DIEL Sport Owner Lachezar Glavinov: There Should Be Symbiosis between Business and Science

"Science should be linked to business. It should not be an end in itself. There should be a symbiosis between business and science," said Lachezar Glavinov, manager of DIEL Sport - Bulgaria in an interview with BTA.

Lachezar Glavinov is the manager and partner of DIEL Sport, a company that specializes in the production of winter sports and workwear. DIEL has been fighting the cold and damp for 31 years, and actively working and partnering with the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute for 21 years.

In support of the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute

"We have been in a very close relationship with the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute since 2002. For more than 21 years we have been working together and clothing them so that they can carry out their vocation and their mission in peace, without worrying about bad weather,'' Glavinov said.

"In the beginning, we didn't have much experience. We started making cold-protection clothing, thinking that people who go to Antarctica have contact with cold and ice. It turned out that the challenges were more the humidity and the wind, because after all, they were going in the summer season to Antarctica and the temperatures were not as low as we imagined them to be,'' the owner of DIEL explained.

Glavinov said that he himself participated in the expedition to Antarctica in 2002, when their partnership with Bulgarian Antarctic researchers began. During his stay then, he was wearing the company's outfit. The purpose of the mission was precisely to test the reliability of the clothing.

"The cold feeling comes more from the damp. The base is about 100 meters from the ocean and any air current brings an extreme amount of moisture. Everything is soaked with moisture - the clothes, the atmosphere, the climate is extremely humid,'' Glavinov explained. He described the first expedition, marking the beginning of DIEL's partnership with the Antarctic Institute, as a failure because they were not prepared then for what awaited them on the icy continent.

Striving for quality improvement

Glavinov said that in all the years so far, the active interaction with the Institute has helped to produce better and better quality clothing for the Bulgarian Antarctic researchers.

"Subsequently, more and more comments, remarks, recommendations, constructive criticism, helped us to provide each subsequent expedition with a better and better proposal that meets the needs of our researchers, namely - how to properly fight the wind, the humidity; how to reduce condensation on long missions. All of this is a challenge for technology in clothing; it has to meet their needs without hampering their work, it should allow freedom of movement. All of this exchange boosts both the quality of our product and that of their work,'' he explained.

Clothing for winter conditions

According to Glavinov, the rule of thumb for Antarctic clothing is dressing in layers, which means that it should be possible to wear lighter over heavier clothing. This allows for variation according to temperature - when it gets very cold, more layers are put on, when the temperature starts to become positive, layers are taken off. He said that rather than wearing one thick down jacket, different combinations could be made with a few thinner layers.

"We make each garment to individual measurements. It's not a concept that one can find in the store, but we have the individual size data of each participant and everything is made to order,'' he said.

The owner of DIEL commented that he and his company provide the necessary garments to the Bulgarian Antarctic researchers free of charge.

"The benefit of this for us is moral first. Bulgaria needs the support of scientific institutes - not only Antarctic ones, but also in general. Science should be linked to business. It should not be an end in itself. There must be a symbiosis between business and science. One cannot do without the other, so we need to move in the right direction together. The way we help them - to feel comfortable and to work, they have helped us to develop our products. That's the value of this collaboration. Yes, we've been giving it away for free for so many years, but we've learned a lot from them,'' Glavinov explained.

Components and characteristics

"There are several features for each garment built with modern textile processing technologies. The first is water resistance. This is the parameter that implies that cold and moisture, in the form of rain or snow, do not enter when there is contact with the garment. The higher the water resistance rating, the better the quality of the garment,'' Glavinov explained.

''The other important parameter is the garment's vapour permeability in the opposite direction, i.e. when the weather warms up and a person performs an activity, there is an excess of energy. If this vapour permeability is low, an uncomfortable sweating starts, then this moisture remaining inside when the person stops working can also lead to injuries, body parts freezing, stiffening, etc. So, the higher this parameter, the better,'' Glavinov clarified, adding that DIEL uses 20K fabrics.

"They should not fade, they should not wash easily. There are some surface treatments that impregnate the fabric - (b.a. soaking fabrics or other fabrics with special solutions to make them waterproof and water resistant). So we try to make sure that every single thing is in the high parameter as much as possible to have quality and longevity of the garments. For us, as a company, one of the valuable things is to make durable, quality gear that has a long service life,'' he pointed out.

Environment-friendly

According to Glavinov, textiles are one of the biggest polluters of nature. "The fact that we buy some clothes from the mall, wear them once or twice and then throw them away - all of that goes back into nature. Fast fashion, which has dominated in recent decades, is our enemy. We try not to sell a new outfit every year, as unrelated to business logic as it is, because everyone wants to make a profit and sell as much as possible. We want the opposite - to make a quality product that can be used longer, not thrown away in nature after some time, but can be recycled after a few years and we can still get fabrics from the same products we have already used,'' he clarified.

Lachezar Glavinov noted that in addition to style and quality, the company also strives to comply with environmental requirements regarding materials. "This is very valuable nowadays - we are guests on this planet, we have to respect it,'' he said.

Maintenance of the garments

The owner of DIEL explained that the impregnant, which is put superficially on the fabrics, helps the rain, and in particular the dripping, to turn into "spheres'' resembling mercury so that water does not penetrate the fabric, which also helps to make it harder to soil.

"The fabric is very easy to clean, and it is not necessary to wash so often,'' Glavinov noted.

"The journey to Antarctica is quite long and the logistics are very complicated - yes, thank God we have a ship now, but it is not free. So we can't afford to drive back and forth pointless cargo. Basically, every single gram is measured. Nothing is left on the base - whatever is taken away is returned, including the rubbish. It's the cleanest place on the planet,'' he said.

In 1992, DIEL was born to a family of passionate skiers as a daring venture aimed at developing and producing premium ski gear. The young company started with five sewing machines and two original models - a men's and a women's overalls. In 1994, the first participation in an international exhibition - ISPO Munich, the largest in the world for winter sporting goods, became a great success for the products and the DIEL brand. In 1996, DIEL opened its own factory - an important step on the road to foreign markets by continuously increasing production capacity and quality. Since 2002, DIEL Sport has been developing a special collection of clothing for the needs of the scientists of the Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition.