Yeti Down Sleeping Bags & Clothing | Ultralight Outdoor Gear

Yeti

Yeti began in a living room in East Germany in 1983. Climber Bernd Exner was going on a climb in Romania in the winter, but he couldn’t find a sleeping bag in East Germany warm enough for the trip. So his wife Sabine (a skilled mountaineer herself) decides to make it herself. Yeti now create apparel and sleeping bags for expeditions and extreme conditions. Yeti is durable yet light, warm yet non-constricting, functional yet fashionable.

Yeti produces in Germany. The small factory is located in the Saxon Görlitz on the bank of the Neiße. At this place, first-class cloths have been woven and fulled for centuries, at last the “VEB Volltuch“ has coloured FDJ (organisation for teenagers in the GDR)-shirts and “Marmor jeans (stone washed jeans)“ here. Nowadays, eight Yeti employees produce about 10000 down sleeping bags per year, which rank among the best of the world.

It is a strange building, light-flooded and interlaced, during the 50ies it belonged to the avant-garde architecture. From the Yeti Managing Director to the salesman, they all work next door – which is usually open. This has two advantages: One can only bear up working here if one likes the colleagues at least a little bit. And the quality of production is visible for everyone.

Prior to delivery, the quality of the downs is checked regularly at laboratories and the textiles pass through external quality checks. However, the sense of longstanding employees such as Birgit, Sophia, Ramona and Ingrid is irreplaceable. Each down filling, each square metre of textile passes through their hands. They see, feel and smell if maturity, bulking power, mixing ratio, softness and odor comply with the demands on a Crystal Down. With their eyes closed they identify a LightyGram-tissue, with open ones errors in a AquaProPlus-cover. They do not pardon sloppiness, their judgment is merciless. For them, quality is not just a question of guidelines, but a also a question of honor.