EP 447. Form Follows Function at Voormi

 

Early Risers

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast today at Dallas Safari Club. That’s where I spend this week every year, and I get to meet some amazing people. I’m sharing a booth with Voormi. You all seen me wear that high e hoodie and a lot of those layers a million times. Now today, you’re going to find out why. Joining me in the booth is Butch English, founder and head knocker at Voormi. Butch, how the heck are you?

Butch English: I’m great, Ramsey. How are you doing?

Ramsey Russell: Appreciate you baby me so early.

Butch English: Oh, it’s all good. We’re duck hunters, man. We get up early. Sleeping in 7:30.

Ramsey Russell: Speaking of duck hunting, I know you do a lot of duck hunting, but what is your origins? You live in Colorado? Are you from Colorado?

Butch English: I do live in Colorado. Southwest Colorado, but I grew up in southwest Missouri, just outside of Joplin.

Ramsey Russell: Outside of Joplin?

Butch English: Yeah. My dad and all his generations were Quail hunters. We had bird dogs, and I broke ranks, and I was the first one to get a lab when I was 16 years old.

Ramsey Russell: You’re kidding.

Butch English: We had a friend of ours from church came up from Arkansas, and this guy came up from star guard, and he wanted to take us duck hunting, and I was hooked from the day 1. He was a great caller, seeing the dog work, and it was just my cup of tea.

Ramsey Russell: The way duck hunting is from the first time, do you remember the first magical moment? so many times people will describe, oh, I remember the time that flock of Mallard hooked up, and you see that first time and it’s like, you get this dopamine bump, and it’s like, you got to have it. You’re like a junkie for it.

Butch English: We were hunting on the river, and they were just piling in this hole that we had, and it was just greenheads after greenheads after greenheads, and that was back in the day. That was way back in the mid-late 70s when good old days. There was no hunting pressure, so it was great.

Ramsey Russell: You think hunt pressure has changed things now?

Butch English: Oh, I don’t know. There’s a lot of people that hunt.

Ramsey Russell: But a lot of people hunt, a lot less habitat. I asked that because we’ve done some pretty cool interviews and had some scientists on here talking about hunting pressure, so I thought I’d throw that in. After Missouri, how did you go from Missouri to Colorado?

Butch English: Oh, man. We were all competitive rifle shooters, and we were traveling all over the place competing, and I had an opportunity to move to Colorado Springs and live at the Olympic training center and train full time and shoot full time, and it was a great experience. We learned a ton of things, had the opportunity to visit, meet, and travel with very interesting people, and then from there, had decided I couldn’t make a living being a professional shooter. There was no money in it, and then I jumped in employment ranks.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Butch English: Yeah.

Beginnings in the Outdoor Industry

Duck hunting, quail hunting, moved to Colorado, picked up big game hunting.

Ramsey Russell: I know Voormi, wasn’t your first employment. What is kind of your history? Where was your first meaningful background in it all? How did you get into the outdoor industry?

Butch English: Yeah it’s been a journey. My dad was in the tobacco industry. I did not want to go into the tobacco industry. I wanted to get into this new thing called technology, and so I was part of the Olympic jobs programs and got set up with different, at the time everybody called it, high tech companies that sponsored Olympic athletes. We had the opportunity to train and travel and then had a job when we came back so we could be gone all the time. So, when we came back and learn a career, basically, it was a great learning. So I got in. At the time, it was called Digital Equipment Corporation, a big computer company at the time, and I ended up spending about 15 years there and then from there, other doors open and I landed at Microsoft Corporation.

Ramsey Russell: Really? And when would this have been on a timeline? Back in the 70s or 80s or-

Butch English: Yeah, I started in 1981.

Ramsey Russell: Before Windows.

Butch English: I came on at Windows. I was at digital equipment Corporation in the 80s and then the 90s with Microsoft.

Ramsey Russell: What was it about? I’m just trying to shrink, man. It was the 90s, and I would not say this about my redneck self. It was like literally 1989 or 1990 before I ever pushed the button and turned on a computer.

Butch English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Only because one of my faculty advisors at Mississippi State University, I walked past his office one day and he hollered my name. I just got to Mississippi State and I said, hey, come here, I want to show you something. We walked down to the computer lab. I’m like, yeah. He goes, come have a seat, and he walked me through it like a baby. And he says, see that button? I go, yes sir. He said, push it. And this light comes on the screen, and he walked me through and told me how to type and save and he said, now, do not ever in your life again turn in a handwritten paper in my class or any class in college.

Butch English: That’s fantastic.

Ramsey Russell: And I mean that’s crazy. But I was a grown man.

Butch English: Yeah, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And had never seen. How did you get into technology? And I can remember, and I hate to say this, I’m embarrassed to say this, but I can remember talking to some kids back in the mid to late 80s, and they were from out west and young and technology savvy, and they were talking about this computer and there’s all this stuff, and I’m like, it’s a fad, man. Like everything else, like 8 track players. It’s a fad. Boy, was I wrong, you know what I’m saying?

Butch English: I know right.

Ramsey Russell: How did you have the clairvoyant thought to do something like that?

Butch English: Well, I don’t know. I wouldn’t give myself any credit for that. It’s just at the right place at the right time, and it was fascinating to me. It was a fast paced industry. It was, things were developing all around us and right place at the right time and with the right people and just a midwestern boy out, grew up in the country, first kid to go to college in my family and just was at the right place at the right time.

Ramsey Russell: Were you still duck hunting?

Butch English: Oh, yeah. Duck hunting, quail hunting, moved to Colorado, picked up big game hunting. I was whitetail hunting a little bit in Missouri at the time, but mainly bird hunting, and then moved to Colorado, started chasing things with a bow in their early days and got hooked into bow hunting and chasing 4-legged critters and then also just kept pheasant hunting, duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: The part of world you grew up in was really good Quail hunting, from there down through Tennessee into Mississippi was just amazing quail hunting back in the day. It’s a time to pass because the habitat changes and everything else, and we’ve actually talked to some people that were big Quail hunters back in the day, at the national bird Dog Museum. Back in those days, Butch, everybody seemed like every family had a bird dog, and that was your people.

Butch English: We had pointers, we had Setters, we had Britneys. We covered the long-range location all the way to up close working singles, and that was our passion, chasing.

Ramsey Russell: What’d you people think about this newfangled young and they had getting a lab and going duck instead, sitting out in cold weather in one place in the water.

Butch English: That’s exactly right. We were loading up a little flat bottom boat and run down the river and set out a couple of decoys or a couple dozen decoys. Didn’t know anything about calling. I was being taught then. Some people think I still don’t know anything about calling, but love to shoot him and have a great time with him.

Ramsey Russell: Duck calling is a part of it. You get to interact and talk to it, but I’ve got a friend, I had a friend, Mr. Ian, that he could blow a duck call very remedially when you get away from him. It sounded just like a big old loud boss hen, but he used it so sparingly. It showed me that duck calling really ain’t that important because he was a good duck killer, but his patience was his strong suit. He put those decoys out and sit quietly and still and wait.

Butch English: Yeah, I think you’re right. Not calling sometimes is better than calling.

Ramsey Russell: But he’d get in the right location, put out the decoy. If he had to call or need to change something up, he’d call a little bit, but not much. Not all this stuff you see on the Internet, not all this main street calling. It was just a quack and shut up.

Butch English: Well, that goes across, even chasing elk learning when not to call, and not to call is sometimes much better than calling. I think that’s across the board.

Ramsey Russell: All these years later, do you remember your first duck?

Butch English: I do, yeah. I actually have a picture of it. I was, I think, 8 or 9-years old, and we were quail hunting. Back then when we duck hunted, it was all jump shooting.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Butch English: So, we’re working around a pond. My dad saw some ducks on a little pond and he said, crawl up there. I’m shooting a single shot bolt action 410.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Butch English: He said, see me shoot one of those ducks? And jumped up and I got lucky and shot a duck, and that was my first duck.

Ramsey Russell: Do you remember what species it was?

Butch English: It was a teal-

Ramsey Russell: Green-winged or something like that.

Butch English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It reminds me of a story. Forrest was about 8 or 9-years old. We were in Texas and jump shot a pond. We got up, bam. The birds rallied 1 or 2 times. It was a 20 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour tail wind. Here comes the hen green-winged tearing across the pond. I threw about a box car lead in front of it, pulled the trigger, and Forrest claimed it. 8 years old, that’s fine. I was walking out to it, and I said, how far did you lead that bird? He says, same as you. My granddaddy said, you got to be smarter than a dog to train them and learn the same to be true with kids, man. You got to be smarter than them.

Butch English: To beat them that’s for sure.

Ramsey Russell: That’s pretty good. You ended up in Microsoft. What were you all doing? I know I’m changing subject real quick, but what were you doing in Microsoft way back then? Were you a code writer, one of guys sitting in a cubicle typing?

Butch English: No, I was always driving different business relationships or licensing programs and what we call the channel? The reseller channel, and no, I didn’t code. I couldn’t do that.

Ramsey Russell: Like a lot of companies, Microsoft, their claim to fame, how they got to be such a big company, was it the technology or was it the licensing? A lot of stuff-

Butch English: Combination of all the above.

Ramsey Russell: Did you know Bill Gates?

Butch English: Oh, no. Not probably. I would say no. I worked with worked, met him different functions, but we didn’t hang out, but it was a great experience. I loved my time in the tech world and learned a lot. I loved the pace of the tech industry and I love the notion of changing the world and thinking-

Ramsey Russell: Oh, it did?

Butch English: Seeing things that change in front of you and knowing, it’s like, oh my gosh. I at a young age studied, it’s called Moore’s law. Moore was one of the founders of intel, and he said back in the 70s that the rate of change would double every 12 months, and he was talking about processing speed, but it really was about life and technology and things. You think about, just reflect back how fast things seem to go and technology, how we change and how we think about things, the information that we can find. When I started at Microsoft, our goal was to, we said, information at your fingertips, and that was our goal, and you think now it’s like all of us can find information. With all the different mapping tools that we available today, we can find hunting spots, we can find private access or public access and all kinds of interesting things that wasn’t available then. So Moore’s law was really something that I embraced as a young professional and felt like that was the direction. If you could stay in that curve, if you could stay on that lane with the rate of change and anticipate, if you think about what made Wayne Gretzky so great. If you go to a little kid’s soccer game and you see all the little kids bunched around the ball and it’s like this big giant beehive. Well, in hockey, I remember somebody asking Wayne Gretzky, what made you so great? What was the key thing? And he said I’m not the biggest guy, I’m not the fastest guy. What I tried to do is focus on where I thought the puck was going to be, and that’s what I did, and it worked out. That’s the technology, and I think having seen that allows us to try to think about where we think the puck is going to be.

Ramsey Russell: You talk about technology evolving since then, using that Moore’s law. Is that the truth. I’m 20 something years old when I push a computer on for the first time, people were way ahead. Back in those days, you had to type the little DOS codes to make things, and then all of a sudden, windows come out. Now, everybody, your grandmother could get on and jump around on this thing called the Internet. That was so few places to go back in the day and so limited information, and do you know, one time Butch, I think in 1990 or 1991, Bill Clinton was running for office, and Al Gore came to Mississippi state going the vice president candidate, even though our politics didn’t line, maybe I wanted to go see this guy running for vice president talk, and we were sitting out there in public, and this man talked about 1990 ,1991, which seemed like it was a long time ago now, but I was a grown man, and he talked about somebody in California or anywhere around the United States being able to access the Library of Congress and find out anything over a piece of wire the size of a human hair. I’m like, what the heck is this. This ain’t Star Trek. But he was right, and this technology blossomed and now today, I can remember back in the 80s, David Hasselhoff was driving that black car around, and he would talk to his car and get information. The car would talk back to him. Hell, I do that every day.

Butch English: Exactly.

Ramsey Russell: Where’s the nearest restaurant or the gas? What’s the population of Des Moines, Iowa? And it’s right there in our fingertips. Everybody listening has more information in their fingertips than George W. Bush did the day he was sworn into office.

Butch English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Do you know, we take it for granted, but back then, you were right at the cusp of it, and Moore’s law proved true, didn’t it?

Butch English: Yeah, in 1995, when Microsoft launched Windows 95, and it was all about information at your fingertips, and now we all take it for granted. Heck, the generation today, they have no idea of this story. They’re like, there’s always information. They can find anything. In fact, a lot of people believe that if you lose your phone, some people lose their phone today or their connected device, they can’t change a tire. They don’t know how. They can’t travel from one city to another city. Sometimes that’s true. How many people you get into someone else’s truck or car, do they have the old maps? Very few people carry maps anymore. I think it’s good and bad in some cases. Sometimes we’ve lost a little bit of how things actually work, but I think the pluses really outweigh the minus.

Ramsey Russell: It’s made us more efficient. But at the same time, maybe because you know what? Back in the old days, if I’m going to do these road trips, I’m sitting there with a map spread out on the hood of my truck, my kitchen table, plotting it out. I knew my miles, I knew my distances. I knew my exits. You say, how’d you get here? I say, I come up this highway, and nowadays, where’d you go? I turn wherever she says, I don’t know where I am. I have no idea. It drives me crazy, too, how I’ll be sitting in some podunk town. I just wonder where I am, and the map on the screen doesn’t show me. So, I am at a little bit of a loss not having my paper map know where in the hell I am just in a city somewhere.

Butch English: Yeah.

Moving from Technology to Outdoor Apparel

Ramsey Russell: But it’s interesting. So you worked at Microsoft, and then what?

Butch English: I had this great opportunity to leave the tech world and join the hunting world, and I had a great opportunity to go work for Mossy Oak and fantastic experience.

Ramsey Russell: Mississippi boys.

Butch English: Yeah, great company, great founder, and enjoyed my time there.

Ramsey Russell: what did you do at Mossy Oak?

Butch English: I was in charge of licensing and sales and marketing.

Ramsey Russell: That is a big part of their business model, isn’t it.

Butch English: It is. Toxie sold the apparel company to Russell Corporation. Right prior I came over and we were building licensing, working with a bunch of different vendors and licensees and growing the business together, and it was fun to see people put the Mossy Oak camouflage on different wide range of products and tell stories and be part of the brand extension.

Ramsey Russell: I’m seeing a theme emerge in this conversation because you got on the technology, the Moore’s Law, Microsoft. The world changed, and my world, which is not technology, changed with the advent of Mossy oak bottomland camo, because back in the day, we wore green BDUs or woodland BDUs or tight, whatever you could find at the army Navy, and if you’re really lucky, you’d go buy some of them foam insulated walls, real splotchy camo that stood out everywhere you go. You could see somebody a mile off wearing it. Along comes this company from Mississippi where this bottom land camo, and I can remember, I think I’m right, when I went to a turkey calling contest, my buddy, the late Mike Morgan, used to have this archery store, and they had an owl hooting and turkey calling contest, and there were door prizes, and there were 2 mossy oak products. One was a turkey blind, which at the time was nothing but a bolt of fabric that you stuck on the trees around you, and a pair of uninsulated bibs, and I got those bibs.

Butch English: There you go.

Ramsey Russell: Let me tell you what. I wore them till I busted every seam in them because I felt invisible wearing it, look at where the hunting and the camo and the clothing technology has gone since bottomland. They changed the whole hunting world in terms of camo, how we perceive the world and what we want to be and how we want to be in nature, Bottomland. So, you’ve been at the cusp of two big innovation.

Making Innovative Hunting Apparel

Textiles and apparel should be dynamic. It should change.

Butch English: In both fantastic companies, and really thought leadership in certain areas. In fact, that led me into the endeavor today, where the world around us continues to change fast, but if you think about apparel, the apparel hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. Maybe some fibers, maybe a little bit of style, but at the end of the day, a jacket is a jacket, and you and I can buy the same jacket today, and we’re going to have a different experience because our personal body uses or our bodies have different temperatures and different expectations. So we have a different experience, and you think about what other things in our lives hasn’t changed. Style hasn’t changed. We still zip up a jacket. We still put on pants. We still have to bring a duffel bag full of layers based on the trip, in case it’s raining, in case it’s hot, in case it’s windy, and that’s really drove me to the thought process around how do we evolve apparel and textiles? Textiles and apparel should be dynamic. It should change.

Ramsey Russell: Technology is changing them.

Butch English: It should change, and if we’re hunting as hunters, if we’re in the predators hunt and the shade and the shadows, our clothes should be adaptable to our environment. If it’s cold, it should be warmer. If it’s hot, it should be cooler. We’re on this quest to change how we think about textiles and clothing, and that’s what we’re trying to do now at Voormi.

Ramsey Russell: We’ll talk a little bit about it. Clothing itself hadn’t changed coat and pants and whatever, but I can remember the first time. Look, before we started recording, we were having a conversation with one of the Dallas Safari club volunteers about fixing to get cold here. Well 9-degrees in Dallas, Texas, pretty damn cold. But it ain’t -30 in Bozeman, Montana. You said the coldest you had ever been was where?

Butch English: In Alabama. Sitting in a tree stand.

Ramsey Russell: Because of the humidity?

Butch English: Exactly.

Ramsey Russell: I got offered a job one time right out of college up in North Dakota, and the boy asked me, he said, how’s old Mississippi weather going to do up here in North Dakota in our winters? I said, probably better than you fare down here in our summers, and he said the coldest I’ve ever been was Vicksburg, Mississippi, in about 40 degree temperature because of that humidity.

Butch English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So, it doesn’t get temperature like fahrenheit cold like it does up north, but we got that humidity that gets down in your bones. Growing up, I got into my 20s, along comes this company that was not a hunting company. It was a backpacking company called Patagonia. They came out some capilene, I believe my grandfather bought some just because it was space age technology. He was older, he got cold, and I got him later, and it was the first time I was ever truly warm with this new magical space age technology called Capilene. Well, Butch, that was 20, 30 years ago and fabrics and textiles have continued to evolve. Voormi specializes in wool, but it ain’t your papaw’s wool. I’ve got one of my favorite caps. It’s got a wool liner. I can’t wear it because it eats my bald head up, or I start wearing these wool clothes, and I’m just scratching and itching, and I can’t wear it. Tell me about you all’s technology.

Specializing in Human Comfort

The sun, the lights coming in, and if you can stay more comfortable, stay warmer, you’re going to have a better experience and that’s what we’re focused on.

Butch English: You bet. We specialize in wool, but we really specialize in human comfort. So right at the beginning with wool, we debarbed all the wool. Wool fiber is like a fish hook. It has a barb on it, so right off the bat, we de-barbed all the fiber, so that makes it comfortable and not itchy, and it doesn’t shrink when you wash it. But our goal is really about human comfort, and what we liked about wool is that, wool is a beautiful property. It keeps you warm, it keeps you cool. It keeps you comfortable. It absorbs 30% of its weight and moisture. If you get wet, you’re not going to die. As opposed to other natural fibers out there, if you get wet and it gets cold, it doesn’t stink. So if you wear polyester or other man made synthetics all day, at the end of the day, everybody knows that you’re smelling. If you’re in a hunting camp for a week, man, I tell you, by that third day, it’s pretty rank in there, so we’ve really focused on technology that allows us to pick and choose the best fibers. We have natural fibers like wool. We layer those with some other synthetic fibers for strength and durability. For water repellency in the hunting world, there is no better camo, there is no better fabric for utilization of camo than natural fibers. Natural fibers absorbs light. Synthetic fibers reflect light.

Ramsey Russell: So you can put glows.

Butch English: You can put whatever printed camo on a synthetic fabric, and it will glow. I can put whatever camel on a natural fiber, and it’s going to absorb light and disappear. So, we have been really working on manipulating things associated with natural fibers, but also utilizing advanced synthetic fibers.

Ramsey Russell: If you look at these, for lack of a better word, plasticized, plastic feeling, plastic sound, and crinkly Velcro type, you know what I’m talking about. These common jackets, I got a closet full of them over the years. How is the pattern, the camo or the solder to the color? It’s literally just printed onto this synthetic fiber. Is that right?

Butch English: Well, there’s a variety of ways to put camouflage on fabrics, but the most common way is just to print on a fabric. What we’re doing is we’re actually printing. We’re actually coloring each of the fiber itself and then, through software simulation, creating a pattern on that.

Ramsey Russell: The reason I bring that up is I want to focus on this glow. This feature of glow is I’ve got several jacket types that, same as you might leave a painted billboard or painted anything out in the sunshine, it begins to change colors. I’ve had a lot of camo product over the year that just with time or being out in nature hunting, begins to morph into this unworldly color. It doesn’t look like it. The brown becomes pink. Now all of a sudden, I look different, or the yellow becomes something else, and it just ain’t right. I think there’s a lot too because we had Bradley Cohen on here recently talking about bird eyesight, and they see things totally different than we do, man. They pick up on this light, this refractive, and that’s what they’re seeing. When you think about nature itself, the trees, the leaves, it absorbs and going down to the fiber level, like you all are doing with a natural product, it does not reflect. It absorbs, and so you blend in better.

Butch English: The light absorbs through natural fibers, but we think it’s more if we can stay comfortable in the woods, in the duck blind, you’re not moving around as much. The sun, the lights coming in, and if you can stay more comfortable, stay warmer, you’re going to have a better experience and that’s what we’re focused on.

Ramsey Russell: That’s the whole point. A lot of us listening can remember. Well, there are people listening that cannot remember life without the Internet, but a lot of us can remember red ball boots and cotton. That’s all you had, and you sat out there to the blind till your teeth were chattering. Too bad you had to leave and along comes neoprene, along comes something else to where we can sit out there longer, be more comfortable. I’ve always in and out bobbed and weaved into the wool world. One thing I can remember, Butch, you were talking about some of the natural properties, inherent qualities of wool. It’s also quiet. It’s very natural fiber, it’s quiet. One time we were up in Russia hunting Capercaillie, in the boreal forest near the Arctic Circle, and it is so quiet. As quiet as a church on Monday morning. Just quiet, and I was sitting by the fire. Some clients had walked off to go listen for Capercaillie, and I could hear them squeaking 200 yards away. If my deaf ears can hear them, I know the birds can hear them, and if they went to open a pocket, crunch with the velcro, it was loud. Just them walking. The crinkle of that sound was just deafening. And I’m a practical guy, Butch, I can’t afford Duck clothes, Quail clothes, Deer clothes, Elk clothes, I need a kind of one, does it all jacket is what I need. I need something that’s going to be quiet and blend in and absorb light in any environment I’m in. I think a product like this, which is why I’m such a huge fan, I think a product like a natural fiber, like what you all make, suits me.

Butch English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I now have about 1500 wears minimum in one product of you all. That’s that high-e hoodie, and short of going to Guatemala or Mexico, where it is hot, like, hot-hot. That high-e hoodie is always packed.

Butch English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I might wear it as a base layer. I might wear it as a mid layer. I might wear it as an outer layer. I go out to eat dinner, and as somebody that packs and travels and spends 8 weeks in Argentina, I like having something that everybody’s not rolling down the window when I get in 6 weeks later, but it doesn’t absorb odors. I need something practical like that.

Designing Environmentally Friendly Hunting Clothes

Do you know that 20% of the world’s wastewater is associated with coloring clothes?

Butch English: So many customers that have 100s and 100s of days on our products that share those type of testimonials with us. It’s funny you mentioned two things. One, how many clothes you have and the environment. Do you know every year, there’s 110 billion pieces of garments made? And do you know that to color these different products that are made, they dye the fabrics. Do you know that 20% of the world’s wastewater is associated with coloring clothes?

Ramsey Russell: You are kidding.

Butch English: 20% of the world’s wastewater is associated with half the mediterranean sea. Now, if you think about does any of us need more products in our closet?

Ramsey Russell: I need less.

Butch English: We need less. But if you’re going to church, if you’re going hunting or if you’re going to the store, why do you have to change clothes all the time? And so we’re focused on how do you build? How do we make things that are scalable, that crosses activities whether I’m duck hunting or if I’m, running to the store, if it’s hot, if it’s cold. How do we make less and do more? And we’re very focused on that. Also how do we do things different where the environment that we all love, that we all play in, is not dramatically impacted? I mentioned 110 billion apparel products are made every year. This fast fashion world is just poison to all of us. So that is a big deal that we’re focused on. How do we make less, that does more? I think all of us owe that to our kids. I know there’s a lot of people that said we really don’t own land. We’re just a caretaker.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of truth to that.

Butch English: But, we’re making, people are buying polyester stuff. Do you know, Ramsey, that it takes 80 to 90 years to decompose a polyester jacket? whereas it takes 5 to 6 months to decompose a wool jacket? Wool doesn’t have any downstream, residual nasties, plasticize, that go down. I don’t know if you read that recent article of that, there’s a huge percentage of plastics now that’s showing up in bottled water, showing up in everywhere. Well, it’s like we have so much plastics in our lives and we discard so much. We’re all contributing that.

Ramsey Russell: I go and wash my polyester long johns, my polyester shirt, and there’s these microscopic particles that are going out in the wastewater, and they’re starting to find those particles in fish. I heard they took core samples up in the Arctic and found them 6ft deep into the arctic. It permeates our entire existence.

Butch English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a staggering number that 20% of water quality is affected just by clothing.

Butch English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Dyes and chemicals. That’s crazy.

Butch English: Yeah. Isn’t that crazy?

Ramsey Russell: Walk me through the whole process, because the first time I met you, you went down into the technology. You were showing me that high-e hoodie I still wear, but you were showing me how you came up with it, how it was done, how you debarbed it, how you incorporated it and why. I’ve worn wool before, and it will keep me warm when I’m wet. I wear a wool sweater, and I go out and I’m warm, when I’m soaking wet, I’m heavy but I’m weighted down. But the thing I was telling somebody yesterday, showing them that high-e hoodie, and if I go out in the rain, I’m going to get wet, but what I love about that product is my dog shakes. It just beads like water and peels right off. So, it’s a very unique quality that serves me very well. It’s very functional for my lifestyle, but walk me through the whole process of how you came up with Voormi’s proprietary blend.

The Secret Behind Voormi’s Proprietary Blend

I mentioned a minute ago, we really focused on human comfort, and the key to human comfort is air.

Butch English: I mentioned a minute ago, we really focused on human comfort, and the key to human comfort is air. So, let’s talk about wet suits for a minute. A wetsuit is developed to protect you from cold water if you’re swimming.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Butch English: How does that work? It brings cold water in. A wetsuit, you get wet in, water comes in, your body warms that water up. You stay very comfortable, and it flushes out, and that continuous flush out, it regulates your temperature. When you’re swimming in wetsuit, you’re not really hot, you’re not cold, you’re staying very comfortable. We’re doing the same thing with air. Air is one of the elements that drives cold, and so we’re using air. So our products are rated for different air ratings. Some products move air faster, some products don’t move air as fast. The whole intent is to keep the right amount of air next to your body to create this microclimate that’s very comfortable, in and out. So, I think when we wake up in the morning, there’s not too many people that are very excited about putting on a 3-layer crunchy rain jacket. It’s hot, it’s noisy, but it doesn’t move air. It protects you from the rain, but it does not create comfort.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Butch English: Where on the other side, the activewear, the lululemons, all these activewear companies are very comfortable to wear. But if you go outside, you’re going to be cold because the air is going to come right through it. So we like to think that we’re the activewear for the outdoors. We like to be comfortable stretchy knits, but yet have the properties that the outdoor companies bring in for weather protection. So, we’re blending those two things and really focused on being the active wear for the outdoor market.

Ramsey Russell: And it works.

Butch English: It does work.

Ramsey Russell: When did you all start, you all have been around, what? 10 years now?

Butch English: About 10 years, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And you’re just beginning to emerge big time breakout. Did you all start as a lifestyle brand or a hunting brand?

Butch English: We really started in the snow world, way up in the mountains. We live in southwest Colorado or headquartered in southwest Colorado. So, we’re mountain climbers, skiers and when you’re at 9000ft, 10,000ft, the weather changes fast. Even in the summertime, they could start snowing and sleeting and be really cold. So, we focused at that level to make sure that we could build products that would really handle rapid change of weather in a variety of weather. So that was our genesis, if you will, is in the snow world.

Ramsey Russell: Whether you’re in the snow world, active hiking, sled boarding, skiing, whatever like that, or you’re duck hunting anywhere on God’s earth, layers is always the key because the temperature is going to change. We go to Africa, and it starts off, it may start off at 31 degrees in the morning. The minute the sun comes up, it jumps 20 degrees, and by lunch it could be 80 degrees and that’s a big deal. You just need to be able to put it on, put it off.

Butch English: But the right layers is important. So many people don’t do the right layers. In fact, over the next year, you’re going to see us release some really interesting technology that will greatly reduce the need to layer completely and again based on regulating the air, keeping things comfortable, and that’s the whole idea of layers today, is to begin to trap layers of air. So, in the future, you’ll see less and less need for that.

Ramsey Russell: You all have built a system, because I wear a Voormi system, I wear base layers. Always anything below 50 degrees. I’ve got on a pair of ultralight base layers, and I like it because it’s like, got this wicking property that pulls the moisture off me, and then I wear a medium layer and then I start layering on up. Get the hoodie, get the outer coat. Did you come out the gate intended to build a system that worked together like that?

Butch English: I mentioned that in the mountains, we really were developed on this notion of follow the water. Starting in the wintertime, it’s snowing goes into spring, we have runoff and melt, and all the people that were guiding skis or ski patrollers would move into whitewater rafting. Then as the water dropped down and moved into fly fishing, and then it would move into the fall for different types of hunting and start to cycle again. Those guys couldn’t afford it, and we didn’t want to make more and more of those products for each activity, so we focused on making products that would work across all those activities as you were following the water in the mountains. So that was Day-1. We focused on making the best, what we call mid-layers. The high-e hoodie that you keep referencing was our first product. It’s still one of our top selling products. It was designed, actually is an original ice climbing gear.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Butch English: Yeah, it has longer arms, longer torso, kangaroo pockets, a really interesting hood, and it has been the favorite for no matter what. You travel the world chasing ducks, it’s one of your favorite pieces. I have ski guides. I have people all over the world climbing, doing crazy things. That is their piece, their must go-to piece, every bag that they have.

Ramsey Russell: How do your wool-based base layers, other than smell, which we all know about the smell of the plastic, how do they differ from a plastic or polypro or something base layer? What are the inherent differences?

Butch English: Yeah, the way our construction of our base layers are unique, actually. Across all of our product lines, we utilize a little bit of synthetic fibers next to skin. Those act as superchargers. They pull your skin, moisture, the nasties from your skin into the fabric, and then we plate wool fibers over that. We don’t blend a synthetic fiber with a wool fiber. We think that’s compromising the inherent attributes of each fiber. We plate it kind of like an Oreo cookie. So, the moisture and nasties from your skin comes in off your skin, gets pushed up into the wool, and all the natural attributes of wool. No odor, comfortable, it absorbs water, it stays warm, and that’s the key is being able to leverage the different attributes of the different fibers that we use the way they were intended versus blending and cutting. Today’s cost based on fast fabric, everybody blends fibers. They try to cheapen it down. They’re trying to make the cheapest product out there, and they talk about recycle this and recycle that. Once you put a recycled yarn in a garment, it’s done. You can’t recycle that again. You can maybe repurpose it, make it into dog beds or something, but you can’t recycle it like you can a water bottle.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Butch English: So, many of the outdoor companies talk about this environmental impact and recycle this and taking the plastics, they’re still making products that are not good for the environment. We’re very focused on the fact that we’ve taken an engineered approach, put certain fibers where they need to be to optimize the personal comfort and durability and longevity of that product.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to shift to camo concealment. That’s a big thing, and there’s a gazillion camo patterns out there, and a lot of them blend in perfectly in one environment. But my beloved and I love mossy oak, put me off into Mississippi bottom lands, it vanishes. Go to the boreal forest, go down to parts of Argentina somewhere, not so much, and I would say that about any camo pattern, you all’s is different because it’s not really a camo pattern, it’s a concealment. What is you all wording for camo? A concealment technology? It’s different, and at a glance, I’m just going to be honest with you, I didn’t like it. I ain’t wearing that kind of like solids, and Yarnell sent me one and I put it on and got in front of something, holding it up, and when the picture went off, I’m like, wow, I like that because it blends in. It absorbs light, but it blends in. You’ve got a dark, you got a light. Describe you all’s concept and what you all wanted to do when you all came up with you all’s concealment pattern.

From Function to Fashion: How Camo Has Changed

Companies have done fantastic things for the outdoor industry and for the hunting market and fishing market, and that those position statements and the support from consumers to, like you mentioned, Mossy Oak has been fantastic, and they’ve done great things for various habitat restorations and all kinds of things. I think what we focused on was, again, on the comfort, and then how can we blend in? I didn’t want to play in the camouflage thing.

Butch English: We think about it as another colorway. Camouflage in the past has been great. Companies have done fantastic things for the outdoor industry and for the hunting market and fishing market, and that those position statements and the support from consumers to, like you mentioned, Mossy Oak has been fantastic, and they’ve done great things for various habitat restorations and all kinds of things. I think what we focused on was, again, on the comfort, and then how can we blend in? I didn’t want to play in the camouflage thing. I think the days of the camouflage war is kind of done. Like you said, so many camouflage, and the religious battles that still exists in certain pockets of the country are becoming few and fewer. It just is, and now people are buying things that really perform or that’s perceived to be cool. So, we took a different approach to that concealment market in anticipation of some things that we’re going to announce soon. Being able to color yarn and then, as I mentioned, through software simulation, create zones of depth and interesting manipulation of light fractions. So that’s what we do. But it looks different. We all see camouflage because we love camouflage. We’re out in the woods and we see camouflage, but we sell that product to a lot of people in big cities. They don’t see camo. They just see a unique colorway.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Butch English: It doesn’t look like camo, and that’s what we wanted to do. Again, staying with our center of the lane approach is like, we don’t want to build specificity. We want to build products that cover a gamut of things, and then when you wear the brand, that brand means something. The brand represents the old camouflage, brands represent the contribution to the hunting market and to habitat management. Then as you think about the brands today, what do they represent? People are trying to transcend their brands into meaning more than maybe what they did in the past. So, we’re very focused on what does the Voormi brand mean? And it means innovation, driving a level of human comfort and expectations. We’re going to set a whole new level of expectations. What we each should expect out of our clothes. Think about it, we expect things from our phone. The communication world has changed all around us. Transportation. You and I both took an Uber this morning to get here. 10 years ago, that didn’t even exist. Healthcare has changed rapidly. Everything, pictures, music, everything in our lives. We can communicate with our homes. Every place we go is personalized for you, for me, except for our clothing, and that’s what we’re working on.

Ramsey Russell: I may be different than a lot of people. I’m certainly no fashion mogul, but I expect my clothes to last forever. Believe it or not, I still wear clothes, belts, I got a few sweatshirts that I had in college 30 years ago, and that’s what I expect. Clothing, if I like it, I want to have it forever. I don’t want to go out and buy a new pair every day. I’m not a disposable mentality kind of guy, and as crazy as this sounds, Butch, I’m a little bit emotionally attached to my high-e hoodie. Me and my old buddy high-e have had so many good times together. It’s like Linus’s little blanket, man, that’s my jacket. I don’t want to get rid of that. I don’t want to replace it with another jacket. I want my high-e. Me and him have gone some miles together. I’m attached to that kind of stuff because it has suited me well and helped me be better and do better than a lot of things I’ve ever worn, and this stuff lasts forever. I got 1500 wears in his jacket and I even thinking about quitting, you had that going into this vision. I want this thing to last.

Butch English: We wanted durability. My son’s involved and my daughter’s involved with the business, but prior to the business, they were also guides and in a variety of things, from ski to mountaineering to all kinds of stuff. The notion they had to replace products all the time, it was crazy. We wanted to build out from the very beginning the most durable products out there. The softest, quietest, most durable, and we initially started building everything in the United States. We still build a lot in the United States. In fact, this year I doubled our US manufacturing over last year. We make our fabrics in the United States. That’s been important to us, and to build the most durable, longevity, things that last, and things are uniquely different. It’s a premium product. It is not a cheap product. We think a lot of inexpensive, cheap things, this fast fashion world ends up in that landfill, and we didn’t want to contribute to that and it cost us a lot of money to make products, design products. We’re proud of the products we make and all the fabrics that you see on our product line, from the super light sunshirts all the way to the very big parkas for sub-0 degree temperature. They’re all made with our unique proprietary fabric technology, and they last a long time.

Ramsey Russell: It’s not cheap. What’s old saying, good ain’t cheap and cheap ain’t good? Something like that. But I’m a kind of guy. I will pay a little bit more. I’ll pay once, wear forever, and that’s just my ethos. That’s how I am. Folks starting to walk in, but I want to wrap up real quickly first. I want to go into, beyond just the wool, synthetic. You all have started doing a different layer now. Some of your products are starting to have a more applied technology. I’m thinking that the two pocket hoodie, that’s not just the wool that breeds now it’s got a little more barrier in there. Talk about that.

Core Technology

We’re going to be able to have adaptive clothing both in comfort, color, and that’s what we’re going to be announcing over the next 12 months.

Butch English: Yeah. We’ve had a breakthrough in some interesting technology, what we call core technology.

Ramsey Russell: Core technology.

Butch English: So, you’ll see that on some of our products. What that is, call it a membrane. We like to think of it as a functional substrate. Today, if you look at a 3-layer gore, let’s just say Gore-Tex, a 3-layer Gore-Tex jacket, or any type of 3-layer rain jacket, they have a membrane, a soft, quiet membrane in the center of that, but it’s glued to a piece of fabric on the top and in the bottom, right. You’re using glue. It’s crunchy, it’s noisy. But guess what? That little membrane that’s not crunchy and loud. It’s soft and pliable. The way the application is, it makes it very loud and crunchy and not breathable. We’ve taken a substrate so that thin, little, whispery membrane, and we’ve actually put it in a new process that we actually stitch and make a fabric through and around it. So we have an integrated membrane in a knit. So think about your soft, flexible fleece that you love that has a soft, quiet membrane that you never know that’s not hot. So, we work through maintaining a very high-level moisture vapor transfer so it stays comfortable, but it blocks the right amount of wind coming through, and it is a product, it’s a game changer. So, we are focused on game changer. It’s a game changer. In fact, we use the word. It’s going to be a tectonic shift.

Ramsey Russell: It is a tectonic shift. I’m going to tell you again. Yarnell said, hey, I want you to try this out. I said, I don’t need a hoodie, dude. I don’t need a hoodie  because I get cold. I’m not you old viking blood guys up in the mountains in -30. I want to be warm, and I got my hands on this two pocket hoodie and I have worn it in as cold weather as I dare go out, which is to say as cold as it gets. It’s unbelievable. It’s got that core technology.

Butch English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It’s got this pocket up here and I’m invisible wearing a blowdown and I absolutely pack it everywhere. It’s cold, but I may not be able to wear it unless it’s cold.

Butch English: Well Ramsey, you’re wearing it right now.

Ramsey Russell: The vest.

Butch English: You’re wearing that technology in a vest.

Ramsey Russell: So think about it, it’ll be coming off here shortly. I’m a little warm.

Butch English: It’s an interesting technology that we’re able to manipulate airflow and air movement through and build upon. But long term, having a functional substrate embedded, woven, knitted all through our fabrics allows us to begin to introduce some things that I have alluded to where we think the future of clothing looks way different. We’re going to be able to have adaptive clothing both in comfort, color, and that’s what we’re going to be announcing over the next 12 months. You’ll see us create some very dynamic things in our clothing utilizing technology, utilizing our unique method of make and a lot of patents that we have associated with that. So warming is the future of clothing is what we like to-

Ramsey Russell: It is the future of clothing.

Butch English: You’re going to see that evolve rapidly over the next 12 months.

Ramsey Russell: You started with base and mid layers and activity type stuff and some of your latest product, and I got to end on this note because from the version-1 rain jacket and bibs, people have put their hands on it. People have seen me wear it. I’ve handed it to people who have put it on and taken it out of the field, and from Australia to Mississippi, everybody that has put their hands on that raincoat or rain jacket or on those bibs wanted them. That takes everything we’ve talked about with the wool technology, and bam, now I have worn it seaduck hunting with spray coming over the bow. I’ve worn it out in snows. It is unbelievable. It’s the perfect complement to everything we’ve talked about so far. Tell me about the version-1 rain jacket and bibs.

Butch English: Yeah. They’re a very heavy duty, utilitarian approach. We can ride snowmobiles, we can ice fish, we can duck hunt. You name it across the board. It’s a utilitarian, do all product. It will stay warm and dry, and comfortable in all the really harsh conditions, and utilizing our wool technology on the inside allows you to have a level of comfort that you probably don’t have in other type of rain protection or bibs. Ramsey, you’ve also mentioned a few times on this interview how many times you’ve wore a product, and we also mentioned about it’s a premium priced product. One of the things that we have taken from the technology industry is a notion of price per wear. The cost of wear. So, if you’ve worn that high-e hoodie that you keep referencing a thousand times and it’s $300, let’s just say that price per wear is really cheap. Let’s contrast that to other pieces that may be in your closet you spent $500 or $600 on or $700 on that you only wear when maybe it’s raining. So, the price per wear is really high. But with ours, the price per wear is really low. So just the viewers, when you look at it and you see the premium price or the price associated with these products, from the v-1 products to our big parkas, all the way to base layers. Listen to Ramsey here, might wears this all the time. So if you think about the price per wear, it’s pretty reasonable.

Ramsey Russell: You bring out a very good point Butch, but let me just say this. The times I have worn and truly appreciated the 2-pocket hoodie, the bibs and the jacket, there wasn’t nothing I wouldn’t pay to have them on at that time because I was pretty damn miserable.

Butch English: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: You know what I’m saying? I like that concept. The longer I wear it, my cost per wear goes down. I wear it a lot because it really got its place, and I just find that my travel bag, I may leave in September and come home at Thanksgiving, and I’m hitting a lot of different climate just in North America. My bag, it’s not near as heavy as it used to be because I’ve got a lot more functional and variable. I’ve compacted with just fewer items. I can hit more terrain. Enjoy that.

Butch English: Our customer retention level is probably one of the highest in the industry. We people try one product, maybe it’s reluctantly, I don’t know. So many people say their products work, what makes it different, and they try our product just like you did a couple years ago, and it’s like, oh my gosh, I need another one, or I want something different, and it’s the unexpected, pleasant surprise you get when you actually wear a product that performs like the person told you that was going to. That’s why you’re able to get away with less.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Butch, thank you very much. Folks, you all been listening to Butch English of Voormi. Last question, Butch. I got to end it on this. I get asked all the time, what the hell does Voormi mean? I know what it means. Where’d you come up with a name and what’s it mean? Cause it hits your brand to a t. It does.

Butch English: Voormi is really around these biped, beastie individuals that really followed the storm cycles snow also followed the migration, if you will. They lived in the truck. They lived in whatever they were focused on their pursuit at all costs, and that’s what a Voormi is. Also interesting, Voormi in Dutch means, for me, and so as we think about some of the things we’re going to announce this year, you’ll realize why for me becomes very relevant with Voormi. So, if you think about Voormi, can handle the harshest conditions, but it also is a jacket built for you.

Ramsey Russell: There you go. Folks, Butch English of Voormi. Check it out. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast from Dallas Safari Club. We’ll see you next time.