Less oil in the outer shell.
Every puffer starts with a shell fabric, and almost every shell fabric on the market starts with petroleum. We wanted a different starting point.
For the REEL DOWN series, we partnered with Toray of Japan to build our shell from Ecodear™ N610 — a nylon that's roughly 60% derived from castor beans instead of crude oil. It's paired with a solvent-free coating and woven in ripstop for durability. It's lighter, softer, and finer than the nylon it replaces, and it doesn't ask you to trade performance for it.
From bean to fiber
The castor bean is a non-edible crop. It grows on marginal land, needs little water, and doesn't compete with the food supply — which is what makes it a genuinely useful feedstock rather than a marketing story.
Toray extracts oil from the bean and converts it to sebacic acid. That bio-based acid becomes roughly 60% of the finished polymer. The remaining ~40% is conventional hexamethylene diamine. Polymerized together, the result is N610: a filament yarn that behaves like premium nylon because it is premium nylon — just with most of the oil taken out.
Why we chose it
Lighter on the hand
An exceptionally fine filament makes for a shell that's light and soft to the touch, without the papery crunch most technical nylons carry.
Solvent-free coating
The exterior coating is applied without chemical solvents, cutting emissions and chemical load out of the finishing stage.
Ripstop construction
Woven with a reinforcing grid so a small snag stays a small snag. Built for boat rails, rod guides, and rough tailgates.
Built into REEL DOWN
Every piece in the REEL DOWN series uses an Ecodear™ bio-nylon shell.
One layer of a longer job.
Bio-based nylon isn't a finished answer. It's one honest improvement to one part of one garment, and we'd rather tell you that plainly than oversell it. We're working the same problem across every material we source — insulation, trims, packaging, and the shells we haven't converted yet.