November 2013

Ultra Light Down Product Development ‒ A Case Study in Leadership and Teamwork UNIQLO Ultra Light Down first launched in 2009, and has developed into a key UNIQLO product line - with cumulative sales totaling 13 million. Although sales are now into their fifth year, Ultra Light Down has a longer history ‒ spanning years. Development began with the UNIQLO Men’s Team, which worked well together and held a shared vision and track record of success. Light down was popular as innerwear with a small group of fashionable men at the time, but the available products were prohibitively expensive. The UNIQLO Men’s Team aimed to produce affordable, quality ultra light down suitable as innerwear or outerwear, and light and compact enough to carry around and wear any time of the year. However, this required the team to not only work well together, but to provide strong leadership to its established partners - materials experts Toray Industries, Inc. and its production partners in China. The team had to push to achieve its vision, and this did not happen overnight. Sanae Yamashita, from UNIQLO’s Fabric Development team, said, “It really took a lot of teamwork and leadership on our part ‒ we never stopped pushing for what we knew to be possible, and were thereby able to lead our partners to the best solution. We all developed and grew together, in the process.” “And we see a lot of room for further improvements. For example, the thread may become even thinner and lighter, to further improve the shell’s capacity to prevent the down from escaping, or we may introduce a stretch fabric to improve the fit, or better wrinkle recovery after removal from the bag. The process never ends!”, she added. The innovation behind Ultra Light Down is the ingenious fabric that UNIQLO developed with Toray. Ordinary down jackets have a two-

November 2013

layer structure, comprising fabric and a bag called a down pack, which holds the down and prevents the feathers from escaping. UNIQLO Ultra Light Down shells are made from an ultra-fine, durable, lightweight nylon yarn that is softer than cotton or polyester and about 1/10 the thickness of a single strand of human hair ‒ allowing for a highly dense end-product. UNIQLO developed this fabric with Toray, and incorporating it in the shells of Ultra Light Down, the surface of the shell is specially processed with heat and pressure to plug all the tiny spaces between the fibers, ensuring that the down is safely sealed inside. The companies then successfully reduced the weight of the down pack, resulting in Ultra Light Down. UNIQLO also uses specially selected, premium down in all of its Ultra Light Down products, resulting in surprising warmth for the lightness of the garment. UNIQLO down uses a 90:10 down-feather mix and a fill power of at least 640 (fill power is a measure of insulation, and anything above 550 is commonly accepted as high-quality down).

Ultra-fine nylon yarn (magnified) (enlargement)

Human hair (magnified)

Before processing After processing (cross section of shell fabric)

November 2013

Further, because Ultra Light Down do not feature conventional down packs, previously both the outer and inner surfaces of their shells had to be pressed with heat to prevent down from escaping, in a treatment called cire finish. This process resulted in glossy surfaces for all Ultra Light Downs. For 2013, UNIQLO has added a range of down items in understated matte colors by applying a cire finish only to the inner surface of the shells, where they come in direct contact with the down.