ALLIED focuses on down as an insulation for apparel and sleeping bags
Founded in Vernon, California in 1987, ALLIED has been responsibly sourcing and sustainably processing down while simultaneously driving innovation within the insulation market for over 30 years. The family owned and operated business has earned the reputation as the largest, most reliable and most responsible supplier of raw material in the industry. Through the creation of programmes such as the Responsible Down Standard (RDS) and TrackMyDown, ALLIED is committed to safeguarding the welfare of animals while protecting the environment. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, Creative and Marketing Director Matthew Betcher discusses the highest quality down technologies demanded by the most discerning brands in the outdoor, hospitality and fashion marketplaces.
What are the current challenges the feather and down industry faces, particularly in terms of competition with synthetic alternatives and changing market dynamics?
The biggest challenge is working against all the misinformation – from animal welfare activists to the plastics industries. If someone, for whatever reason, is opposed to using or wearing down, fine. My simple hope and goal is that those decisions are being made from an informed position and not based on misinformation or hysteria. I feel like the coming regulations will help us all in that direction so we will see what the coming years have.
How are new regulations affecting consumer preferences for natural insulation materials like down, and how is the industry responding?
As new regulations against greenwashing are implemented, brands are now faced with the choice of continuing to offer cheaper synthetic options or shifting towards natural materials like down. For decades, the plastic industry has misleadingly marketed their products as “eco” and “more sustainable”, with claims of offering the “warmth of down”. None of this has been true, and now both these products and the brands promoting them are being forced to change.
As a result, we anticipate a resurgence in the use of down. Although it is a more expensive insulation option, it has a significantly lower environmental impact and lasts for years, if not decades longer.
How is the feather and down industry evolving in terms of sustainability practices, and what are some of the most promising innovations you see emerging?
The down and feather industry as a whole is still quite antiquated and there are still many suppliers of down who want to source both certified material for one market and still offer live plucked and force-fed material to other markets. It is a critical flaw in the current certifications we are working on to improve the industry as a whole and do what we can to disincentivise practices like live plucking.
What technological advancements have had the most significant impact on the quality and performance of feather and down products?
We need to all be careful to not get caught up in the innovation for innovation’s sake. We work on a purpose driven methodology when it comes to ‘new advances’. I talk a lot about Occam’s Razor when brands ask for “what’s new?” Why do we always demand something new? Sometimes the best option for performance and for the planet is right in front of us (and has been used for centuries).
Can you tell us about the founding story of ALLIED Feather & Down and how the company has evolved over the years?
ALLIED was founded around 40 years ago as an insulation company alongside a growing outdoor and outerwear industry. This differentiates us to this day. Our founder and CEO, Steve Uretsky, had worked in the bedding industry and realised that there was a need to provide much higher quality down as an insulation as opposed to the same qualities used to fill down pillows and comforters. Even now, it remains that almost every other down supplier is a bedding company first, and insulation provider second. ALLIED truly focuses on down as an insulation for apparel and sleeping bags which allows us to think different about innovation, traceability and overall sustainability.
How does ALLIED ensure the quality and consistency of its down, given the diversity of sources and supply chains across different countries?
Down is a natural material so it is always hard to ensure that the material is the same from source to source – or even within the same source from season to season. This is why you never hear about single origin sourcing (and if you do, alarms bells should sound).
We procure down working directly with farms and abattoir groups. Then, the material is blended to provide the specifications we need. This allows us to keep consistent quality over the years. Even though we have tolerances that would allow the shipping of below-advertised fill power, we will never do so. It is our goal that the down provided to each ALLIED customer always exceeds expectations.
ALLIED has played a significant role in developing the Responsible Down Standard (RDS). How has this influenced sourcing and production practices within the textile and apparel industry?
The question of how the development of the RDS has influenced other parts of the industry is perhaps a better question for another, but I can say it has been a model for other large standards that use animal by-products.
The most interesting part of the RDS is how it has affected the farms and farmers’ lives. When we started the pilot, it was seen as almost impossible without sizable buy-in from the farmers themselves. We stepped in and helped with costs, helping many farmers get involved and change their practices to ensure they operated beyond just the needs of the certifications.
Back then, when we visited farms, we might have been lucky to talk to the most entry level worker. Now, on a recent farm visit, they have told me that they are actually able to charge more for their meat and sell it as a premium product, which has an immediate impact on their families. They are extremely proud to talk about what they do to ensure happy birds, and one even went through the trouble to pull out the boom-box they use on the farm to play K-pop to the birds in the afternoon and Tokyo Jazz in the early evenings for them.
What is the significance of ALLIED becoming the first down supplier to achieve bluesign system partner status, and how does this influence your environmental footprint?
Becoming the first bluesign system partner down supplier for us stands as part of our commitment to the environment and those organisations that help to ensure the best possible practices and authentic communications. Down is likely the lowest impact ingredient in the entire textile industry (85-97 per cent lower impact than recycled synthetic alternative as shown by a published LCA) and ALLIED’s processing methods have been developed to reduce as much water, energy and detergent as possible. To be honest, we do not necessarily need a certification like bluesign but believe that we can all do better and support all those organisations that help achieve realistic goals for reducing our footprints.
ALLIED collaborates with a wide range of brands, from small designers to global outdoor brands like The North Face. How do you tailor your insulation products and services to meet the needs of such diverse manufacturers?
We work closely with all our partner brands and even help consult on the design and materials to ensure their products are the best possible products for their intended use. Many people do not realise just how wide a spectrum of warmth down has and how you can use the same material for a fall in Los Angeles or summiting Mount Everest. We often get asked what the CLO value of a particular quality is, and our answer is always, “whatever you want it to be.”
TrackMyDown.com has been a major innovation in consumer education and transparency. How has it changed consumer awareness and trust in down products?
I feel that TrackMyDown has been a real disruptor in the down vs. synthetic battle. For so many years, the down industry as a whole wanted to remain silent regardless of their sourcing practices. This allowed the synthetic industry to market directly against down with no push-back or fact checking. It also allowed a lot of misinformation from animal welfare activists to blossom into industry ‘truths’.
We built TrackMyDown to coincide with the launch of the RDS because we knew that the consumer would want to have more information than just a somewhat empty mark. The RDS was the insurance to now talk to the consumer about all aspects of a wonderful, low impact material that has a fraction of the environmental impact than any alternative. Alternatives do not come close to the warmth to weight, feel or impact; now we can tell that story.
We realised just how important this tool was when we found brands adopting this over brand RDS certification and when some large European retailers required their down products to either have RDS certification OR use ALLIED’s TrackMyDown tool.
Duck down and goose down have distinct properties. How does ALLIED educate textile and apparel partners on selecting the appropriate down type to optimise warmth, weight, and performance in their products?
This is a very timely question now as we experience massive shortages and price increases in the goose down supply chain.
In short, the differences between duck and goose down would never be experienced in 99 per cent of the products made. The old adage that goose down is superior to duck down mostly comes from a time when all down was aggregated through regional brokers. This is still a model in use today in most of the industry. But as we have direct relationships with the farms and abattoirs within the supply chains and do not work with such aggregators, we can provide a wider range of qualities.
In that aggregator model, goose is larger bird than a duck and generally grows larger down clusters. And Europe tends to process birds at an older age than China, so those older birds have the ability to grow larger down clusters. So, you can see on an aggregated model how European Goose Down could be seen as the best as it has likely the highest fill power.
This all changes when you go direct to the sources. In an aggregated model where the highest fill power for duck might be 700, ALLIED can regularly supply 800 and often 850 fill power in duck!
There are some small differences which make the goose down cluster more compressible and perhaps last a bit longer, but we are talking nominal differences. And in fact, we have even worked with some of our partners to use duck down because in their designs and intended use, it would actually perform BETTER.
Re-educating the consumer on this is another matter. We are working on this now with many of our partners. And we do not feel like it benefits anyone to over specify and have to charge more than is necessary to create a product that is equal in almost every way.
Can you explain how ExpeDRY’s use of FUZE technology differs from traditional hydrophobic treatments?
ExpeDRY is an entirely different mechanism and approach to retaining loft under extreme circumstances.
When water resistant down was developed, it was a case of using the tools we had on hand with a less than thorough understanding of what sort of conditions were actually causing the down to lose loft when ‘wet’. Hydrophobic chemistry is great for moving water away from a surface, and it did help keep down from losing loft under those circumstances, but we started to ask questions. One was, “What is really happening inside the insulation chamber and is hydrophobic chemistry’s mechanism of moving water really the best solution?” And the other subsequent question then was, “Can we do this better and with lower environmental impact?”
We knew anecdotally that down inside a jacket or sleeping bag is never really in direct contact with water so the testing method for water resistant down by soaking in a water filled canister and shaking until it loses loft is not realistic at all. Who cares if your down can shake for 5,000 or 10,000 minutes? Realistically, if your down is in contact with that much water, I guess hypothermia sets in completely in less than 90 seconds.
We have been looking closely at what happens inside a jacket in different environments and realised it is high levels of humidity that are affecting the down. And much of this comes from within. We also found that most real-world use had a number of wet / dry cycles. So, the ability to deal with humidity (NOT water) and to dry quickly to return to loft, if and when a little loss of loft occurred, was the primary thing we needed to attack.
Working with a very new cutting-edge partner like FUZE allowed us to tackle this precisely – and best of all – without any chemicals. I feel that even in the world of C-0 chemicals, it is only a matter of time before we realise these, too, are harmful for the environment. Why take a low impact, high performance product like down and slather it with a chemical?
Could you explain the Durawash process used for cleaning recycled down in the RENU line, and how it ensures that the recycled insulation retains its durability and loft for use in high-performance apparel?
Our Durawash process is used for all ALLIED down. It is just what we call our proprietary processing method. It was built to use less water, detergent and ultimately, energy.
Recycled down is processed EXACTLY the same way that conventional down is. And it is a testament to the longevity of down in general that a 20-year-old comforter that likely has not been cared for properly can still provide strong down clusters that can perform for decades to come. Part of our recycling process separates the strongest down clusters so what is left is a high performing product.
It has to be said, that often it will have a slightly different feel than conventional down since it is coming mostly from bedding. It also needs to be said that all the talk about recycled being better for the environment than conventional down is a myth at best – and misinformation at worst. Due to the industrial nature of the collection of the material, the energy and difficulties in removing the material and the losses from years of use actually creates a HIGHER environmental impact than conventional down. As the down in those products has been used, it slowly breaks down into fibres that all go into the wash. After drying and separating, we lose quite a bit of weight due to those fibres, etc. This means that pound for pound of what goes IN, recycled down uses MORE water, detergent and energy. And it is generally not traceable for animal welfare. At least until we can build up our RENU:TRACE programme, which is the world’s first recycled down traceable for animal welfare.
Looking ahead, what are ALLIED Feather & Down’s goals for the next decade?
Our main goal is to work to identify the exact environmental impact all of our material has, which is a large project since we will be analysing every source and region. From here, we can build more realistic goals for continued reduction of impact and further work with our partner brands – not just for performance in warmth, but performance for the planet as well.
