At one point a long time career welder told me he wanted a glove that was more nimble. He liked to design things and gave me some ideas for a welding glove, "just as an idea".
Months later, I had met a friend who was leaving a high fashion industry, who knew the ins and outs of textile production, but just couldnt handle the stress anymore. We came together with a concept for a glove by comparing many others and identifying what made each one better than the other.
(pictured above, talking about elements of a particular welding glove)
What we had made had checked all the boxes (we thought) for what we needed, but perhaps it was too fancy looking.
(original sketch for first glove)
We created a full techpack later which identified each type of material, stitching and more. It wasn't known at all that we could use kevlar, we didn't know about ANSI protection ratings, heck we didn't even know much about welding, outside of our welding expert who had to constantly correct us.
We had made countless prototypes over a 4-5 year period from countless sources.
There were many refinements made over the years by testing them all in the field for weeks or months at a time.
(Not welding, just holding a random model in hand)
We thought we might have had a product with me (Matt, a industrial bearings/parts guy), our designer Filipa and all the guys in the neighborhood who put the gloves to work.
It turns out, that was not even close.
We discovered a guy who is a leather gloves expert, one who also lived in Los Angeles, originating from the UK and has his own several lines of gloves and does a lot of work behind the scenes for other companies, many that you likely know already.
For another couple years, we learned a lot about leather, about how its made, where its made, the different kinds and their attributes and even our local pro Paul, likely learned a bit too.
Than became another set of samples, another loop of trying things out and making changes.
This is when we got into the certifications, learning about what leather tolerated head, where everyone else makes their gloves, what materials they use, what the limitations are in the market for production and many more things.
And this is where we started getting to the end.
(Local welder with fancy lighting, color work on the photo, and a prototype pair)
(Sample that was never produced, nubuck leather that is not sueded)
Eventually, we got our first order in and brought in a model to our dirty warehouse to show this first batch off, which are the photos you see online today.