Moriarty Bros. Criminal Consulting Agency tee's

Just seen the new "Moriarty Bros." shirts by GWorx today.

Designed to commemorate the formation of the James & James Moriarty Criminal Consulting Agency in 1890, the shirts are looking very cool. GWorx are only doing a limited production run so note your interest as soon as you can. When they're gone, they're gone.

We liked the gas mask graphic at the bottom of the crest.

Have a looksee here before they are uploaded to the Gworx Store.

And we're back

Following a period of restructuring, reorganising and other words beginning with "re", we're pleased to announce that we're back.

Since our last post, we've trimmed back the group, relocated (another 're' word). It's taken some time and a fair amount of pain, but we're back stronger than ever with a new business model that focuses on our core competencies in technical textiles and apparel. We have, what we're sure will be, some interesting news to announce in the coming days.

Additionally, we launched our own line of limited edition urban casual wear "Guerrilla Design Worx". If you have a spare few minutes drop by the store and have a looksee.

In the meantime, we hope you all had a great New Year and we look forward to working with you in the not too distant future.

Regards,

Team UTE

What to do when it's +35 Deg C in Bavaria

Today we shall be mostly jumping off high things into water

The "New" Sukhoi T-50

First test flown back in 2009, the Sukhoi T-50 or Prospective Airborne Complex of Frontline Aviation (PAK-FA) was given it first public Showing at an airshow in Russia recently. Allegedly it is more agile than the F-22 which wouldn't be hard given that every F-22 is currently grounded due to a mechanical issue.

The PAK-FA, built in partnership with India,  is visually very similar to the F-22 and is expected to be deployed in 2014-2015. The really interesting aspect of the aircraft is the price. Estimates put the price at about $50 million a piece. Quite the bargain when you consider you can get three T-50's for the asking price of a F-22. On the subject of the F-22, it's been estimated that the F-22 has been out of service for so long that all pilots run the risk of becoming de-certified.

It still remains to be seen if the T-50 is indeed a fifth generation fighter jet. One of the fundamentals of a fifth generation system is that it must have certain stealth characteristics, something the design engineers have chosen to sacrifice over maneuverability.

Have look for yourself.

The Office - Afghanistan Style

Popular TV series "The Office" has now made it to the most unexpected corner of the world...


Welcome to "The Afghanistan Office". Cant wait to see The Minister doing his dance for Comic Relief...

Airships Are Back In Fashion

While were at the recent Outdoor Show in Germany, we took some time out to visit the Zeppelin Museum. Here you can see 1:1 partial model of the Hindenburg as well as several other exhibits and collections from this period.

The scale, design and craftsmanship have to be seen to be believed. For example the engine nacelles were made from aluminium while machinists working in shifts would scale a ladder into the nacelle to perform maintenance during flights. The interior wouldn't have looked too out of place even today with use of plastics and other "modern" materials of the time.

Jump forward to the present day and Lighter Than Air vehicles are making a come back courtesy of US Air & Missile Defence Command (USAMDC) and Lockheed Martin. The High Altitude Airship (HAA) is an unmanned, untethered airship that provides, through its on board and mission configurable suite, geostationery monitoring capability.

Designed to operate above the jet stream, the long endurance platform uses thin film solar arrays for power and propulsion providing coverage through it's mission defined sensors to an area in the region of 600 sq miles. The cool thing is that when the mission is over, you bring at back and re-deploy for another task. According to Lockheed Martin the saving as a package is in the order of magnitudes lower compared to satellite technology.

The image below, shows the High Altitude Long Endurance Demonstrator (HALE-D). What is interesting is the size of the building that has been constructed for the project. Clearly designed to provide the facilitation of a much larger piece of equipment!

Team UTE

Pictures courtesy of Lockheed Martin & NY Daily News

Outdoor Show 2011

Last week, we were fortunate to attend the Outdoor Show 2011 in Friedrichshafen, Germany. This exhibition allows brands to showcase new products for the upcoming 2012 season and is similar in format to the OR Show held in Salt Lake City.



Best viewed full screen & 720p

It's been a few years since we were last at the show and it came as quite a surprise just how much marketing investment brands put into these events. We asked several "marketeers" on various stands how they measure the benefit or return on investment. None of them could give us a clear figure, but the general consensus is that they need to do it because....they were expected to do it!

Products that made us stop in our tracks were fairly thin on the ground. Nearly every major brand had some flavour of GORE-TEX* on show with Active Shell being the chicken soup for the light and fast outdoors person for the coming season(s). The drive for the coming season appears to be less is more. By that we mean less material for more money.

The personality of the show was on the Fjallraven stand. Waxing and ironing Fjallraven products all day for four days can't be the most glamorous of jobs, but the girl on the stand did it with good spirit and promoted the features and benefits of the brand extremely well. For that she gets the UTE Award for Indomitable Spirit..she even quipped that she'd do our shirts for us...if they were Fjallraven. Good effoert and great personality.

Our "Sour Face Of The Show" went to the (non) personality on the Kuhl stand. Dude, seriously, get a f*ckin job you like if you can't straighten your face. Or visit Fjallraven and see how customer interaction should be done.

Slack lining was very popular with the youth at the show. If ever they make Top Gun II expect the beach volleyball scene to be replaced with Mavrick and his and his Number 2 to be bouncing around on a tight piece of webbing tied between two trees. Our newly created "Slackline Shitbag" award goes to the guy in the picture. After getting himself organised and building expectation with the crowd, he promptly flipped through 180 and had to be rescued by the cherry picker.

The highlight of the show was by Mammut who were celebrating 150 years of Absolute Alpinism. The Mammut Eiger Jacket featuring NeoShell* by POLARTEC was, in our opinion, an awesome piece of work. Design intent, execution of manufacture and quality of finish were gold standard. In an industry that is constantly talking about "Technology" it was great to see NeoShell actually delivering a technology that benefits the user while allowing brands to create products like this. We can't speak highly enough about what has been achieved in this garment.

Location Specific Camouflage

"Ye cannae change the laws of physics"...so says curmudgeonly Chief Engineer, Montgomery (Scotty) Scott of the USS Enterprise when asked for "all he's got" by Kirk.


Well some folks would have you believe that you can. We, on the other hand live in the world of Scotty with all it's limitations. We spent some time last year looking at location specific camouflage.

The premise is that you obtain intel on a target of interest and then adapt your concealment for that specific job. The downside is that the supply chain for this can run to many weeks or months and would be hugely expensive.

So we set about developing a solution whereby terrain or environment specific camouflage could be turned around and shipped to the organisation within days. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

To test our theory, we sent one of our guys to the West coast of Scotland and asked him to recce a site that we would then develop a camouflage for and send it to him. Within 8 days we had the 3ft x 3ft sample with him for the picture below. The only adjustments to the picture (apart from fizzling out the face) were to clean up and blur the edges of the sample as it detracted from the overall effect.

We would add that four of the eight days were added due to the regular postal service taking that amount of time to get it to our tester. We're fairly confident that scaling up the process to conceal larger pieces of hardware would be relatively straightforward. If you're interested in this, let us know, we're only too happy to help.

Ye cannae change the laws of physics, but you can give them a hard time!

Kill That Damn Porsche

You've really got to have reached the end of your tether or have more money than sense ...or both to do this to a $90,000 car.


The owner of this Porsche 996 was so annoyed with his car and customer service, he decided to offer it to a local gun club. Quite what "shooters" got out of the process is unclear, but given the amount of lead that was sent downrange, the lack of precision and general range discipline (check out the guy at the end of the line when he has a stoppage) we're amazed that it was just the Porsche that got drilled.

Hopefully when the lead stopped flying someone did the decent thing and took a knife to the Porsche :-)

The "Business Grey Man"

Like most people these days, we spend a fair amount of time in airports, train stations and various other transport hubs. When I get the opportunity, I like to people watch and play a game of " I wonder what he/she does?". Especially good fun when you have some creative friends and a few beers to add to the creativity. However, after a couple of incidents today, I felt a word of warning was in order.

Time was a few years back you could park your butt in a departure lounge in the airport of almost any country and easily identify security contractors from what was affectionately refered to as the 5.11 Tuxedo. The "Tux" was made up of a certain cut and colour of shirt, pants and boots. Fashionably supported by some desert boots and a day sack (hero patches were optional. Over time it became clear that this Tux was a dead giveaway (no pun intended) as to the wearers way of making a living. Effectively blowing their personal security (PerSec), that of their team, the client etc etc etc.

The smarter contractor recognised this very early on and adapted themselves to become grey men. Not literally in grey, but dressed in such a way as to not draw attention to themselves as they went about their business. Kinda makes sense doesn't it?

Pity that sense, hasn't made it's way to the commercial/business community...!!!

So here I am wandering around a small international airport earlier today and decide to take a look in the tax free. Really wanting, but not being able to justify the cost of an iPad 2 I decide to try out the Motorola equivalent. Lo and behold, the first thing I see after sparking up the browser is that some fool has logged into their email and Facebook account...! Not only was it possible to view all his personal mail, photo's, but also his cloud stored docs, which included his MBA course material.

So, I did the decent and proper thing. Yip I sent a mail to his entire address book telling them that this c*ck had not only compromised the personal security of himself, but that of his (ex)friends, then I logged him out and informed the store staff. "Yeah mate, happens all the time", was the response.

Having did my good (ish) deed for the day, it was time to relax on the flight. Well it would've been relaxing if I didn't have to sit through two hours of complete disregard for Commercial Security by a person seated diagonally across from me.

In that two hours, 

• I knew the guys name and that of the colleague who were presenting the data
• The subject matter of the data
• The agenda
• Extensive technical aspects of the data being presented
• Could have taken photo's of the presentation
• Could have videoed the slide show

As if that wasn't enough the guy represented a company that is a direct competitor to UTE and are involved with government contracts globally. Now, I ask you this, if this was your employee would you want them running around presenting your hard earned data and intellectual property to anyone that cares to open their eyes?

The moral of this story is that personal security and commercial security are not something that you switch off and on. It is fundamental to a companies growth and future that these activities are embedded in the psyche and are part of day to day business.

It is estimated that countries and businesses lose hundreds of billions of Dollars, Pounds and Euros per year to industrial espionage. After witnessing first hand the behavior of two individuals in a few hours in one it's hardly surprising.

Personal & Commercial Security Are Not Optional:

1. DO NOT ATTRACT UNDUE ATTENTION
2. DO NOT DISPLAY ANY COMPANY INFORMATION IN PUBLIC
3. BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS
4. NEVER ENTER PERSONAL OR SECURITY INFORMATION INTO PUBLIC, DEMONSTRATION OR TRIAL EQUIPMENT
5. DON'T BE A C*CK or COCK-ESS

Antitrust Complaint Filed Against GORE-TEX* Manufacturer

Columbia Sportswear Company have filed a complaint with the Commission of the European Union alleging that the owners of the GORE-TEX* brand W.L. Gore & Associates Inc. have abused their dominant position in the outdoor textiles market.


This recent complaint comes on the back of news that, following its own investigation in March this year, the United States Federal Trade Commission issued a subpoena to W.L. Gore & Associates Inc. for unfair practices related to contracts, exclusionary practices and other conduct related to its outdoor textiles and related products.

If true, this is a contradiction of one of the tenets that the organisation was built on. Fairness, has been central to the Gore organisations beliefs since its formation. These recent allegations will put W.L Gore & Associates Inc's culture under the spotlight and if proven should provoke some soul searching within the organisation and also see some very hefty financial penalties being brought to bear.

Certainly there appears to be a case to answer. Stories abound in the industry of manufacturers and brands being constrained to use materials and equipment supplied by the company. In addition, procedures and products are required to be verified and validated before a manufacturing or trademark license is issued. Failure to adhere to this can result in the loss of licenses and lucrative marketing support.

For too long a premium has been placed on a product that for the most part hasn't changed in over twenty years. Through skillful marketing the brand has grown to the point where it is almost impossible to find an alternative in the stores. Should the allegations be realised (which won't be any time soon), the winner of all this should be the consumer. There are many alternative and better products including components like seam tapes that are offer better performance or are less expensive, but are avoided by manufacturers, brands and retailers for fear of falling foul of unavoidable agreements.

This is an unfortunate turn of events given the work that the company did in enhancing and developing the outdoor apparel markets and professional protection. Hopefully, the situation can be resolved and the market can bounce back without too much damage being done.

*GORE-TEX is a trademark of W.L. Gore & Associates Inc.

Updated 15/06/2011 - Gore petitions to limit or quash the FTC subpoena


Gore Petitions To Quash Subpoena




Gore Subpoena Exhibits