User centered design, product design, rapid prototyping, lab testing, production.
The goal of this project is to make softgoods products, that look and feel amazing to the user and deliver many years of service even with punishing use. Looking at softgoods development in the outdoor industry and really all arenas since the 1980s is pretty incredible. New textiles, advanced welding, bonding, weaving, and insanely complex cut and sew assemblies now being fairly normal we see that the hardware (buckles, clips, loops, etc.) available are the weak link. While we see hundreds of styles of side release buckles, tri-glides loops, g-hooks and many others, most of them amount to the same thing. They are cheep to make, hold up ok, then after 1-5 years, they break. Further more, with all the effort that is put into making products that delight the user, the plastic buckles look and feel cheep and tend to fail.
If sofgoods designers do opt to steer clear of plastic hardware, then they look at the metal options. These tend to either be cast or stamped. Cast hardware is metallurgically inferior which necessitates larger cross sections which makes it heavy and it is still brittle. Stamped hardware on the other hand doesn’t look very refined and, if made of steel is heavy and if made of aluminum often deforms. When trying to make high end, high performance that will deliver years of performance to the user designers are in a bit of a pickle. No one makes, great looking/feeling, durable, and lightweight hardware for softgoods. So to deliver amazing looking, feeling, and performing softgoods products to users is to improve the hardware.
The one exception to the above is the Cobra Buckle from Austrialpine. This buckle is all machined from billet and it looks and feels amazing. Unfortunately it was designed for fall protection so, while it can withstand a tremendous tug, it weighs in at 65 grams. Despite the weight, makers of very high end bags such as Beduin Foundry, Bag Jacks and other have started using the Cobra Buckles on many of their products. Unfortunately, this makes the bags quite heavy and even while these buckles look great, the hardware on the rest of the bag looks just mediocre.
While we have just begun this project, so far the results are looking very promising. The first buckle is a Cam Buckle for 3/4” webbing. The buckle weighs in at 8.2 Grams which is lighter than a lot of plastic buckles. Despite being light weight, in our last test, we saw the webbing break at 360 lbs and the buckle was still in working order. Each piece is CNC milled from solid billet and while this is not the cheapest way to do it, it is the only way to deliver this level of fit, finish, and performance to the end user.
People have accepted bad hardware for years. We see teams of designers slaving over every detail to make gear that performs at the highest level. Then with all that effort, one small plastic buckle breaks and renders the whole thing useless and often goes to the landfill. Hopefully these buckles can change some of that.
