By Jason Blevins
The Denver Post
PAGOSA SPRINGS — Dan English welcomed the pounding rain.
His company’s new wool-blend hoodies — almost four years in the making — were on display in a customized snowmobile sled in the parking lot outside the Backcountry Experience shop in Durango. His team giddily stood in the downpour, dry and warm, championing its duds.
“The weather was dismal, but it was brilliant for showcasing our technology,” said English, CEO of Pagosa Springs-based Voormi.
English founded Voormi after a career in software, a fast-moving industry where the pace of innovation and technology doubles every couple of years. His new outdoor-apparel “softwear” career is in a decades-old industry that is waiting for a significant innovative or technological surge.
“Saturated markets are often dominated by major, major brands who often stagnate innovation because they have existing revenue streams to protect,” English said.
He’s hoping Voormi’s ingenious blend of locally sourced Rocky Mountain wool and synthetic fabrics sparks overwhelming change not just in the insular outdoor-apparel industry but in the country’s textile and manufacturing industries.
It’s a bold gambit, taking on massive companies such as Patagonia and The North Face. And after almost four years of planning, Voormi arrives in stores this month . To hear English tell it, the revolution has begun.
While Voormi’s $229 High-E hoodies — with wicking, next-to-skin synthetic fabrics bonded to water-resistant, locally sourced, nylon-hardened wool — are potential game-changers, Voormi is aiming to renovate U.S. manufacturing as well. The company’s hoodies and base layers are made in the U.S., which allows for speedy adaptations and tweaks as they refine middle layers tested at Wolf Creek ski area and backcountry skiing across the southern San Juans.
Finding those manufacturers — a network of small textile outfits across the West, which the Voormi crew is reluctant to reveal — was a challenge. Persuading them to carve time for a startup with a disruptive strategy and newfangled fabric designs was harder.
“We are asking our manufacturers to break a 40-year mold,” said Dustin English, Dan’s son and the managing director of Voormi, who tests Voormi iterations as a mountain guide on Alaska’s Denali.
Talk to the Englishes and marketing director Timm Smith, an engineer who worked in marketing for Gore-Tex, and the word “innovation” is liberally applied across all conversation.
And indeed, nontraditional ideas permeate every level of the Voormi business plan.
Read more: Pagosa Springs’ Voormi hopes to upend the outdoor apparel industry – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_24626842/pagosa-springs-voormi-hopes-upend-outdoor-
