Launch HN: SheerlyGenius (YC W18) – Indestructible Tights from Bulletproof Fiber
Every year $8 billion dollars worth of sheer tights/pantyhose end up in the landfill after only one or two wears. Ripping sheers is as easy as accidentally catching them on a fingernail, or simply pulling too hard while putting them on. Our goal is to replace these disposable products with Sheerly Genius, which has been tested to last up to 50 wears.
We have been working on this for about 12 months so far and it has been quite an adventure. When I started out I didn’t think we’d be developing our own fiber and machines, but that’s what it ultimately took.
The first fibers I looked at were aramids, like kevlar, which of course were attractive for their strength. To be considered sheer (as opposed to opaque), a pair of tights needs fibers that are 30 denier or less. Denier measures the thickness or fineness of a fiber. I quickly learned that the lowest denier kevlar came in was 1000 denier! So it was a non-starter.
It turned out that none of the fibers on the market today were both fine and strong enough to make an indestructible sheer product. Ultimately we had to develop our own fiber: a finer, colored version of the non-dyeable polyethylene fibers used in higher end bulletproof vests and climbing equipment. To use these fibers we had to retrofit circular knitting machines with new feeding systems and blades, because the fibers are so strong they break typical knitting machines!
My background is in software and manufacturing - building and selling two companies prior to Sheerly Genius. But this is my first journey into textiles. In my last startup I worked directly with many hardware companies, but became increasingly skeptical of the trend in IoT towards “connected” anything. One thing I love about this project is that we’ve been able to innovate in wearables without being connected.
Fun Fact: Half of our backers on Kickstarter so far have been men!
I’m looking forward to talking manufacturing, textiles, and crowdfunding. Can’t wait to hear your ideas and experiences in these areas. Also happy to answer any questions about our journey in developing the product so far!
169 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadEven if the bullet didn't breach the fabric, the fabric is gonna breach YOU. I guess it might make recovering the projectile from your internal organs a little easier, LOL. So there is that.
I can't help but wonder if something coated with something perfectly bulletproof might actually make things worse depending on the bullet's angle - for example, under ideal circumstances, a bullet could enter and leave and take out some fat - but if everything's covered, the whole surrounding area is going to get some serious bruising instead.
Possibly. </Armchair commentary>
That's not even clear.
One of the common problems for bullet manufacturers with the "FBI protocol" suite of tests used to be the "heavy clothing" test. Shooting through several layers of denim would clog the cavity of the hollow point bullets and cause them to over penetrate.
Simply put, it's extremely difficult to predict how bullets will react to barriers of any kind in lieu of testing.
Wish there was a site where I could learn about new textiles initiatives/technologies like this.
I was YCS2012.
Textile dye causes 20% of all industrial waste water pollution.
This is a huge win, well done. Very relevant.
Rooting for you(all)
And here another interesting application, a textile bike lock: https://www.tex-lock.com/en/
Out of curiosity, how did you determine this?
edit: omg lol, I love the robber scene in your kickstarter video
If you can make stockings bulletproof at 15 denier, what's to stop you (or a competitor) from going to 3-6 denier and make an even prettier stocking that only lasts four-five uses?
But, I think a business needs to have solid distinguishing characteristics. An ad that basically says, "It's more durable and just a little more expensive, so if you do the math, it will work out in your favor after a long enough period of time" doesn't sound like you're playing your strongest cards in your hand.
If you can make a product that no one else can, such as 3-6 denier, or super-strong athletic compression tights, then you create name-brand distinction. Even if it means that the bulk of sales end up being what you just advertised in Kickstarter, the tail-ends of the market is what defines the brand. "Super-sheer, super-strong."
(then sell socks to the military's of the planet) (and glove liners, and Bivys)
Though I imagine to get the fibers fine enough, you would need even higher molecular weight and a little more crosslinking. Possibly with a better plasticizer so you could get tighter loops (from the knitting process) without breaking the strands.
This is awesome. If you can get this to succeed as hosiery, gloves are the obvious next step, then the inner liners for multilayer outerwear garments.
Fibers is truly where chemistry and engineering collide.
Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_po...
Dyneema vs. Kevlar data: http://bladebuster.ca/our-products/cut-resistant-clothing/dy...
Dyneema vs. Kevlar and new fibers for military: www.army-technology.com/features/feature98985/
Zylon that was used instead of Kevlar degraded due to body moisture: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=473209...
Spectra a polyethylene fiber from Honeywell:: https://www.honeywell-spectra.com/applications/textiles/
UHMWPE used in ropes: www.novabraid.com/rope-material/spectra-fiber-rope/
But it's very little, I had about 2.5cm change in 25m over a few years. That's 1 part in 1000. This is from irregular kite flying, so not under (very) high tension or constant stress.
Fantastic materials, nevertheless.
I love (f) U
Thought, look into nanocellulose fibers for textiles, and your product could be biodegradable while still exceptionally strong[1]. Tech is probably not mature, but worth keeping an eye on for future.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5018
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycaprolactone
If the fibers can be made cheaply and are biodegradable, then perhaps you could make deliberately and responsibly disposable tights, in which case their strength wouldn't matter as much. It's not as cool as super-strong hosiery, but thinking about it, i quite like the idea of disposable underwear!
Unfortunately, PCL's tensile strength is kind of lame, tens of megapascals, like typical polyethylenes — but polyethylenes greatly exceed it in chemical resistance, heat resistance, and moldability. And its low tensile modulus gives it a very low speed of sound, which in turn means that in some applications where you'd really love its incredible fracture toughness, the impacts are sharp enough that it will break anyway. So, most of the time, you're better off with metals or stronger engineering plastics for fracture toughness.
However, the poor moldability and low glass transition point of PCL give it a rather unique property among reasonably stiff materials: you can shape the freaking stuff with your hands while molten. And so it is that you can find PCL inexpensively on Amazon under names like ShapeLock, InstaMorph, ThermoMorph, Kemilove, TechTack, Polymorph, and so on.
Just be careful about the service temperature. Like most plastics and metals, PCL loses most of its strength well before it actually melts.
As for textiles, supposing you could spin PCL into fibers (which I'm pretty sure you can, even if nobody has), PCL tights would be pretty much impossible to get runs in, but they would melt if you spilled hot coffee on them. That might be a deal-killer.
Rayon (cellophane) is also biodegradable. Usually this is considered a drawback. Polylactide is probably the most popular biodegradable plastic going around these days, but it isn't really biodegradable, it's aquadegradable. And it's probably too brittle to make a useful garment fiber, even if the hydrolysis problem wasn't a killer.
Personally, I think the Kickstarter video might be a bit long and/or verbose? I know nothing about Kickstarter campaigns, but there's plenty of folks who do within the YC network.
Also, there was a missed opportunity for a cameo by Zak! (Kidding of course!)
Really appreciate your feedback on the video! We're always trying new things, so I'm sure there are more edits of this in our future. Right now Kickstarter is showing that 32% of visitors watch the whole video - which I think is probably pretty good?
1) Is the price not a bit high for something that you can only wear 50 times? I suppose i'm not sure what the price per wear is of traditional pantyhose
2) Why does something so strong (e.g. you can try to pull them apart) only last 50 wears? Seems like it's stronger than any tshirt I've worn but I continue to wear them for years
2) Pantyhose are made with a pretty open weave, and are much lower denier than any shirt you would own, making them more susceptible to wear and tear - even when made out of an incredibly strong fiber like ours. But well taken care of - I'm sure they could last more than 50 wears. That said, it is an underwear product, so you may want to swap it out eventually :)
Another advantage of the $1 pairs is they always look like new, since she wears a new pair almost every time. How does a SheerlyGenius pair look after 30 wears?
I imagine there's a use case here because people are funding the Kickstarter, but I feel like $150 pantyhose is a small market.
Juicero was VC backed, funding sometimes is not a good proxy to go by. Nevertheless, good luck to them.
I never really put much thought into pantyhose during my life, and I just assumed they costed $10 and lasted a long time like a pair of socks. I didn't realize 1-2 wears is normal. It is a huge amount of waste as you said.
Nonetheless, I don't think $150 pantyhose is the solution. My girlfriend can have three different thicknesses to choose from in her closet for $3. She's not going to pay $450 to have that same level of selection. I think the price needs to come way down from $150 to $25 to make sense.
Also, other than the resistance to being broken does it have any other capabilities such as wicking, odor resistance?
Are there any disadvantages to wearing the fiber?
What about allergic reactions?
The fiber is bacteria resistant, odor resistant, and naturally cool to the touch. We have yet to find any disadvantages of this product compared to a traditional nylon. This fiber has been used in safety equipment like gloves for some time without issues like allergic reactions - and we haven't see anything like that in our own testing.
7/ >the ->them?
8/ >ridicuously ->ridiculously
Two things:
> Sheerly Genius sheers are patent pending and our manufacturing process is a trade secret.
Patents are the opposite of secret, ie public. You can't patent something and have it secret at the same time. So your manufacturing process is either secret, and not patented, or patented, and public. (Of course you may have patented something other than the manufacturing process, like a specific knot, etc.)
The second thing is, what about security? Things that never tear or break can be dangerous, for example if you get caught by a moving vehicle, or other problem. It may sound far-fetched and completely improbable... until it happens. What are your thoughts about that?
If that worked, you could also sell to that company making the anti-rape pants.
[1] http://www.energiapura.info/158/PANTA-34-ANTICUTTING
really makes you think
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
I'm with you that I'd like some better question answering service, but I don't think it's fair to blame Google for not trying ...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3aicvf/what_vill...
They have luxury funds (like the golf market) and they want thin, but protective, garments. (weekend-road-bikers are usually execs/professionals that spend ~$3-12K on just their bikes...
Put thin, D30 [0], pads at key points/joints (hips/elbows/knees) between layers of this fabric in small patches...
Now you have a performant, but protective, sheer/light competitive cycling outfit...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D3o
"Did you see Bill's new garment?"
"yeah thats bad-ass!"
"im getting one!"
---
And you should have a service that allows people to upload their graphics to the garments they order....
Tee-Spring for cycling gear that is protective and they can choose from D30 padding options....
PS - the crooks in the video made me lol :D
I see that 1000-denier tights do exist (TIL). Could a sport/compression-specific fabric blend be produced that has extremely high compression and also high abrasion resistance?
Compression clothing is notoriously fragile; it all-too-happily shreds itself at the slightest tug or snag. That keeps "big sport compression" in business, but these items are $150-$400 retail...
There's a very big demand vacuum for solutions in this specific space at the moment as far as I can see.
Hell, if you just sold me the material I'd sew it into my clothes anyway so I could do the above. I've been trying to hand knit kevlar thread into such a weave, and it's not the most fun material to work with. And kevlar mesh you buy otherwise (batting) is too thick for this purpose in some casual clothes.
It's not true safety gear but it's better than your tshirt or shirt melting on the pavement.
I wear them under regular jeans for casual riding (I always wear an armored jacket so no need to wear the upper liner) and would trust them in a low-to-freeway speed getoff about as much as any other mesh gear. You can stuff d3o armor into them pretty easily too.
It's not precisely what you're trying to achieve, but it's more versatile and generally looks better than full-coverage (Hood, etc.) riding jeans.
It'd be great if new materials could be used to make protective wear that is thinner and more air permeable.
Ugh, just looked, the same problem... they don't have a height option. The shirts are too short for my torso (and gut), and the pants are too tight in the thighs :(
The long john style liners are, well, long johns. They're stretchy, so they adapt well to body shape. The leg liners aren't cut particularly long--they have stirrups. You could choose to ignore or remove the stirrups and flip up the leg cuffs to make them a few inches shorter and they'd still work under boots. I haven't tried the shirt but it's the same material. My guess is if you match with the size you'd wear in standard long underwear it'd be fine.
The other respondent to me was correct, though--like all long johns these are fairly warm. I'm fine in them spring, fall and winter, but summer is a different story. It is an uninsulated open-weave mesh, so breathes well enough and it does a great job of creating air channels under your jeans, but I tend to just take my chances for a couple of months of the year rather than add more layers.
Edit: to make sure we're looking at the same thing, I mean the ones reviewed here, https://www.webbikeworld.com/draggin-liners-review/
I'll take a look again tho. I live in seattle where it's pretty cool most of the time.
Professional cyclists typically don't buy anything, almost everything they use is provided by sponsors, and/or to display tech/goods as marketing for sale later to amateurs.