kathomuth

You could make a bodysuit, can't see why not - was there a particular application you were thinking of?

The fiber is bacteria resistant, odor resistant, and naturally cool to the touch. We have yet to find any disadvantages of this product compared to a traditional nylon. This fiber has been used in safety equipment like gloves for some time without issues like allergic reactions - and we haven't see anything like that in our own testing.

Yes, also this. As we mature as a company I'm sure we'll get more data around # wears under different types of circumstances and after longer periods of time.

Yes! Very promising fiber. Sadly none of the manufacturers we spoke to were ready for any sort of mass production yet.

1) A typical pair of sheer pantyhose lasts 1-2 wears. Generic pantyhose cost about $10, and name-brand pantyhose cost $25-35 (Commando/Spanx), designer pantyhose cost $60-$85(Wolford). So 50 wears in another pair of sheers would cost anywhere from $250 - $1500. When you look at it like that, our cost actually saves women money, not to mention frustration, over time.

2) Pantyhose are made with a pretty open weave, and are much lower denier than any shirt you would own, making them more susceptible to wear and tear - even when made out of an incredibly strong fiber like ours. But well taken care of - I'm sure they could last more than 50 wears. That said, it is an underwear product, so you may want to swap it out eventually :)

I totally agree, it's not in the interest of the hosiery industry to create a reusable product. 30-40 denier products in traditional nylon are definitely stronger than sheerer product, but are by no means even comparable to the strength of the product we can produce in the same denier. If we wanted to produce a 3-6 denier product with our materials, we could. So if that's where the competition wanted to push the fashion trend we could go there and still have a way better performing product. Not to mention, the industry's move towards disposable product has created a massive pain point for consumers, so we really believe consumers are ready to invest in something they can actually get through a day in.

ShopLocket (to PCH Intl) and Female Funders (to Highline Beta)

There are definitely lots of interesting applications - it has been amazing to me that this fiber has been so under utilized in apparel to date. We started with hosiery because of the very obvious pain point, which I've experienced personally, but love hearing about people's experiences with other products we could take this to!

They're not.

Zak is the robber accomplice - sitting in the car beside the robber that has lines :)

Really appreciate your feedback on the video! We're always trying new things, so I'm sure there are more edits of this in our future. Right now Kickstarter is showing that 32% of visitors watch the whole video - which I think is probably pretty good?

Yes! That's the very same rabbit hole I fell into when I started out. It's really fascinating stuff.

Interesting! Thanks so much for sharing. Another fiber I'm keeping an eye on is Spider silk, but that tech is still too immature for mass production.

Definitely shares a lot of similarities!

How did we determine the 50 wears metric? We've been producing prototypes since September, and have been testing them with real women for day to day wash and wear (in addition to our other more extreme tests like velcro, rings, and hanging from the ceiling...lol)

Definitely! We've had a lot of requests from the sport/workout wear side of things in particular. For anyone interested in more of a sport related product, I actually have a list you can subscribe to for updates as we continue to explore new product variants: http://eepurl.com/dkHD6X

Yes we already have a number of prototypes out in the wild. Everything shown on our kickstarter is real product. They look and feel just like traditional pantyhose, which was actually a bit of a surprise to us too! They have some perks over traditional nylon knits as well, the PE fibers are natually cool to the touch and bacterial resistant, making them great for hosiery/intimates. The biggest challenge for us in getting the knit to work properly was stretch. PE fibers don't stretch, so we had to fiber out ways to knit/combine with other fibers, to create stretch, without compromising on strength.

Thank you! Really appreciate the support.

We ended up using polyethylene based fibers, which have similar applications to aramids. They have taken the place of Kevlar in many applications because they are lighter and stronger. They were a better starting point for us due to the fact they come in lower deniers, but were still not fine enough - or the right color for our application. So we went directly to the manufacturers to develop our own variant.