From Firefighters’ Equipment Comes a Men’s Apparel Line

Heat Straps builds rugged men’s clothing in Passaic, New Jersey.

Long-time entrepreneurs and inventors will tell you that the most successful way to enter the marketplace is to identify a problem and find a practical solution to it. This often entails creating a product that fills the void in the market and has widespread appeal.

This is exactly the path taken by two New Jersey firefighting brothers when they started their men’s apparel brand, Heat Straps, in 2018.

Jordan Lang was just about to graduate from the Fire Academy in 2017 when on a training drill he dropped his fire-retardant gloves over the side of a stairwell. He was trying to put on his mask and achieve a tight fit with his bare hands when his gloves came loose.

“In order to mask up and get a proper seal to protect your face you have to take your gloves off,” said Lang, a 32-year-old member of the Jersey City Fire Department. “When you take your gloves off, you have to put them underneath your armpit or underneath your knee. That’s when I dropped them.

“I went home and said to my dad, who is also a firefighter, ‘what if they were attached to your wrist?’ My dad said that was a really good idea, so I went out and did a prototype.”

Lang procured fire retardant – National Fire Protection Association-tested raw materials – and took them to a seamstress at the local laundromat who sewed the strap so it would connect the gloves to a firefighter’s wrists.

“I gave that first one to my brother Tyler who is also a Jersey City firefighter and he was on the line at that time,” said Lang. “He got on before me and caught a fire on his first day with them and said, ‘dude, these are awesome.’

“Firefighters lives depend on their equipment, and the heat straps really help firefighters with glove management. It was a product we really believed in and that’s how we set the base for our brand and our business to establish ourselves and learn the manufacturing, how to procure raw materials, and what it took to manufacture something.”

The Lang brothers, who are third-generation firefighters in Hudson County, have sold the heat straps to individual firefighters across America, their largest sale being 1,400 units to the Boston Fire Department.

But while attempting to achieve sales among a nation of firefighters, the brothers decided to pivot their manufacturing to rugged apparel that would not only appeal to firefighters but to all men that love the outdoors.

Today Heat Straps is a Passaic, New Jersey-based manufacturer of men’s coats, jackets, vests, shirts, and duffel bags, all of which are designed to protect during cold and wet weather. And they are doing it in the most American way.

“We have snaps that come from Connecticut, zippers from Kentucky, and our waxed canvas, which is what a majority of our products are made of, are dyed and finished in New Jersey,” said Lang. “Our quilting is done in New Jersey, like when we put fabrics together for lining insulation. Our sheepskin comes from Texas. Our denim comes from all over the place but most of it is domestic.”

After procurement, all materials come to the Heat Straps workshop in Passaic, which is also home to two companies that provide contract manufacturing for Heat Straps products. It is there that fabrics are cut and sewn by a combination of 11 employees of the in-house contract manufacturers.

“We learned a lot of little lessons on the way that kind of brought us to the point where our goal was to eventually make a chore coat for firemen, because that’s what they wear when they’re on duty,” said Lang. “We do things in really limited runs.

“I never thought in a million years that I wanted to do this. I do have a passion and an eye for quality stuff, and I think that helped us establish our brand, knowing what quality feels like and looks like without compromise. That’s how we differentiate ourselves, by not cutting corners.”

The brothers are still full-time Jersey City fireman that work shifts of 24 hours on followed by 72 hours off duty. This allows them time to concentrate on Heat Straps and help with their infant children at home.

Heat Straps takes up only a quarter of the space in their manufacturing building, which was once the home to 300 sewers making garments for Jones of New York. Heat Straps has grown year-over-year since inception, but Lang envisions a day when Heat Straps occupies the entire building.

Heat Straps does very little manufacturing for the wholesale market, choosing to sell direct to consumers. But Lang is beginning to send his products to boutique retail shops to get his apparel out in front of his potential customers.

“That’s the thing about our stuff. Your can say it looks just like another product but until you feel it in your hands, pictures don’t really do our stuff justice,” said Lang. “So, we have to be in retail because it’s the only way for people to touch and feel. Every single item that you get from us you are going to say ‘wow’ when you touch it.”

Heat Straps’ best-selling item is its deck jacket, which is 24 ounces of waxed canvas. It is an extremely heavy jacket because of the sheepskin that keeps you warm no matter what you are doing.

“The deck jacket is our brand in a nutshell,” said Lang. “It’s the one item that really describes our brand. It’s designed for if you’re outside and not moving around, it will keep you warm.

“People have been waiting for this thing to come back in stock, and we just relaunched it. It’s very, very labor intensive. All the sheepskins are cut by hand. It’s a lot of work but it is our baby. I take a lot of pride in that jacket.”

The brothers also take pride in the 100 % mouton wool they source from American Woolen in Connecticut. There are no woolen blends at Heat Straps. And wool-lined jackets are entirely lined with wool, unlike other manufacturers that use plastic or polyester for the sleeve linings.

Heat Straps procures its top-quality leather for its duffel bags from Horween in Chicago and Wickett & Craig in Pennsylvania. Leather for its leather jackets comes from the Seidel tannery in Milwaukee.

Whether it’s a jacket, shirt or vest, a Heat Straps garment is an ideal holiday gift for the outdoor man looking to stay warm. It will be rugged like a big city firefighter and last for years.

“We are totally different from the norm in this space,” said Lang. “We’re two firemen. We’re blue collar people. Everybody wants to be a fashion designer, but we had no intention of getting into this space.”

To shop for Heat Straps apparel, go to www.heatstrapsusa.com.