Make Silk Stockings Resistant And Environmentally Friendly! Britain, Canada, Sweden, These Three Startups Show Their Powers.

Stockings, especially stockings and pantyhose, are essential for many women's closets. According to a 2016 survey, an English woman spent more than 3000 pounds on stockings and pantyhose on average. The Statista survey showed that in 2018 alone, more than 400 million pairs of stockings and pantyhose were sold in the US.

But behind the massive demand, many consumers are "love hate" for stockings. They are very easy to damage. When they are dressed, they may cause openings, tear and so on, or even a little longer toenails. They may open a hole in the top of stockings. A survey of 3000 French women in 2018 by NGO Halte Halte L bsolescence bsolescence Programm e showed that her panty hose would be damaged on average for only six times.

Many people think that this is deliberate. In the 2010 Danish documentary "The Lightbulb Conspiracy", the earliest nylon panty hose was very durable, so DuPont (DuPont) redesigned its fabric to make it easier to damage and promote sales.

More durable sewing method

In recent years, many start-ups have realized the pain of consumers in this area and started to solve these problems in their own way. Heist Studios, one of the UK's start-up companies, is one of them.

Founded in 2015, Heist Studios is a direct selling pantyhose brand based on digital channels. Fiona Fairhurst, vice president of Heist Studios, said that the garment industry has undergone tremendous changes in the past few decades, but stockings and pantyhose are still stuck in the past: "it's 2019, but people still wear underwear in 60s."

Heist Studios is working with a community of 67 women, based on feedback from them to improve the design of tights, emphasizing comfort and durability, so that women can not panic when wearing stockings, and always worry about breaking the stockings with too much effort. Their panties are unique in their way of sewing. Compared with the number of knitting threads of the general tights 500, the number of knitted threads of Heist Studios has reached 5000. In the textile process, their sewing machines rotate at 400 revolutions per minute, instead of the average 700 to 1200 turns in the industry, so as to ensure that the product is compact and durable.

At the same time, they also made improvements in the design, using an integrated sewing mode, removed the frequently caused problems, and moved the joints at the toe to the sole to reduce the possibility of damage.

Heist Studios's pantyhose is priced at 20 to 24 pounds, and there are 10 different colors that enable consumers to match their clothing and complexion. According to the company, they can sell a pair of tights every 15 seconds, and the average sales growth has been 20% every month since it was founded in October 2015. In September 2018, they opened their first physical store in London.

Stronger tights than steel

Sheertex, a start-up in Canada, solves the problem of tights from another angle: new fabrics.

Sheertex was founded in 2017 and won $200 thousand in start-up funds through Kickstarter public funding. Katherine Homuth, founder, said: "the fabric on the market is either very tough or very light, but there are no two fabrics."

To this end, she and the company's R & D team spent a year looking for the right fabric, and finally found a fabric for bulletproof vest, and also used for making tights. Natalie Catania, a senior executive at Sheertex, said: "she found the right fabric, but the fabric is still too thick for traditional pantyhose production." For this reason, Sheertex has developed a way of making this special fabric into pantyhose without sacrificing wearability.

Although the process is time-consuming and laborious, the result is astonishing. Sheertex's tights are known as "indestructible". In the gizmodo.com staff's tests, no matter how hard they tried, they could not tear the Sheertex pantyhose, even put the potatoes in the tights and then stabbed them with a knife. Scissors can cut the tights of Sheertex, but the opening is much smaller than that of other tights.

These so-called "stronger steel" pantyhose can be repeatedly worn 50 times, in addition to black and white, but also to provide three different meat color, to meet consumers' different complexion. Natalie Catania said: "the fabric we use is very expensive, so the price of each pair is as high as 99 Canadian dollars, of which 50 Canadian dollars are spent on the cost of materials."

More environmentally friendly production process

However, vulnerability is not the only drawback of the tights industry. Environmental protection and sustainable development are also a thorny problem.

Sweden's stockings brand Swedish Stockings's two founders, Linn Frisinger and Nadja Forsberg, focus on solving this problem. The inspiration that they founded the company came from the documentary "The Lightbulb Conspiracy".

"Two billion pairs of tights are produced every year, but they are discarded only two times. This is also one of the biggest sources of pollution in the fashion industry." Forsberg said: "when the tights first appeared, they were the best quality products at that time, but now they are expendable consumables."

Frisinger said that tights have not evolved for a long time, whether in terms of product quality, design, environmental protection and sustainable development. Worst of all, many people are totally not aware of the serious pollution of pantyhose. He said: "their materials are all derived from petroleum derivatives, and they can not be degraded naturally. They will eventually fall into landfills. Many people do not know this."

The products of Swedish Stockings come from nylon, which is recovered from all kinds of waste materials. Their factories in Italy use solar energy and other clean energy as drivers. They also recently launched a new product line called Innovations by Swedish Stockings, which uses more kinds of recycled materials to produce pantyhose. The first batch of products comes from elastic fibers recovered from waste materials, and then will expand to plastic bottles and other garbage.

Swedish Stockings also encourages consumers to send their worn pantyhose to them. "We can not make use of these old pantyhose to produce brand new tights at the moment. This is a very painful thing, but we are working in this direction." Frisinger said: "now we hope that in this way, more people will be aware of the importance of tights recycling, and encourage more brands to enhance environmental protection and sustainable development."

Swedish Stockings plans to introduce completely degradable panty hose in two years. Their products range from 12 to 39 euros, and are sold through brand websites and over 600 cooperative retailers worldwide. The United States, Canada, Japan and Holland are their biggest markets. The sales volume of the brand is up to 100% this year, and the sales growth in 2019 is expected to reach 200%.

Frisinger said that in the future he hopes to link up with more brands. He stressed: "we do not want to be the only sustainable brand of tights. We hope we are only one of them."