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Thursday, December 07, 2017

2017 Pro Tool Innovation Workwear & Safety Awards

PTIA: Workwear and safety gear is essential to jobsite performance. One is required by OSHA, the other by common sense. I’ll let you decide which is which. From the clothing we wear to the lighting that aids vision and everything in between, these are the most innovative solutions the 2017 Pro Tool Innovation Awards found.

3 comments:

Drew H said...

I always try to read articles about tool innovation because I am always curious if by innovation, the article really means improvement. It is frustrating to see an innovative litium ion battery becayse it has three more hours of work life, that is improvement, not innovation. This article has a little improvement and a little innovation. The two Truewerk workwear items I would classify as innovative, the product is not one that has been on the market before and brings a completely new idea. These items of apparel would be really good for someone who is performing manual labor, but has to move freely, perhaps a rigger would like these. The boots, gloves, and flashlights are all just improvements. Now, the shop light I would say is innovative. It has a clever system to hook onto the hood of a car and has a long tube light. I have not seen this before although I suppose I have very limited experience with mechanics tools and accessories. The portable work lights are improvements. All in all, a cool run down, but I wish people were a little more conservative with the word “innovation.”

Kimberly McSweeney said...

It is always interesting to see these “year in review” articles for the best of the best in each category because oftentimes there are one or two brands that just dominate certain things. In this case, Truewerk took the clothing categories with both their outstandingly overthought work shirt that has way too many attribute to be considered a shirt, in my opinion, and their fantastically overreaching work pants that have plenty of useful features, but I think they are going too far to be overly applicable and could just say the pants are for comfortable working conditions as opposed to saying that they are designed for “three-plus seasons”. The other category that peaked my interest was the work boot section as I am in the market for a new pair of steel toes. I’m not surprised to see Wolverine as the top pick, but their shoes are terribly pricey so I will not be getting this model.

David Kelley said...

Awesome another tool article but with a slight twist we are going into the wourld of Workwear and Safety Gear. The number one item on this list was the Truewerk G2 Werkshirt, this product intrigues me mostly because they said “Inspired by combat shirts used by US special forces, the G2 WerkShirt is constructed from three technical fabrics each engineered and placed on the garment to optimize the performance of the shirt as a system.” This Idea of the military inspire work gear is not new and most likely is going to be here to stay, for better or worse. While I kind of get annoyed at the whole military inspired branding of items I can’t lie the shirt intrigues me. I don’t really love the high neck but the rest of it seems to be just about what you would want out of a work shirt. The real question is how flexible and light weight is it, I guess I got to see if I can get my hands on some in a store to check them out.