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Natural Perspectives

Stio Materials Manager, Sandy Flint Explains River Dynamics and Elegant Natural Solutions

By Stio

A family river trip on the Yampa River is what first brought Stio Materials Manager Sandy Flint west. Years later, after grad school back east, he jumped at the chance to take a material science job in Jackson that allowed him daily access to mountains, trails and, especially, to floatable rivers like the Snake. With his own hand- built 14-foot river dory in tow and ten thousand water miles under his belt, Sandy turns free time on the river into a place for both decompression and reflection — slowing to a natural pace where sharpened focus helps simplify complex day job challenges like material selection and supply chain sustainability.

For Sandy, inspiration and clarity often strike amidst the interconnected flow of work and life, art and science. “When I'm out here in nature, I'm constantly thinking about what would be the appropriate combination of textiles for the activity we're doing,” he says. “It’s back to the simplicity of nature, there's just a system for everything and it's circular. Everything has a start and then a known finish and I think that's the next step that I'm really looking at for Stio, how can we start to incorporate that circularity that you see all around us into our product life cycles.”

We sat down with Sandy to learn more about how he blends art and science while translating the inspiration he finds between put-in and takeout into his work for Stio.

How did you get into your line of work, and what drew you to the field?

I've always been passionate about both art and science. So, in college, I started as an architecture major and I wound up a physics major. I was looking for a way to blend both art and science, and I found this program, a master's program at Cornell University called Fiber Science and Apparel Design.

And that master's program, I decided was it, because we were working on sewing machines, and talking about product, which I was also passionate about. We were also doing tear strength, resistance strength, abrasion tests.

I was actually using electro-spinning to make membranes out of nylon, so these are a millionth – or a super-fraction of a human hair in diameter. They are just tiny, tiny nano-fibers that can be used to build outerwear and apparel.

So, my passion for both art and science blended into materials. With that degree, I worked at Burton for a couple of years and then came to Stio.

How did you decide to make the move to Jackson and begin working at Stio?

I first came out here on a family road trip when I was ten. We flew into Salt Lake and did five days on the Yampa River. It was early to mid-June, which is high water on the Yampa.

For the first four days it snowed, so, we were bundled in down. We spent a lot of time in our tents. Finally, on the fifth day, we had a big rapid, the sun poked out and there was snow on all the canyon runs. It was wild. We drove up from the Yampa to Jackson. Here, we saw the Tetons and spent about a week with my family and sort of was captivated by it.

And then for college, I was in Colorado. After college, I came up to Jackson and spent two years here. While I was back getting my master's and living in Vermont back east, I always kind of knew I wanted to go back to Jackson and then to work for Stio.

First half of the dream?

That's right. Yeah, for right now, I'm feeling very lucky where I'm at.

What really drew you to Jackson? What about the place resonated with you?

I think just the incredible mountains, the Tetons, the Snake River, and the fact that from town you can run out there and be fishing after work. You can go skiing at Snow King. You can get out to the village, and every time I drive out of town, just around the corner into the park I see the Tetons. It's just that's the awe. That's what really gets me. I love the mountains.

Most people come to Jackson for vacation, or to ski. However, Jackson allows you to combine your career with you’re a place you love. What about living in a mountain town is unique and important to you?

For me, it's my internal balance and what I need to be really happy. Being stimulated professionally and being engaged in the community, but also having that access to the outdoors.

Other places I've lived, there's a different balance, where there's engaging work but you don't have that outdoor recreation opportunity. And so, I think that Jackson has the best balance for that, there's really interesting work to be done here and there's also unrivaled outdoor recreation.

How are your professional and creative influences different in Jackson, than if you were spinning Futurelight fibers in an urban environment?

We're making products for the mountain town, and we're in a mountain town, so we can go right out and test the gear. We'll have proto-samples come in and I can take them into the park and ski in them that afternoon.

Being able to make a mountain bike shirt and take it mountain biking right out the back door is incredible. You're making a ski pant and you're touring up Snow King later that day. So, I think that access, is our difference – the Tetons are our testing lab for Stio.

“When I’m backpacking, I’m thinking about how I could make a jacket lighter, or how can we make it more breathable — thinking about what you actually need in the textile for the activity that you’re doing.”

How does being forty minutes from the wilderness influence you when you're thinking about textiles, materials and fabric technology?

That’s a great question and a tricky one. It's hard to separate what I'm doing for work and what I do for recreation, because this outdoor gear is a tool to get me out further into the wild. So, if I'm at the Village, I'm constantly just looking at everyone, what they're wearing, what the trend might be.

When I'm backpacking, I'm thinking about how I could make a jacket lighter, or how can we make it more breathable — thinking about what you actually need in the textile for the activity that you’re doing.

To that end, we're looking at a new softshell pant for touring. You don't always need to have it super-waterproof when you're skiing, right? You need it to be waterproof in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast when it's raining when it should be snowing. But, if you have a good snow, it doesn't need to be super-waterproof. What you're really looking for is just a pant that's going to protect you.

So, yeah, when I'm out here in nature here, I'm constantly thinking about what would be the appropriate combination of textiles for the activity that we're doing.

Why is it so important for you to live and work so close to nature?

There’s only so much time in a day. If you can be rewarded at work, and then cut out at five o’clock and still have six hours of daylight during the summer, we can go float the river. When you only have so much time, living right next to the recreation area is really important.

You don’t have an hour commute before you're somewhere you can go biking?

Forty minutes out my door and we're in remote wilderness.

“I’ve spent a lot of time on the river. It’s one of the most calming places that I go hang out. ”

Switching gears, why is the river one of your favorite places to go in Jackson?

It probably all started with the river trip down the Yampa when I was ten. It was the harshest conditions and yet my whole family had such a good time. Since then, I've spent a lot of time on the river. It's one of the most calming places that I go hang out.

After you put on, there's nothing you can do until you get to the takeout. If you've planned it right, there's a twenty-day trip down the Grand Canyon and you don't have to worry about anything else. If it's after work, it's still a way to get an hour-and-a-half to three hours just relaxing on the river.

I actually built my boat in my parents' barn. I was inspired by one of my trips down the Grand. We saw these Grand Canyon river dories and I thought that was the most elegant way to get down the river, versus pushing a big raft.

I had a medical condition about eight years ago, which was interesting. I had to wear masks and gloves for a year because I had no immune system, and that's when I built the boat. I had a lot of time on my hands and I started doing research on building that Grand Canyon boat. I scaled it down a little bit and made it 14-feet instead of an 18-foot canyon boat. That way, it would be tailor-made for a river like the Snake, where you're just going out for an afternoon, a day, two days.

We'll do up to three or four days on the Green. It’s just a little boat that has everything you need. You have your kitchen, a full bag of clothes, some food, a couple cases of beer and you're good. You don't have to think about anything else.

Did you have the boat before you had the job offer?

Yeah. I left Jackson. I was in grad school for a year, and then I built the boat. I took it out on Lake Cayuga and no one knew what it was. We had a little trolling motor, and it would get us across the lake. I took it down the Susquehanna. We probably have 10,000 miles on it at this point.

For a while, I was writing dates and locations and mileage and recording the hatches, but that's gone.

With all those miles spent on the river in the boat, can you describe one example of inspiration, clarity, or an ah-ha moment you had that impacted your work?

I think you can boil it down to just what's necessary. Whenever you're floating on the river, you're really looking to pack light. You just want to bring what you need. It's not quite backpacking where you have to count every ounce, but you want everything you bring to be very specific to what you're doing. So, that's the deep fryer for the turkey, but it's also the down jacket that's going to be all you wear for 20 days. You want one raincoat that's going to hold up and that you don't have to think about. You just have that go-to piece.

When I'm on the river, I'm always trying to think what is that perfect piece for the day. If it's a hot July day, it's the sun shirt. In the fall it’s something flannel, or in April it's the Hometown Down Jacket. That mindset of really distilling what you need down to the essence is something I pick up when I'm out on the water.

It’s really just thinking how to simplify, there's such elegance in the simple solution. And nature, really nature does that better than people ever will. It’s a very elegant, simple solution to life.

Can you describe one example of something in nature that you feel is a perfect evolutionary design, something on the river?

I mean that's a tricky one. I'm sure I'll come up with something else, but the first one that comes to mind is on the Snake. Specifically, you always see the eagles flying over and they're perfectly built for this ecosystem. I love watching the eagles fly, there's no effort expended at all. Totally, perfectly effortless.

Just riding the thermals?

Yeah. And to an extent that's what we're trying to emulate in our boat on the river, too. You can put your boat right in the current and barely work. I can row the boat all day, but it's really just finding those currents in the river where you're letting gravity just slide down the river. My boat weighs 300 pounds, but when I fill it up, it can weigh up to about 1,500 pounds and I don't even feel it because we're just letting the river do the work for us.

Why are fabric and material choices so important to the overall performance of apparel?

It’s really cool because there are so many different ways you can put fibers together to make a fabric. Whether it's knit or woven, and within weaving you can twist yarns together. You can brush them. You can make it a very densely woven. There are different patterns you can weave them into. Each iteration you come up with has a different hand feel, so a different softness, a different flexibility, a different stretch, and it all comes down to how it drapes.

When you're looking at different fabrics, there's this bridge you have to learn through experience—how is it going to drape and then look on the body? And a flat textile looks very different than how it looks once you stitch it up and make a garment out of it.

That's what really intrigues me, starting to picture this 2D thing, and how to turn it into a 3D garment?

There are a lot of really good examples out there that you can mimic. But, if you're trying to find the next new thing, it's a question of how would this twill fabric look in a jacket? Or, could we take something that's more traditionally sitting in a fashion piece and bring it into a technical garment through laminations, bonding, technical finishes?

“Everything we make has an impact on the planet, and so to truly live by our mission, vision values, and our ethos at Stio, to be caretakers, we have to do everything we can to reduce our impact.”

Why do you think sustainability is such a big part of the material discussion at Stio right now?

I personally think that we are so dependent on nature and what we're doing. Everything we make has an impact on the planet, and so to truly live by our mission, vision values, and our ethos at Stio, to be caretakers, we have to do everything we can to reduce our impact. So, from the material side, that's where a huge chunk of our impact lies. It's not in our office in Jackson or our commute. Most people bike to work. It's really within our supply chain that the impact lives.

A huge part of my focus has been, first, trying to quantify and set a benchmark for how much we are using, and then strategically look at that and knock off the biggest ones and work our way down. So right now, the biggest impact lies in the main body fabrics in our clothing. The biggest wins right off the bat are that we're converting our Sweetwater and Wilcox Fleece programs to recycled and also starting on the journey of moving a lot of our cotton products to organic cotton.

For someone who doesn't have the same in-the-weeds knowledge, how big of a logistical undertaking is it to make a switch from one material to the other?

It’s a challenge and there's a couple of headwinds. First, of course, is everyone wants to keep doing what they're doing, and it's easy just to continue when you have a bestselling fleece. So, first, you have to buy-in to the idea that we need to make a change. That's internal.

The external factors are, again, there are many different types of yarn out there. When you look at a regular polyester or a cotton, you have hundreds of options, and when you look at the recycled version, there is a limit on how many yarns you have. So, there's a give and take with a material supplier to redevelop the textile to what you want, and then there's an added cost. Because there are less options, there's less scalability and so the cost is more.

Once you can get past those headwinds, it's a matter of redeveloping the fabric. You have to remake it and do wear testing on it to make sure it's going to hold up. We do lab testing to make sure that it has the same durability. And then, at that point, we can start thinking about recoloring it and sending it to the factory for update.

It takes at least a year from when we decide a style needs to change to making the update. In some cases—the Women's Hometown Down—we're trying to get that same sheen. I started that when I got here a year and a half ago, and I just now have the fabric, but it'll be Fall '22. So that's three years. It could take one to three years to redevelop a fabric to make it a preferred material.

This sounds really interesting, kind of the EU idea, that if you create something, you have to figure out what the recycled solution is.

Yeah, the brand or the company becomes responsible for the product when it's done. And that's not at all our system in the US right now. We consume and then it becomes waste. So, trying to close that loop, it might mean making a product completely out of one material that can be broken down and turned back into yarn. That's the coolest thing about synthetics, you don’t lose a lot of quality when you recycle, so there's definitely potential there.

When we think about the brand values at Stio, why is it important that the brand you work for has the core values of responsibility, sustainability and conservation, all of those things that we've kind of been talking about? Why is it important for you to put your energy into this brand?

I think most people want to work for a company that they believe in and that aligns with their values. If it's something that I'm doing at home, then it's something that I'm hoping my employer is also considering important. At Stio, we're a small team, so we all wear a lot of hats. That's part of why I want to work here. I'm a materials person but I also sit on the Stewardship Council and get to spend a couple of hours a week thinking critically about how we can be more sustainable.

If I was at a company that didn’t think this was important, something worth putting time and effort into, I would lose steam. But, because I work at a company where it is important and it is something that people want to pick up on, it energizes you. It makes you more engaged to work on that solution.

“Mountain life for me is all about balance. It’s not always easy. You’re going to work hard. But in between you have really beautiful moments, when you’re looking out and seeing the mountains on the horizon.”

When you look at the Stio logo, what does the pinecone idea represent to you?

I took an ecology class when I was in high school, and I always think back to that. The professor was telling us about the Clark's Nutcracker and how it finds pinecone seeds. It puts caches all over the mountain. So, whenever I see the pinecone, I'm thinking about the top of Static Peak, when you go up Death Canyon and as you come to the top, there's a massive white bark pine forest up there.

When I see our logo, I think about that sort of approach right before you hit the ridgeline. You're in the grove and every bird, I'm assuming, is a Clark's Nutcracker, connecting that high school class with being in the field, putting caches around and spreading the seeds. I guess it's more just a place. When I see it, I think about the backside of Static Peak.

Stio is about the mountain life. What does the mountain life mean to you in a couple of words?

Mountain life for me is all about balance. It's not always easy. You're going to work hard. But in between you have really beautiful moments, when you're looking out and seeing the mountains on the horizon. Mountain life means a small community where people look out for each other. But, more than anything, it's that work hard, play hard mentality.

Obviously, through the past year, many people have rediscovered nature. Why do you think people are changing the way they see or relate to nature right now?

I think it's because nature is so good at so soothing and healing. It's a relaxing place and there's so much anxiety right now. Not knowing what's going to happen next, and there's been so many unknowns. When you go out on a walk, even if it's just around your block, when you're outside, it has a calming presence.

I think that people are recognizing that, more so than ever, because we're less caught up in our commutes and trying to be at the office all the time. Instead it's taking a little self-reflection and it's a way of healing.

If you could thank nature for one thing, what would it be?

One thing? Oh, man. Sunshine. Yep.

Got to have some sunshine in your life, right?

Gotta have some sunshine. Yeah. Growing up in the Northeast, you really appreciate sunshine. It could be gray and cloudy for two weeks and then there's an afternoon when it's sunny and you just drop everything you're doing and go outside. It's so warming. It can be negative four here and you can go out in a t-shirt because of the sunshine.

Like the month of August for me here, we go so hard all summer because it's just beautiful here. But, there's not time to do laundry and clean your house. It's not like we have a good rainy Saturday to go in, but I'm thankful for it.