi role.

Tayson: So that's a high elevation hike and August temperatures. Swing drastically. We got snow, he took the Nova you. Well, if we were to go out on a trip this month and to potentially snowy conditions, cold weather, obviously getting well below freezing at night time, which piece you take

Brigham: Let's say, I am only taking one layer meaning.

Tayson: No, no, this shirt that I'm hiking in

Brigham: rain jacket and then it's late piece. I would take the pro.

Tayson: Yeah, talking about her two ounce differently.

Brigham: Yeah, two and a half ounce difference,

Tayson: two to two and a half ounce difference to go from the UL to the pro. And then a roughly probably not super scientific in this 50% increase in warmth. Yeah for most of my hiking, I've been taking the UL however if I know I'm going to be hanging out around Camp a little bit more or I've got colder conditions specifically what I'm going to switch to the pro. Say you're even like like a fissure man, you

Tayson: know, you're fishing and you're just kind of standing, you're not moving a ton, you know, Pro is like something you'd want to look at for a conditions like that, just because you're not moving all the time etc. Etc. But both are really good pieces. They're just a difference in the warmth categories so you can look at that yourself. Now we're gonna ask this. What's the temperature rating of the jacket? I'm

Brigham: Maybe as I'm saying this, all think of that but like when we did the Virgin River Room Trail, yeah,

Brigham: that was in like mid October if but it was a kind of a cold front 90, we were at night at 10,000 feet, the high was didn't get above like 40 and the low was probably like in the upper 20s. And I took the NovaPro on that one, there was some potential for rain, but yeah, that's what I took was the NovaPro

Tayson: and we weren't logging quite as many miles,

Brigham: it was a very low intensity. Yeah. Low intensity hike. So

Tayson: I think that plays a factor for sure. So

Brigham: yeah, activity level and and the weather that those are kind of like what you want to pay attention to like And like, are you? Are you on the trail like all day and then you're straight to your tent? Because that that's another factor is really is if you're kind of like hiking like six miles and throughout eight hours, meaning you're like stopping a lot snacking. Just enjoying the view visiting whatever. Like that means you're sitting down

Brigham: pretty stagnant and like you're not exerting yourself so you're going to be a lot colder. So the NovaPro is a very is a great jacket for like low intensity. A lot of relaxation that type of thing and winter months. Obviously in the winter months, you want to take the NovaPro, the Nova UL is is great for the warmer, the warmer months and higher intensity like more long days on the trail, where like, it's 12

Brigham: hours of Trail time. 20 minutes of eating time and then you're straight to your, you know, top quilt or sleeping bag. And so, yeah, I would say I would throw in this last

Tayson: Thing, which is in the winter months. For those of you that are really using these for like Urban use you go from your house to your car, from your car, to the office. And repeat a lot of times people. Enjoy the regular the regulator I, the pro just because it's warmer and you're just going from like warm house to support cold to warm office, and repeat. And then once you're getting in the office, you're pulling it

Tayson: off, right? So sometimes that's like, like last year in different years, like, I'll start using the regulator just because it's like, literally on the out there for like, 20 minutes or less from here to here, and I'm not exerting myself. I'm just sitting, and that's where sometimes the warmer Jackets play in. So okay, one last thing. So a couple last things one, this is not like these don't compete with the ventasys just like that's a Hot

Tayson: Topic right now. We're selling a lot of emphasis people for getting their Ventus is the dentist's. Are totally different piece, you can look up the marketing on them and stuff like that, they're just, they're designed different, they're meant for different pieces, but they work extremely well in layering together. So, you know, a Ventus, and then this on the top of it, you know, Ventus is something going to move around in more so than this piece Etc.

Tayson: Etc, but just realize we're these are layering systems, they're not competing so be aware of that. Next thing. If you're listening to this podcast within about a month of us launching it, you can likely get these items on pre-sell. Which means if they're on pre-cell you're going to get a discount. And if you are a member of our Live Ultralight membership which is a 10 dollar, a month store, credit membership, with the bunch of benefits,

Tayson: a couple things with that. You will probably get your jacket first ship out first because you get priority and prioritized Jack shipments, but you'll also get an additional 10% off of the presale price is. So if you want to get a discount on these jackets, make sure that you go over and pre-order them. And then if you are a member, you'll get an additional discount on top of that and these aren't pre-orders like six months down

Tayson: the road. These are roughly a month out. These are just finishing up at the factories right now. We are going to pay Quite a bit of extra money to Airship them because of the port situation. But we want you guys to have these this winter season. So these cross, our fingers will start shipping sometime into December. We're not going to probably be able to guarantee them for Christmas and maybe the uls for, you know, they're going

Tayson: to ship out a couple weeks ahead of the pros. Just so, you know, you're talking about pre-ordering for one, maybe, two months before you would get this in your hand, hopefully more, so like one month ahead. So if you want, if you have interest in this, you know go check out the website, learn whatever else you need to learn about it. Pre-order it claimed that discount otherwise You can as well if you're listening to this a

Tayson: month out because stock in situations are crazy right now. So you're going to want to go check and see if we have them in stock. We're going to do our best to keep them in stock but we expect a lot of Demand on this piece and we're always hard to know what the demand is on a PC, you've never launched before. So anyways, that wraps it up. We really appreciate you guys staying tuned. If you've stuck

Tayson: around for the hour plus, talking about this whole, you guys learned a lot in the process things to look for and puffy jackets. And hopefully now, you know, when you take this piece out on the trail, the kind of confidence that you didn't hit the trail with and that's really why we do these If you're going out on your hyaline trip, you know, your through hike, your whatever it is your trail, that you're focusing on now,

Tayson: you know what you can count on out of our jackets that we've developed and that inspires you to get out there and it inspires you to having that confidence, just inspires you to to go and do so. Tuning in with us. Make sure you're liking and subscribing to this podcast, as well as Leaving reviews. So if you haven't left review, go leave review and with that, we'll close off. Thanks for being with us. We'll catch you

Tayson: on the next Live Ultralight podcast.