]]> http://www.marinelayer.com/blog/our-new-re-usable-bags-inspirational-yoga-poses-not-included/feed/ 0 http://www.marinelayer.com/blog/and-the-winner-is-fort-point/ http://www.marinelayer.com/blog/and-the-winner-is-fort-point/#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:37:13 +0000 alynch http://www.marinelayer.com/blog/?p=741 After 5 rounds the winner has been decided and like Kentucky this year, the favorite from the start has come out on top.  In a decisive 29 – 18 vote win, Fort Point has proven that it is the greatest t-shirt ever made (by us)!

Final 4 Results:

#1 Sunset Stripes (41 votes) defeated #2 Ski Tahoe (20 votes)
#1 Fort Point (41 votes) defeated #7 Yosemite (18 votes)

The final match-up:

The Elite 8 Results:

#1 Sunset Stripes (41 votes) defeated #6 Buffalo (4 votes)……ouch!
#2 Ski Tahoe (34 votes) defeated #5 Double Sun (11 votes)
#1 Fort Point (41 votes) defeated #3 Original Logo (4 votes)
#7 Yosemite (28 votes) defeated #4 Ocean Beach (16 votes)

The Final 4 is all set:

Round 1 East Bracket:

#1 Fort Point (33 votes) defeated #8 Night Fog (18 votes)
#3 Original Logo (32 votes) defeated #6 Rising Sun (20 votes)
#4 Ocean Beach (27 votes) defeated #5 Bjorn McAgassi (23 votes)
#7 Yosemite (27 votes) defeated #2 VW Bus (24 votes)

The Elite 8 Match-ups:

Round 1 West Bracket:

#1 Sunset Stripes (98 votes) defeated #8 Bike Tee (25 votes)
#6 Buffalo (72 votes) defeated #3 Original Stripe (47 votes)
#2 Ski Tahoe (63 votes) defeated #7 Sunglasses (60 votes)
#5 Double Sun (65 votes) defeated #4 Fleet Week (53 votes)

The next round of Western Region match-ups…….

In the spirit of March Madness, we decided to join in on all the fun and create a little contest.

After 3 years of pumping out the softest shirts known to man (and woman), we have amassed quite a library of graphics (36 total to be exact).  Some graphics we bring back from time to time, but some have fallen into the one hit wonder camp and have been forced into early retirement.

With the help of our Facebook fans earlier this week, we picked out 16 graphical standouts from the past and threw them onto a bracket .  Although we think they are obviously all winners, we want you to vote on the match-ups that we will be posting up on Facebook.  At the end, the winning graphic will be brought out of retirement and back onto our shelves once again.

How to play:

To spice things up we are going to be giving out $250 worth of Marine Layer gift certificates to 4 lucky people who participate in the challenge on Facebook.  At the end of each round, we will give a gift certificate to someone who both voted and shared that rounds match-ups ($50 gift certificate to someone in each of the first 3 rounds and $100 to someone who votes and shares the final).

Check out the bracket up top (which we will be updating as we go), and head on over to Facebook to start voting.

Big launch of our new Superfine Merino Wool sweaters today. Here are some of the entertaining notes from the last 48 hours of heavy product testing:

Tough to convert a t-shirt guy to a sweater wearer

Day 1, Hour 1: Four boxes of sweaters land in our office. A quick check of the packing slip looks like they got the order right. 50 grey sweaters, 50 blues and 2 Vietnamese kids to fix any minor tears. I kid. I kid. These babies were proudly made in LA at one of the last remaining sweater factories in the US. Sadly, this area of textile manufacturing is almost completely overseas now.

Day 1, Hour 2: Medium sweater fits perfectly, which is nice because I’m going to try and wear it for the next 48 hours, doubling my overall sweater usage in 2011.

Day 1, Hour 5: After lunch in my new sweater I pop into the Apple store. It’s the first time one of their associates notices me before the security guard does. Really starting to feel like a functioning member of society.

Day 1, Hour 12: Head home for some comparison work. My old sweater is also supposedly “merino” but feels more like a Brillo Pad. We don’t want to name names so we’ll just call this other local retailer by a made up name, Cabana Retublic. Either way, ML wins the softness battle by a landslide.

Day 1, Hour 15: A quick swap of the t-shirt for a button-down and I feel like I could go out to any restaurant in the city. Ditch the t-shirt and the button-down all together and I could go to any restaurant in North Beach. Ok, that’s my last Italian sweater joke.

Day 2, Hour 40: After a day, night and day of sweatering I’m feeling remarkably fresh and think I could stretch this out even longer. If Kiefer Sutherland can turn his 24 hour promotional stunt into a whole franchise why can’t we? Probably because we don’t have Elisha Cuthbert on the payroll. So we quit while we’re ahead. After almost two days of constant wear I can happily confirm that our new superfine Merino sweaters are soft enough and comfortable enough to bear the Marine Layer name. Which is good because they’re already on the website and for sale.

You need a stripe guy, talk to our cutter Larry. He's like a surgeon.

Step 1: Our fabric is custom knit and dyed at a mill in Los Angeles. For the track jackets we knit our signature cotton and modal fibers into a heavyweight fleece. The mills refers to this as “3N” fabric because they add a third needle to the loom to achieve a heavier and denser fabric. Nerddddd Alert.

Step 2: The dyed fabric is then laundered to remove any additional shrinkage. This is done at a different vendor in LA whose name is Ron and he sounds exactly like Will Farrell in Anchorman.

Step 3: The fabric is shipped up to San Francisco where it is hand cut by our main man Larry. His hands are basically like a surgeon’s. If you ever get shot in the Mission go to Kirin Cutting and have him stitch you up.

Step 4: In addition to the primary fabric (it’s called “self” if you’re trying to impress your friends in the biz) we also have to cut all of the trim. For this particular jacket there were actually five different fabrics being used:

1) Self fabric – our signature heavyweight fleece
2) Rib for the bottom band
3) Elastic sewn into the rib – In our last version we used self for the band and found that it would stretch out too much over time so we knit elastic into this version so the jacket will keep its shape
4) Pocketing – we used a heavy duty cotton for the pocket linings that can withstand more wear and tear than our super soft jersey (we hope your hands will survive the slight decrease in softness)
5) Jacket Stripes – we actually used the same heavy duty nylon that is used for board shorts in making our stripes. Not that stripes have to be particularly strong, just thought this material looked cool.

Step 5: Antique nickel zippers are cut to our specs for each size. You need a good zipper guy? Let’s talk. Always go YKK. They are the Rolls Royce of the zipper game.

Step 6: With all of the trim and fabric knit and cut its off to see Xiao Ling at the sewing house. She is delighted to see that we are only sewing 50 of these things in three confusing colorways. Actually she is not happy at all and encourages us to make more t-shirts.

Xiao Ling was not happy about the five different fabrics we used on this jacket

Step 7: Production samples are made in each colorway. All three are incorrect. One of the nice perks of making stuff in San Francisco is that we can catch mistakes like these.

Step 8: Sewn garments are finally ready. They look great so it’s off to the east bay for embroidery.

Step 8a: Say three hail mary’s and pray the bus doesn’t tip over on the bay bridge.

Step 9: Jackets are ready for pick-up Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. Shotgun not driving. Two traffic-filled hours later Franny returns to the office with some sweet new jackets.

Steps 10-12: Ok, I guess its only a 9 step process, but we already sent out the email and there is no way that more than four people have read this entire thing.