Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel Uretsky.
Daniel, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
ALLIED was started in 1987 with the vision to provide the highest quality, innovative and responsibly sourced down to outdoor and apparel brands. To this day, we’re still a family-run operation, and what started in a 12,000 square foot warehouse, has grown to over 1 million square feet with facilities in the US, China, Vietnam and opening soon in Europe.
From the beginning, we sought a new way of doing things. Thirty years ago, the down supply chain was a network of brokers with very little connection to the source.
This practice still exists in many supply chains today. When Steve Uretsky founded ALLIED, he knew there was a better way to source and process what was then a generic ingredient. Strong relationships were formed directly with hatcheries and farms to ensure consistency with quality, price, and traceability. Washing processes were rethought leading to a method that would become more sustainable while setting new benchmarks for cleanliness.
Working directly with the source has allowed us now to develop industry-wide standards and leading traceability programs and tools, while also offering our partners an unparalleled level of support and working directly with animal welfare organizations. We are proud to have helped develop the Responsible Down Standard which has become one of the largest animal welfare standards in the entire textile industry. Our unique sustainable processing methods also allow us to recycle over 65 million gallons of water annually and led to ALLIED becoming the first down supplier to achieve the prestigious bluesign® system partner status in 2010. All down from ALLIED is now a bluesign® approved ingredient– one of the few non-textile based ingredients to have that status.
Our goal has always been to make our customers and partners feel part of our family. Working with brands of every size, our sourcing practices, quality, innovations and consumer education tools such as TrackMyDown.com® offer every partner the tools and content to bring added value to every product using ALLIED down.
ALLIED will always continue to look forward, and look how down is purchased, used and marketed to new consumers. Through the three pillars of our brand– Quality, Innovation and Sustainability– ALLIED has and will continue to set the standard for quality insulations found inside the finest luxury and most technical outdoor brands worldwide.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Building a business from the ground up is rarely a smooth process. As more and more manufacturing business started to go overseas we anticipated a drop in business as companies looked to source there. It was a large challenge for us to meet our customers’ needs in Asia while still maintaining our high level of quality and service. The willingness to adapt in a changing business landscape is crucial.
Additionally, the complications of working with an animal by-product are significant. Even though what we use is a small portion of the value of the animal, we constantly find ourselves as pushing the farms we work with towards always increasing best practices. It’s something that is both extremely difficult with such a large global supply chain, but is also extremely rewarding to see how we can actually create significant change in the way things are done in a much larger global poultry industry.
How my father, Steve Uretsky, founded ALLIED 30 years ago has allowed us to be able to have an unprecedented transparency in a historically opaque supply chain.
If the core foundation of our company wasn’t built on transparency, the entire down industry would be a much different one than it is today and we would not have been able to spearhead many of these changes we now see our competitors picking up on.
I think, in the end, there are always going to be struggles and it’s how you are able to anticipate and remain in a leadership position that really identifies who you are, as a company.
Allied Feather & Down – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We specialize in selling the highest quality, responsibly sourced and innovative down and feather insulations on the market. We work with most of the major outdoor and apparel brands and can be found in products from The North Face, Patagonia, Columbia, Marmot, Adidas, Nike, Lands’ End, Burberry, Eddie Bauer, etc…
We have set ourselves apart through our work with traceability and sustainability. We have an industry benchmark sustainable cleaning method and have developed unique consumer traceability tools. At trackmydown.com, the purchaser of one of many of our partner brands can experience exactly what is in their down products.
They can see where it came from, where it was processed and an exact content analysis. And as the only major down supplier with a global supply chain that is 100% certified to the most robust industry animal welfare standards, any user of down can feel more comfortable knowing that a product with ALLIED down inside has been sourced responsibly and processed sustainably to last a lifetime.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Launching the Responsible Down Standard together with The North Face is our proudest accomplishment as it has now become one of the largest animal welfare standards in the entire textile industry and used as a model for future animal welfare standards in other industries. To date, it has helped protect almost 500,000,000 birds to ensure they are kept in the most humane conditions possible.
Contact Info:
- Address: 6905 W Acco St
Montebello, CA 90640 - Website: http://www.alliedfeather.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alliedfeatheranddown
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/allieddown
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/allieddown
- Other: http://www.trackmydown.com
Image Credit:
Eric Larsen
Ian Morrison (WHITE NOISE)
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