Columbia Sportswear, which acquired OutDry Technologies eight years ago, quietly decided to take no more orders for the waterproof-breathable membrane placed by any of its 50-plus external clients after May 15. The company will continue to use the special lamination technology only for the products of its own brands, including Columbia and Mountain Hardwear. The membrane will continue to come from the same production partner in Japan.
Existing clients will get deliveries for orders placed prior to that date, allowing them to use OutDry for the products they have developed for their autumn/winter 2018/19 and spring/summer 2019 collections, but they will have to take on an alternative technology for the subsequent seasons. OutDry's lamination laboratory at Busto Arsizio, near Milan, will be closed early next year. Within the next 12 months, it will stop renting out its lamination machinery to manufacturers that don't work for Columbia.
A top manager of Columbia said his company had resolved to stop licensing out the technology because it had not achieved the desired levels of revenues and profits. Insiders indicated that OutDry was unable to reach those objectives because of huge competition from Gore-Tex, which has a much stronger image and a much bigger marketing budget. The competition became more acute after the launch of the Gore-Tex Surround technology, which has somewhat similar properties.
When it bought OutDry in 2010, Columbia said it viewed it as the “gold standard” for waterproof-breathable footwear and gloves because its construction methods bond the membrane directly to the inside of the outermost layer of the product. The inventor, Matteo Morlacchi, subsequently developed new machinery that allowed the membrane to be bonded all the way down inside a boot, without turning the shoe upside down.
The technology has also been adopted by brands like Ferrino and Mountain Hardwear to protect backpacks from the rain. Most of the other outdoor brands that use OutDry have applied it mainly to their shoes and gloves. Among the companies listed on OutDry's website are Castelli, Descente, Didriksons, Equip Outdoor, Fluchos, Goldwin, Gronell, Helly Hansen, Hestra, Lizard, Mont-Bell, Pearl Izumi, Rapha, Ricosta, Roeckl, Rossignol, Scarpa, Specialized, Uhlsport and Ziener.
While using Gore-Tex for other types of shoes, Scarpa relies on OutDry for more complex shoes that don't have an inner bootie. One of the most recent new clients is Stonefly, an Italian brand of casual footwear that switched over from Gore-Tex to OutDry, partly to save money.
The OutDry technology has been under development since 1998. Gronell was one of the first users, but Matteo Morlacchi and his brother Luca had a hard time getting it accepted. Toward the end of 2009, a few months after its acquisition by Columbia, a Brazilian investor who had worked for the former Brown Shoe Company and Reebok, André Bruère, injected some money into their company, Nextec, through a private equity fund, Referencia International.
Matteo and Luca Morlacchi have continued to work until recently for OutDry Technologies as R&D manager and chief executive, respectively. Matteo left the company after Columbia decided to stop its third-party business. Luca, who was also in charge of sales, has not been in good health lately. OutDry's marketing manager, Stefania Genoni, is set to leave the company in October.
