Tersus: Where Patagonia, Arc'teryx and The North Face Get a Second Life

All Images: Courtesy of Tersus Solutions

In a sport that thrives on innovation, it’s easy to overlook the value of what’s already out there. Sure, we all love a throwback Warren Miller flick or our dad’s retro onesie, but what about the gear in our own closets? Inside a massive warehouse in South Denver, a company called Tersus is proving that the five-year-old kit we reluctantly take back out each November still has some gas in the tank.

Tersus is the middleman between your old ski bibs and the brands that sold them to you. Ship your torn and unwashed gear back to companies like Patagonia, Arc’teryx, North Face, all partners of Tersus, and it ends up in their Denver facility. There, it’s cleaned, repaired and either sent right back to you or resold through those brands’ renewed gear programs. Whether you’re looking to cash in for website credit or sending it in for a second lease on life, your gear gets another shot to shine.

“[Big outdoor companies] sell a billion dollars worth of product every year,” says Tersus CEO Peter Whitcomb during a tour of the 90,000 square foot facility. “You look at the trailing 20 years of stuff that’s in a closet, 80 percent of that is underutilized. How do we get that back into the hands of college students who want to pay 50 percent less than retail?”

At the heart of the Tersus operation is liquid CO₂-based cleaning, a cutting-edge, waterless method that permeates the small pores in technical fabrics to clear out every bit of grime. This method of cleaning isn’t just different, it’s better for technical fabrics and in some cases, can actually make the gear perform better than it did out of the box.

“When we first launched the North Face’s renewed program, they came in to run their pieces through the cleaning process and see how waterproofness and technical capabilities perform after the CO₂ process,” Whitcomb recalls. “Both the Gore-Tex and Futurelight pieces came out better than new.”

It’s not marketing BS, it’s chemical science. Tersus’s cleaning process removes over 98 percent of contaminants (compared to ~55 percent at best with water cleaning), restoring the integrity and performance of the technical fabrics.

Tersus doesn’t just blast your gear with CO₂, they repair it as well. This isn’t the YouTubing how to iron on a patch mid-season we’re used to. Tersus is one of the few third-party certified Arc’teryx repair centers in the US; a status earned through a year of rigorous training and an even longer testing period that continues through today.

“It’s a year-long certification process where they put you through a battery of tests, and they actually come in person and watch the tests,” says Whitcomb. “They’re getting critiqued on things I could never see visually. It takes years and years to understand.”

These brands see Tersus as their partner rather than a contractor. They’re an extension of the outdoor gear companies themselves and carry on their standards as such. For the skiers who want high-quality gear without the premium price tag, Tersus’s circular economic model is groundbreaking. It keeps high-quality gear out of landfills and in the hands of the people who will use it, and encourages further innovation in the technical gear industry. With the circular economy Tersus is pushing for, there will be a greater demand for new gear that is actually better and not just in a new colorway.

Everything that enters the Tersus facility is recycled in some way. Whether it be reselling the used gear as it is or recycling fabric scraps for unique, one-of-one pieces, nothing goes to the landfill. They even run a separate facility solely for recycling down from products that have reached the end of their lives. After a CO₂ clean, that down goes right back into brand-new puffers, sleeping bags and other insulated goods.

Tersus is flipping the script about what “new” means in the outdoor industry and beyond. By bridging the gap between high-end gear and the people that will actually use it to its full potential, they’re proving that sustainability and price-consciousness don’t have to come at the cost of performance. So this winter season, when you break out your old, sun-spotted, patched-up jacket and bibs and are tempted to chuck them in the trash, think again. The future of technical outerwear is sitting in your closet already.