abe1x

Good question and a complicated one, let me do my best to parse it out.

first off, it's something we been working on extensively, particularly with the shirts. We use a lot of Corozo buttons for a few reasons. For one they look great, for two they are very renewable material, a type of tree nut, thirdly they are reasonably inexpensive and finally they are really easy to dye. What we've found unfortunately is that they don't handle repeated washing to well. It was a slow tricky issue that didn't really manifest itself clearly until it was a bit too late. Once we saw it we started working really hard on getting some replacement that meet our standards and we have a few thing we think work, they'll be making there way into the shirts very soon. Once we have them established we'll be offering them for free to anyone who has purchased a corozo buttoned shirt from us. Unfortunately these things take time but we are moving on it.

As for pants, yeah the buttons are a week point and it's really because of the unique place we've positioned ourselves, as somewhere inbetween traditional menswear and the outdoor industry. The simple answer is that all buttons fall off eventually with use, it just isn't a super strong attachment. The issue is more pronounced with our stuff though because we use four way stretch fabrics and people tend to put a lot more abuse into our clothing than say a pair of khakis.

If you take a look at workwear or outdoor gear you'll notice they rarely use buttons at all. Conrad from Arc'teryx Veilance once told me they tried to use bottons once, and immediately gave up, their shirts use snaps. We've looked at those sorts of options but we want to make classic garments, and we haven't found anything that looks right beside buttons in a lot of cases.

Beyond that we're always harassing our factories about the buttons and trying to QC every one. We've even looked into buying a new machine for one factory but we don't quite have those resources yet. So for now we're basically stuck with NY quality buttons, same quality you'd get on an Engineered Garments, Steven Alan or Patrick Ervell garment. And yeah we are looking on ways to make it better. Always.

sure. Tim O'Reilly once wrote about looking at his company like a road trip. Money is like gas. If you run out of gas the trip comes to a halt. So in that sense you always need to make sure the tank isn't empty. But the purpose of a road trip isn't to put as much gas in the tank, it's to have an amazing trip, see things, learn things and hopefully arrive at an interesting destination. A company is no different, you need to keep money flowing through, but that's not what makes it interesting or fun. When we make decisions we need to consider the financial implications, but we never are looking at them first. In the end we look for the routes that lead us to interesting places without getting caught without gas.

We mix it up a bit and there will be more technical looking stuff coming, but we're always going to keep a lot of that 'future classic' vibe going.

It's almost the opposite, I'm pretty much unemployable I didn't have much option but to freelance or start my own company... I've never had a proper salaried position in my life, Outlier is my second company, an animation/design studio called One Infinity was my first and inbetween I've always freelanced.

As for hoodies, we've done a few merino ones and will do more and reinforcing the elbows is definitely in discussion. If you are looking for an indestructible cotton one American Giant claim they are doing it and there is a kickstarter going for another similar company. I like Reigning Champs stuff a lot too. Our rule over here is if someone else is doing it well, buy their stuff. We focus on trying to make things that don't exist yet!

The one we talk about the most is Icebreaker underwear, which is great but has these awful logos on it. We sort of want to make our own just to escape those logos, but we haven't figured out how to make them substantially better in other ways so so far we've passed.