It's been an extraordinarily busy week for us this week but we managed to squeeze in a visit to Keela on Monday so we could have a chat, learn a little more about Keela's rich history, and see some of Keela's ranges so we can choose some products to start testing when the weather turns for the worst this year.
(Above - Drew Wylie, Owner of Wylies Outdoor World at Keela)
Manufactured in the UK
It's not often we feel like kids in a sweetie shop but after seeing so many things for the first time we can see why Keela really has earned their reputation as one of the best outdoor clothing brands still manufacturing their own products in the UK, less than seven miles from Wylies Outdoor World in the small town of Glenrothes, Fife on the east coast of Scotland! Allowing us a unique opportunity not just to support a prestigious brand such as Keela, but also support another local Fife based UK company, that in turn also supports the UK economy.
Award Winning Innovative Ideas
Founded in 1989 by Rube Fernando to initially supply local mountain rescue teams, since then Keela have consistently pushed the boundaries of outdoor clothing design by developing many unique technologies for their various clothing lines such as Insect Shield Technology, Primaloft (a soft, lightweight, water repellent fabric) System Dual Protection (a unique condensation control system, a winner of the Queen's Award for Innovations, it uses an inner air gap to keep you comfortable in all scenarios) and many, many more!
On arriving at Keela there is a wall dedicated to proudly displaying all Keela's awards they have won over the years. As a local retailer even we didn't fully understand just how innovative and forward thinking Keela were until we seen the collection of awards for ourselves, but we will have more info and some demonstrations on these technologies in the near future.
Wylies Outdoor World Supporting Keela
You will see us supporting Keela by testing out as many of their ranges as we can get through, using their clothing on our own adventures, and you will see Drew wearing Keela Clothing in many of his future videos while showing off other outdoor gear too so you can see for yourself that we are putting the hours in with it to gain as much first-hand experience as possible!
Keela Product Lines
We were given a (socially distant) tour of Keela's men's, women's, and kid's collections which you can now find in our website in our Outdoor Clothing and Footwear collections, and it really did make our head spin. We still have lots of lines to add to our website but we are working our way through them.
Our First Product Test of Keela Clothing
In the mean time Drew has started testing the Keela Tasman Merino Top
In our next post, we will show off the Keela Tasman Merino top after we have had some time using it in different conditions but our first impressions are fantastic.