Pro-ID

In the years since being founded, Duluth Trading Co. has continued to release irreverent and innovative products that workers have a need for. DTC looks at simple but overlooked ergonomic needs, like the fact that when you're building, installing or fixing something you often need to crouch down or brace one leg up on something, which automatically tightens your pants in the crotch. In an effort to provide "Crouch without the ouch" and "man room," they released a line of jeans with a hidden crotch gusset. The not-so-subtle name: Ballroom Jeans.

DTC also recognized that there's a huge and largely unaddressed market of women doing manual labor, farming and fix-it work, hence their line of women's clothes and a dedicated area on their website called "Real Women" featuring a test panel, true stories and product testimonials. They've refused to use photographs of female models and instead use only actual working women who use Duluth's stuff.

In addition to the stuff they manufacture, I like the variety of unusual but useful gear they seek out and distribute, like wire benders for repurposing coat hangers, a dental tools kit filled with a variety of picks and tweezers (that I'll shortly be ordering to clean old grease out of machine gears), and military-developed "X-Treme" silicone-based repair tape that's stretchable, watertight, and acid- and melt-resistant.

Next I'll take a look at their "killer app" material.