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.

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.

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

To maintain anonymity, let's just call her Peg Billiams.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which basically means we’re going to have to write a long-ass post because we don’t have any pictures of all the new gear that is landing for holiday over the next month.  On a positive note, I think my dad is the only one who still reads this blog so pops, I’ll just text you some pics when they come in.  But we’re really going to start posting more stuff on here in the future on the off chance that we go viral, so thanks for checking in with us.

More importantly, we’ve been hard at work over the last two months getting ready for holiday (as evidenced by occasional naps at office), so here are some highlights of the new product coming in over the next month:

Men’s

Ski Tahoe 2nd Edition

The first Ski Tahoe shirt we made was one of our fastest sellers ever.  It’s sometimes tough, but we’re sticking to our guns and keeping with our philosophy of only doing small batches of every graphic we do.  The good news is that this year’s Ski Tahoe is equally rad.

Merino Wool Sweaters

This crazy idea that you can’t always wear t-shirts has driven a lot of our new product development over the last year.   That doesn’t mean we can’t make everything as comfortable as your favorite tee and our buttery soft merino wool sweaters will be no exception.  Soft enough to wear without an undershirt (that is, if you’re a very good-looking Italian model, for everyone else let’s keep it clean).

Jersey-Lined Flannel Jackets

I would say this is the product that everyone at Marine Layer is most excited for, and not just because it is going to be very expensive.  I absolutely think this is the softest and coolest product we have ever made.

Jersey & Flannel-Lined Hoodies

Two types of contrasting fabric? Get right out of town and back onto the runway in Milan…Not since Dolce & Gabana launched crotchless boxers has the fashion world been so curious about a new product.

Women’s

Winter Plaids

Our first run of women’s wovens were a big hit and we’ve got some great new patterns landing in the next week.  In fact, my sources tell me that I have to go pick these up at our sewing vendor on Friday so they should be in the shop this weekend.

Jersey-lined Track Jackets

Rich wintery colors, baby bottom soft jersey linings and some added stretch in the fabric. They even have those fancy thumb holes. Lulu and Lemon better watch themselves…

Every Winter Color Scarf You Could Imagine

OK, that is a slight exaggeration and there are a lot of people out there with really bad taste who will probably be annoyed that we didn’t make a red and green two-toned infinity scarf, but we’ve got the rest of you covered. Or at least your necks will be covered.

Easy on, easy off, quick as a flick of her tongue.

We’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of our first batch of graphic hoodies…In the meantime, we stumbled across this epic ad.  Behold, One Easy Piece.  It might be a little hard for you to read all of the copy so we’ll just pull out some of the highlights, such as “Fits so tight it shows all you got”, “She’ll eat you alive”, “you’re a walking turn-on” and “drop a little moose-knuckle on her lap”…ok, the last one isn’t in there, but I bet they were considering it…

OK, back to work.  Hoodies landing on Thursday!  Mansies available by special order.  Must have full beard and mullet to be eligible for purchase.

Q) What are your holiday store hours? I’m sure they are not accurate on your website.

A) You know us well.  We’ll be open from 10-7:30 everyday through Christmas Eve.  And I’m pretty sure this is the only place on our website that mentions this important nugget of information.

Q) Will any of the girls in your photos go out on a date with me?

A) No.  But if you get your current girlfriend one of our amazing new hoodies I will not tell her you asked that question.

Q) What is the cutoff time for online orders getting somewhere by Christmas?

A) Orders placed up until 2PM PST on Monday Dec 21st will arrive by Christmas Eve.  We ship everything same day and Priority Mail guarantees delivery in 2-3 days so that should have all packages arriving at the latest Thursday the 23rd.  But we are building in an extra day to be safe.

Q) Has the amount you can bench press increased since the last Q&A you did on your blog a year ago?

A) No.  But I’m pretty good at folding shirts and tying ribbons.

Q) What should I get my wife, girlfriend, sister, niece or friend?

A) Stick with the two-tier strategy: Wife and girlfriends get hoodies and everyone else gets some form of t-shirt.  If you live in Utah wife #1 gets the hoodie, wife #2 gets long sleeve tee and wife #3 gets a sale item.

Q) Don’t you have any male models with more masculine, hairy arms? This one looks a little feminine.

A) This was our most popular question.  Said model has been pretty busy sanding floors and writing blog posts every six months, but there is talk of a mickey-rourke-style comeback.  I hear he is bulking up for the cruisewear photo shoot in February.

Marine Layer Ladies

Quick update on Marine Layer Ladies.   It seems women like soft things even more than men.  We made a small initial run in three styles with some new variations of our custom-milled fabric and they are positively flying off the shelves.   Thanks to everyone for the support (and patience) as we work out inventory “kinks.”  Big shout out to our friends at Daily Candy for their great piece last week.  Many more women’s things to come over the next few months so stay tuned.

New Products on the Way

Keep your eyes peeled over the next couple weeks for some new additions to the Marine Layer lineup.  A new limited edition shirt paying homage to our new home in the Marina…Some graphic tees for the ladies… our first set of wovens (plaid button downs for those of us not in high-fashion)…and if you’re lucky, maybe another surprise or two.

Last Monday Thrillist ran a sweet feature video touring the new store on fast forward.  Great for the A.D.D. viewers because it only takes about 30 seconds.

Then our classy polos were featured on the Today Show last week.  Kathy Lee and Hoda were really digging the in-between sizes.  If, like me, you don’t know who Kathy Lee and Hoda are, then ask your grandparents.  Rumor has it they are kind of a big deal….

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And lastly, a cool musician from Nashville came into the shop the other day and grabbed a couple shirts.  He was so into the story that he decided to take some pics of the shop and blog about it when he gets back home.  The only problem was we didn’t get his name or his blog.  So I guess just keep your eye out on the world wide web? You’ll probably just randomly see it….ahhh, or not….

Back to the shirt folding fun…

Enjoy…

-Adam

Anyway, the new space is pretty cool, but needs some work.   If you’re in San Francisco and you know how to demo some walls, sand some floors or re-wire some lights then drop us a line.  We can probably arrange some t-shirts-for-work trades….

Here are some pics on Day 1 of construction:

Adam, resident electrician

Talking construction...no big deal

Location: 2209 Chestnut St. between Pierce & Scott
Dates: Saturday May 1^st – Wednesday May 12^th
Hours: 11am – 7pm

Black Yoga Pants Contest – Win A year’s Free Shirts
To help pass the retail days away we’re going to count the number of black yoga pants that pass us by on Chestnut St. over the next two weeks. Come by and submit a guess. Closest guess wins free t-shirts and dress shirts for a year. Just to give you a hint, we were painting the store today and from 9-7 on a Thursday we counted 117 pairs. That’s almost double the number of pairs my wife has in her closet.  Astounding.

Taylor Stitch Custom Dress Shirts
In an effort to minimize your time spent shopping we’ve partnered with our friends and custom dress shirt makers Taylor Stich.   You can see their gear online at http://www.taylorstitch.com or come by the shop for a fitting.

New & Improved T-shirt Polos Coming Next Week
For sale in store starting Friday and online next Wednesday.  A full line of polos made from our signature t-shirt fabric, complete with re-inforced stitching, some new colors and a special edition graphic. Here’s a sneak peak at the shirts: