Western Mountaineering - visit to the sleeping bag factory

Western Mountaineering is a well-known brand among outdoor enthusiasts. Their bestseller is the WM Ultralite, a bag that I used a lot for 10-15 years before replacing it with a Versalite a couple of years ago. I visited their sleeping bag factory in San Jose, California, and saw how some of the world's best sleeping bags are produced.

By Jörgen Johansson 

Western Mountaineering has been around since 1970 and has kept its position as one of the leading brands among sleeping bag manufacturers. One reason for this might be that they only make sleeping bags (yes, quilts and some down garments as well). Managing Director Gary Peterson showed me around their factory and on this subject says: "We do not try to conquer the world". 

This reminds me of another outdoor brand, Swedish Hilleberg The Tentmaker, who at one time did chose not to branch out into packs, clothing (where the real money is) and many other things, like other outdoor manufacturers do. The business idea seems to be to focus on a very narrow part of gear, tents or sleeping bags, and to do this really well.

The WM factory and "world headquarters" is in a very unassuming locality in a very unassuming part of San Jose, about an hours drive from San Francisco and situated in the not so unassuming Silicon Valley. Gary took me through the different steps of manufacturing and I also got to meet Yolanda, the "finisher" of my own WM Versalite sleeping bag.

The fabric is laid out on the cutting table.

Placement of the interior baffles are marked.

Cut inner and outer fabric waiting to be sewn into bags, with baffles, zippers and collars.

Scales and down waiting. An old, high quality mechanical scale from Germany has so far proved to be better than any digital version.

This template is hung onto the scale. The numbers around the perimeter shows how much down goes into each separate compartment of the bag, from the big ones to the small ones in the hood.

The finished product.

Ready for shipping. WM makes 16 000-18 000 sleeping bags per year.

So what are the biggest challenges for the company? Two things, raw materials and skilled staff. 

WM tries to buy as much material from US suppliers as possible but fabrics are bought from Japan (about 60 percent) and South Korea. In some bags they use laminated outer fabrics to make the bags water resistant and Gary mentions that when W.L Gore. Closed down their laminating facilityt in Japan and moved to China, WM managed to find a lighter alternative from a Japanese supplier. The other main component, down, is sourced from Poland.

All down-filled WM products are made in the factory in San Jose. Why not in South East Asia, like most every other gear manufacturer, was my obvious question.

To have control of production, says Gary. It is very difficult to make sure that every seamstress in every factory in China or Vietnam knows every little detail of every bag. Last week they might have sewn products for another company, next week they will work for yet another. 

Quality is also easier to maintain with a low turnover of staff. The latest employee joined WM two years ago. This comes at a price. While a seamstress in SE Asia might be payed $1 per hour, WM pays $27 per hour.

A problem with the major outdoor gear companies basically having left the US for SE Asia was and is that skilled seamstresses are now hard to find. The skill set, not surprisingly, disappeared when the jobs disappeared.Gary says that the average sleeping bag takes about 4,5 hours to make. When it comes to "the giants", like the WM Bison sleeping bag rated at 40 below, production time increases to 8 hours

So, does WM make the best sleeping bags in the world? In my opinion this is not a statement that can be made about any manufacturer or any product. But when I ask people in the outdoor business for a company that makes better sleeping bags than WM, there is usually only silence for an answer...