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SmartWool Fiber

You won’t find clothing more comfortable than SmartWool products, whether you’re out tromping in rain, shine, heat or hail. They are the best products in the world for cold and warm, wet and dry weather, combining comfort and performance into one versatile package.

Above all else, it's extraordinarily comfortable. Far from the itchy wool of yesteryear, SmartWool clothing is super soft. Our partners, New Zealand wool growers, raise their merino sheep to our exacting standards, to ensure the wool we start with is super-fine. Combine this with a production process that removes all itch and shrink, and you get socks, accessories and apparel you’ll never want to take off—even after the day’s journey brings you home.

But extraordinary comfort is only the beginning. The real tale lies in the performance of SmartWool products. Our main ingredient, merino wool fibers, begin as the protective wool coat for our sheep, which keeps them warm in the alpine winters and cool in the southern summers. That same natural temperature regulating process works for people. This is because each fiber harbors thousands of tiny air pockets which, like insulation in your house, act as a buffer against heat and cold. The fibers naturally regulate temperature, whether you’re climbing an 8,000-meter peak or running a marathon in the desert. They keep you warm when it’s cool and cool when it’s hot, while moving moisture faster than any other material on the planet. This means you stay drier longer.

Unlike synthetics, which have to wait for moisture to condense into a liquid before wicking it away from your skin, SmartWool garments absorb and transfer moisture in its vapor state, before it condenses. When it’s hot, this creates a mini air-conditioning unit next to your skin, transferring body heat through your apparel. When it’s cold, this keeps bone-chilling moisture at bay. Because SmartWool products are great at managing moisture, they don't give odor-causing bacteria a chance to take up residence. This means that you can go full throttle all day without smelling.

Wool Expertise

It’s not only the SmartWool fiber that makes our products so comfortable and high-performance. It’s also the technology behind it. SmartWool is the world leader in performance wool products. In business for more than 10 years, the company pioneered the wool performance category with its socks, perfecting the no itch, no shrink approach to wool performance base-layers. In the process, it’s won several prestigious product awards in the industry, including Backpacker magazine’s Editors’ Choice award for its hiking socks, trekking socks, and base layers. And, more importantly, it continues to win the numerous consumers’ choice awards in industry publications.

Though the fiber is at the root of this success, everything from the company’s relationship with its growers to its knowledgeable staff comes into play in SmartWool’s award-winning products. It starts where the material is sourced high in the alpine environments of New Zealand. SmartWool is one of very few companies in the world that works directly with a raw materials producer for its products. Our growers have generations of experience and work to SmartWool’s specifications to produce the finest wool in the world for socks and performance base layers. The company’s unique buying contracts allow these growers to plan for their future and preserve their way of life, all while ensuring the best possible material for SmartWool’s products.

The company’s experienced staff also plays a starring role in SmartWool’s accolades. Wool is not an easy fiber to work with, requiring extensive design work to weave into high-performance socks and base layers. While synthetic products can be easily mass produced, working with wool entails attention to detail every step of the way. SmartWool’s designers know every single characteristic of wool fiber and how to parlay that into functional and comfortable end products. Our product developers and sourcing teams have all worked with wool and other natural fibers long before joining the SmartWool team, and this experience shows itself every time you put on one of our products. SmartWool…Extraordinary Performance, and even more Extraordinary Comfort.