Dan English was staring at a problem that kept him up at night: merino wool that pills after three washes, softshells that trap sweat, base layers that fall apart on the first bushwhack. After years watching outdoor brands chase cheaper production overseas, he had a radical idea. What if you could weave technical fibers directly into wool? What if you built your own mill to do it?
In 2013, English packed up his life and moved to Pagosa Springs, Colorado — population 1,700, tucked between the San Juan Mountains and the Continental Divide. He wasn't just starting another outdoor brand. He was building a textile mill from scratch because no existing facility could create what he envisioned.
"Why doesn't clothing do more?" English had asked himself back in 2010, and by the time he reached this high-desert town with its natural hot springs steaming in winter air, he thought he had an answer.
Pagosa Springs sits at 7,126 feet, where you can ski Wolf Creek Pass in the morning and soak in natural mineral springs by evening. It's the kind of place where your gear gets tested whether you plan on it or not — sudden weather changes, altitude that makes everything harder, terrain that doesn't forgive shortcuts in manufacturing.
English's background reads like he was training for this moment without knowing it. Former Microsoft manager, ex-Olympic shooting team member, Executive VP at Mossy Oak. But it was his frustration with gear failure that drove him to create Voormi (named for a mythological mountain creature, because why not?).
"The result is fabric that's warm like wool, abrasion-resistant like a softshell, and made entirely in Colorado."
The breakthrough came with what Voormi calls Core Construction — their patented process of weaving technical fibers directly into merino wool during manufacturing. You can't see it from the outside, but run your fingers across one of their pieces and you'll feel something different. The wool retains its temperature-regulating properties and natural odor resistance, but now it has the durability of a hardshell jacket.
This isn't marketing speak. When Colorado Public Radio interviewed English, he explained how living in Pagosa Springs means your clothing gets field-tested on every dog walk. The trails behind Voormi's headquarters climb into aspen groves and alpine meadows where a afternoon thunderstorm can drop temperatures 30 degrees in minutes. If your base layer can't handle that transition, you'll know before you get back to your truck.
The mill English built processes everything in-house. While other brands design in Boulder and manufacture in Vietnam, Voormi spins, weaves, cuts, and sews within a few hundred miles of each other. You can drive from their Pagosa Springs headquarters to their production facilities in a morning, passing through Durango's red-rock country and the farming valleys that feed the San Luis Valley.
English's Olympic shooting background shows up in unexpected ways. The same precision required to hit targets at 50 meters translates to textile engineering — understanding how fibers behave under stress, how seams fail, where designs need reinforcement. When you're developing fabric that needs to perform from Pagosa's high desert to Crested Butte's alpine zones, that attention to detail matters.
The town embraces this kind of innovation. Pagosa Springs has always attracted people who do things differently — it's where you end up when you want to build something without committees and focus groups. The natural hot springs that give the town its name (Pagosa comes from a Ute word meaning "healing water") create an atmosphere where taking time to get things right feels natural.
Walk down Main Street and you'll find the Choke Cherry Tree, a bookstore and coffeehouse where locals debate everything from water rights to backcountry access. It's the kind of place where English could test ideas with people who actually use gear hard — guides from Wolf Creek Ski Area, ranchers who work cattle in the San Juan National Forest, hunters who disappear into the wilderness for weeks.
That feedback loop shaped every piece Voormi makes. Their base layers aren't just warm; they're built for the rancher who needs to move hay bales at dawn and still be comfortable during afternoon meetings. The pullovers work for the ski instructor who spends eight hours outside, then wants to grab dinner in town without changing clothes.
Forbes called Voormi "an experiment in materials innovation with natural fibers," but sitting in Pagosa Springs, watching the San Juan Mountains change color with the light, it feels more like common sense. If you're going to make clothes for people who live and work in places like this, maybe you should make them in places like this too.
Next time you're driving Highway 160 between Durango and Del Norte, pull off in Pagosa Springs. Soak in the hot springs, grab coffee on Main Street, and think about what it means to build something from scratch in a place where shortcuts don't survive the winter. Then go test some gear in the mountains behind town — you'll understand what English was thinking when he decided to weave technical fibers into wool and call it good enough for Colorado.
