KORI Made in Sweden

June 6, Sweden's national day. We celebrate this day with a one-week offer on KORI Coyote and today, to honor the day, we wish to once again draw attention to our manufacturing and production in Sweden.

It all started when we needed a factory for the development of the concept, moving from one home sewn prototype to a production-ready-product. The closer to the final product we arrived we realized how many factors that play in to get an accurate delivery in the end. Since we had a great relationship, effective communication, and above all we shared the understanding of quality, we felt that there was no reason to look further afield to produce our products. We wanted a stable quality- and delivery control - and we got it!

We have a recent example of the tragedy in Bangladesh, we constantly hear about disasters in both India and China, and we constantly see examples of unfair treatment of factory workers. Today, with the manufacturing culture that exists around the world, we would not be able to stand for the same safe and honest emotion that our products convey. Today, we feel that it is natural for us to retain production in Sweden. We are presently working together with three factories and we want to pay them all a big thank you for a fantastic collaboration, it is with great joy and pride.

Above is a movie from the first set of KORI Coyote, our back protector / backpack, filmed at Moberg Factory amid the forests of "Småland".

Photo: Fia Jobs

"Comfortable to wear and with an exquisite sense of material."

Kori - smart Swedish back protector with integrated backpack

Kori has been in another product review, this time by Hagen Hoppe who is the editor of BUMSEN, BMW club members magazine. We are pleased that Hagen seemed convinced and satisfied with our KORI and he summerize s the back protector with three words:

Multilateral

Feeling of quality

Locally produced in Sweden

Observe correction in article: We only recommended to drive with KORI, folded  and flat, inside your jacket. If KORI is used as a backpack while driving, it is very important to note that the protective properties are significantly reduced and you should supplement with additional protection inside the jacket or in the jacket. This is mainly due to that the position over the spine can not be assured when placed on the outside of the motorcyclejacket, even the contents of the backpack affect the backprotectors protective properties.

KORI in the discussion about oil, transportations and consumption

This morning I heard a great discussion on the radio (Morgonpasset i P3, SverigesRadio) regarding our future and our oil consumption, something that we all are more or less aware of. The Swedish professor in physiology Kjell Aleklett who were guest this morning described “Peak Oil”, how we have reached our maximum in oil consumption and that it cannot continue to increase.

Kjell explains how fish from the Atlantic – is freezed – transported to China to be cut into filets and then transported back, it is cheaper that way… Are we really that greedy?  

As we are talking about China, China is a large and strongly growing nation, we are aware of that. The thing is, as our society looks today, a growing nation implies a growth in oil consumption. Growth = increased consumption = increased production of goods and services - goods and services that needs to be transported by machines that need oil = increased oil consumption. I hope, I do not need to go in to the details why this is bad..

Chinas oil consumptions increases with 7% each year, they are growing today as Sweden did in the 1945-1970, and who are we to tell them not to… We have to let them grow, but we also need to be aware of what this means and come up with a way to change our consumption habits, read oil consumption. 

The world, and mostly the growing parts of the world, need oil for production and transportation. And of course we, our company KORI, is also a part of this consumption, but at KORI we try to be aware and try to think at least one step ahead.

Our KORIback protector/backpack is mainly made out of polyamide (Nylon) and Polyester which are plastic materials which comes from the oil. Despite this discussion about oil, we still choose to work with plastic textiles because there are no other materials that can live up to their strength and durability which is of essence for the high quality and long lifecycle that we strive for. Also, as Kjell mentioned in the interview, taking oil(plastics) and transforming it into products with a value is much better for the national economy than letting it exhaust. So in the case of choosing materials, we choose long lasting products that wont end up in the growing mountains of garbage.

When we turn the coin and look upon our part in “production and transportation” we are proud and hope to be exemplary. When we started this company, KORI experience AB, many told us to turn to China to find a production. But for several reasons, this discussion in particular, we did not. We were, and still are stubborn with the hope that more people will understand why... ...why we choose to keep our production local, 3 hours drive from our office. With the backup of this very present discussion with “Peak oil” there is no excuse not to…

The relation to consumption read oil is just like any addiction, the difference is that the addict is a whole worlds population and the body is the earth with all its nations and their economy and climate.