Thermography Confirms New Jacket Design

A workday epiphany and a Sears credit card sparked Andy Gathings’ creation of the VersaLayer™ Versatile Layering System.

Always a lover of the outdoors and a self-professed “gear-head”, Andy spent summers working as a guide/counselor at a kid’s wilderness camp in Vermont and the rest of the year as a groundskeeper at a Birmingham, Alabama golf course.

He landed what he thought would be a dream job at a Colorado ski resort but visions as a life as a ski bum disappeared when his job was eliminated because of a drop in business after September 11, 2001. Andy returned to Birmingham and started working at Alabama Outdoors, an outdoor gear and apparel shop. He found that he enjoyed and was good at advising customers about how to prepare for their outdoor adventures. His experience mountaineering, climbing and whitewater paddling gave him a wealth of knowledge about how to be prepared for any situation in the backcountry.

Then one day, out of the blue, the idea for a jacket with retractable insulation came to him. He snatched a piece of receipt paper off the register and quickly sketched out the crude beginnings of what would eventually become the VersaLayer.

Andy made the original prototype of the VersaLayer out of a mesh laundry bag, an old down vest, some fishing line, duct tape (it really does bind the world!) and a Buttonier™.

Andy then started to research how to protect his idea. It was a friend who offered the answer --- a “poor man’s patent.” He put his original sketches and the prototype in a box, had it signed and notarized and mailed it to himself. He eventually worked with a lawyer to file an official patent application. He is now fully protected under a granted US Patent.

He spent several months in his basement working on improved prototypes with a family friend who also happened to be a seamstress. Then fate, or rather Sears Roebuck intervened. Andy got a Sears card in the mail. He used the Sears card to buy a sewing machine. Then he taught himself how to sew. Little did Sears know it had just become his number one investor.

Six prototypes later, Andy partnered with Marathon Apparel, a reputable manufacturer.

Through some paddling buddies, he met Carol Owen, a freelance outdoor clothing designer in Boulder, Colorado who helped Andy with designs and patterns.

Soon, Andy produced what we now know as the VersaLayer jacket.

    
The VersaLayer  Ability jacket and thermography video showing how it works.

The VersaLayer System is designed to give you complete control of a full layer of insulation. When the panels are extended, they trap core body heat. When the control cords are pulled, the panels retract and compress. This allows heat to and moisture to escape. The system warms and cools you quickly and efficiently without using compressed air or batteries. The system's total weight is only 9 ounces.

To learn more about the system, how it works, and where you can buy one, go to
http://www.versalayer.com/index.html .