From the Editor
Preface
We occasionally write to manufacturers (we like) when we feel they're in the process of blundering or could make a meaningful improvement. The purpose of publishing our side of this email exchange with Mountain Equipment is not to shame them in any way or even criticise any of their products. Rather, the purpose here is simply to use Mountain Equipment to highlight a broader problem in the outdoor industry; a problem we addressed in our piece: Insulation: A Fraud of Meaningless Measures.
This respectful interchange with Mountain Equipment is posted here as an addendum to that piece, to show how the lack of any EN testing standard for measuring synthetic insulation, causes brands like Mountain Equipment to make claims they cannot back-up publicly with technical data.
Mountain Equipment's Oreus Hooded Jacket seems to have been well received despite its shockingly high price. Assuming the reviews are all in good faith (and not just the industry's PR machine doing its thing), then the "groundbreaking" Aetherm Precision Insulation which Mountain Equipment have developed may well be all the things they claim. The problem is, they can't or won't prove or demonstrate their claims in any controlled, scientific or technical way. So, to quote our aforementioned piece:
When it comes to synthetic insulation we're given the impression of a meaningful specification but in actuality it's merely a call to prayer: trust us, have faith.
Below, we haven't included Mountain Equipment's (very professional and polite) employee's replies, partly to ensure their anonymity and partly because we didn't inform them we might publish the conversation. However, it's easy to infer their responses from our subsequent follow-ups.
We began by asking a simple question via Mountain Equipment's web form:
An instructive back and forth with Mountain Equipment on their Aetherm Precision Insulation
1. Mountain Equipment Form Submission - Enquiry Type: Products
I'm interested in your new synthetic insulation as used in your Oreus Hooded Jacket. I read that "Aetherm Precision Insulation is warmer than anything [i.e. any other synthetic insulation] of equivalent weight". I was wondering how it compares to Primaloft Gold Crosscore (the Aerogel infused insulation). ME have, in the past, used standard Primaloft Gold; how much Primaloft Gold (g/sm) would you have to have used to get to the same warmth / insulation of the new Oreus?
2. [Email #1] "How it keeps you warm" & "How warm it keeps you"
Dear Mountain Equipment [employee name removed]
Re. "It's really difficult to do like for like comparisons between existing forms of insulation and Aetherm because it's just so different in the construction and the way that it works."
"How it keeps you warm" (the way that it works) and "how warm it keeps you" are two entirely separate things. How a sleeping bag achieves its EN13537 rating is a reflection of its design and materials, BUT its actual EN13537 rating is an outcome of measurement and laboratory tests.
According to Mountain Equipment, Aetherm "has best-in-class warmth-to-weight ratio". If it's best in class, then it has to have been measured against its peers, otherwise what is that statement based on? Surely, a patentable insulation has to have been lab tested? Otherwise, it would seem hard for Mountain Equipment to make such claims, no? I find it hard to believe that ME spent 5 years developing an insulation without testing it against other cutting-edge insulations like Primaloft Gold Cross Core.
Mountain Equipment should, for example, be able to state that 60 g/sm of Aetherm is approximately equivalent to 100 g/sm of Primaloft Gold or something along those lines. It's no good comparing a jacket with a 10D face fabric to another with a much heavier weight outer. That says nothing about the insulation.
I appreciate your response. We're big fans of Mountain Equipment in the main, but hope Mountain Equipment can give us a little more in the objective measurement department. The tech exists to measure such things (just as it does with sleeping bags).
3. [Email #2] What is the "next best performing synthetic insulation we’ve ever independently tested"?
Dear Mountain Equipment [employee name removed]
That's understandable and thanks again for the quick response.
I guess my point is, for customers to make an informed decision, they'd need to at least know what the "next best performing synthetic insulation we’ve ever independently tested" is. For example, if the next best synthetic insulation was Primaloft Gold, then at least many customers would have a good approximation of how Aetherm is performing. If instead the "next best performing synthetic insulation" was Primaloft Gold Crosscore with Aerogel, then of course that would be a hell of a lot more impressive.
I get that Mountain Equipment have intellectual property (IP) to protect, but without that key comparison metric, we're still left very much in the dark. [ Editor's Note: ... and giving away the "what" (the lab tested technical specification) does not disclose the "how" (the patentable IP) ]
I would think that ME give nothing away from an IP perspective to say something like:
"In our lab tests, Aetherm was 7% warmer and 18% lighter than Primaloft's best performing Primaloft Gold Crosscore with Aerogel insulation and thus nearly 60% warmer than regular Primaloft Gold on a gram for gram basis".
Then, people like me would know what we're dealing with and would be extremely impressed. As I've said, comparing it to the Fitzroy (jacket) really doesn't help for the reasons you laid out. We still have this problem.
Have a great weekend and perhaps you can at least pass on this exchange to your marketing / design team, as I would guess they'd want to brag about what looks like quite a breakthrough in the insulation department, but brag in terms that are also meaningful to prospective customers, like ourselves.
Scramble Editor
Last email sent: 11/10/24
