Oceanographic Magazine (OM): Before founding ThruDark, how were you both involved in the Special Forces? What’s your background?

Louis Tinsley (LT): “My military career began in 2003 when I was 19. I followed in the footsteps of my elder brother Frankie. He had passed the Royal Marines Commando course 3 years prior. I’d always looked up to him and I was inspired by what he had achieved. I served in various roles in the marines for a few years and in 2010 I enrolled on Special Forces Selection and spent the latter half of my career with the Special Boat Service before being medically discharged in 2017.”

Anthony ‘Staz’ Stazicker (AS): “I had a slightly different path into the military. I had no siblings or immediate family that were in the military. I got into football at a young age and was playing at quite a high level. I thought my future career was going to be in professional sport. That didn’t happen because of an injury and I started working at a local gym as a gym instructor. I always wondered what else I could do. When the Iraq war happened and the Royal Marines were all over the TV, I started reading books about military history and the Royal Marines. The next thing I know, I was enrolled onto 32 weeks of arduous training down at the command training centre in the Royal Marines in 2005. I spent three years in the Marines, I did a sniper course, and got deployed to Afghanistan. Out there, I got into contact with the Special Forces and it spiked my interest. When I came back off that deployment, I went into a sniper course, and that was me putting myself forward for what is known as the Special Forces in 2009 for ten years. We went around the world twice, had some incredible experiences and got very fortunate to work with some very good people as well within that organisation. I learned a lot and it was very formative in terms of me personally and my career as well. And then I left in 2018.”

OM: How did you two meet?

LT: “We met back in 2006 whilst serving at 40 Commando in Somerset, we’ve maintained a friendship ever since.”

AS: “I’d passed Royal Marines training for duty in 2006 and joined the same unit as Louis… I remember we were preparing to go on exercise in the Scottish Highlands to do mountaineering training.”

OM: What were the biggest challenges for you during the Special Forces selection process?

LT: “Special Forces is an extremely arduous course that is both physically and mentally demanding. It’s a year-long course split into phases that test specific requirements of a Special Forces operator. The first phase is a gruelling test of physical capability, you carry ridiculously heavy backpacks around the Welsh hills navigating to checkpoints under time pressure.”

AS: “That first phase that Louis was talking about is more physical. You have to get from point A to B across huge distances in the Welsh mountains, while carrying big loads. Once you pass that phase of selection, the hill phase, you’re then going into the jungle phase which concentrates on your soldiering abilities and your communication skills within a small team. Then, the resistance to interrogation phase follows which, for me, was the one that caught me out the most. You know what you’re getting with the physical or the jungle parts. But when you’re tired, cold, wet, fatigued from 10 weeks of really taxing mind and body work, you get into this challenging phase of being on the run and being chased. I had to go through 36 hours of interrogation after five days of being chased. You’re mentally at your lowest, but you still have to know what’s going on around you and you still have to meet the required standard. After that, you then go into a skills phase which is about shooting and other skills. Generally speaking, that’s the phases you have to go through. It’s very different to the usual military and if you succeed, it’s a very proud moment.”

OM: What are the character traits that you took away from or were needed for that kind of training?

LT: “Some of the obvious ones are determination, integrity and resilience.”

AS: “Yes, mental and physical resilience are big things. But also some core values you get taught in the Royal Marines and Special Forces. When we’re all comfortable and everything’s fine and a little bit of stress comes in, I can deal with that. But we all know what we’re like when we’re hungry, when we’re tired, we haven’t slept well, or we’re physically and mentally drained. That exposes the real people and that’s what the military is trying to do. They’re trying to get to the real person. You remove the masks that we all wear during the day, and it reveals who you are. They are looking for specific character traits, but for me the main thing is are you trainable as well? Do you take in information? They’re not asking you to be rocket scientists. We’re not incredibly intelligent people academically, but we can adapt, we are malleable, we can learn and we can sort of solutionize. That helps in our daily business dealings as well. Sometimes we have small problems, sometimes larger ones, and more often than not a combination of the two, but we’re always solutionizing and we’re always quite positive about it all.”

OM: How did these character traits help in your life after the Special Forces?

LT: “I think that those character traits stay with you and obviously I’m very thankful for the experience that I had because they make me the man that I am today. I’m proud of that. It does build certain skills and skillsets within you that are transferrable, and we did build them into ThruDark. They’re also ingrained in our culture internally as a ThruDark unit and throughout the staff.”

OM: How did you come up with the idea for ThruDark?

LT: “We were thinking about the opportunities that we could have on the outside, and that would usually involve the security sector for someone coming from the Special Forces. We had an idea for something different, we wanted to create high-quality products and gear that reflect our heritage. We wanted it to be rugged and hard wearing. That was the main concept. We spent a lot of time with the ideation and what that could look like.”

AS: “Yes, I had a lot of close calls and things were changing for me on a personal level. I’d not done everything but certainly ticked a lot of boxes that I wanted to tick professionally with the Special Forces. At some point, I felt like the wind was out of my sails a little bit and I started looking at different opportunities. Louis and I started talking about what life and a business could look like on the outside. We’ve always loved the outdoors and in the military, technical gear allowed us to thrive in so many different environments from the Arctic to the desert. While we were wearing the best kit and equipment, we were still quite critical about how it was performing, so we were thinking, quite naively, how hard can it be to make some technical clothing. The idea for ThruDark was born.”

OM: How did you come up with the brand name ThruDark?

LT: “We wanted to find a name that’s quite unique and hasn’t been used before. We liked ThruDark because it connects with our Special Forces background. Most of the time, you’re working at night in the Special Forces, so it’s through dark. But it also has another subliminal meaning which is going through dark times and adversity. Our motto is ‘endeavour through adversity’ so it’s all interlinked.”

OM: What do you want to achieve with the brand?

LT: “It’s about the inspirational, motivational, and aspirational nature of what we do. I hope that our products are making a difference, and they get people to do something that’s outside of their comfort zone, for their own betterment. We want to improve people, even it it’s as simple as going for a long walk.”

OM: What makes your brand stand out the most? What does it embody in a nutshell?

AS: “Our stories have always been based around authenticity and credibility. There was nobody at the time that had left Special Forces and set up a technical clothing company. When we sat down and thought about it, I noticed that we, when we look at other brands, want to know their story, who the owners are and what their core values are. We tried to create something like this, and I think we’re very credible in our brand story.”

LT: “We’re also very particular about every detail and, at the time, are quite open across social media platforms in showing people the processes. People are interested in what we’re doing, so we take that new garment into the world and do all the crazy things that we normally do. We’d jump out of planes, we abseil, we’d take it to the harshest conditions, and we’d try to destroy it. Then we would show that process to people from the outside world, and we would be able to learn something from that process. If it wasn’t good enough, we tried and tried again. We’re pretty set in our ways in terms of where we wanted to position ourselves from a product perspective. We want to be best in class through authentic storytelling.”

OM: Was it hard to establish yourself as an outdoor brand in the UK?

LT: “It’s a huge market with absolute behemoths within it, brands that have been around for decades. It’s been a hard slog over the last 6 to 7 years to punch into this market with a unique selling point that is founded upon our military experience. It gave us the credibility that we needed to be able to do something different in the outdoor space.”

OM: How has the last year been for you? Were there any hardships?

LT: “I think we get setbacks and tailwinds and I think that this is coming back to what we said earlier about what the Special Forces and the military probably has done for us. We prepare to fail, and when we do, we remain resilient and make sure that we continue to be quite obsessively driven.”

OM: Do you have any favourite products yourself?

LT: “For me, it’s the Scout Smock which got inspired by the Buffalo jacket which we used quite often in the military. With the Scout Smock, we brought that jacket into the future by doing significant improvements – 3-layer waterproof combined with Polartec insulation. It’s an all round mountain jacket and looks unique.”

AS: “For me, it’s a product that you can’t buy. It’s a bespoke summit suit we created in a relatively short period of time, and it stood on all the highest peaks across the world. I climbed Ama Dablam in Nepal in it, and, for me, that was a key time to showcase our fabric technologies, the manufacturing processes and the capability that we had available to us. Most products that followed are descendants of that summit suit because we would use the same fabrics, down and manufacturing techniques. I’m excited for what’s coming down the line and I’m now looking forward to what is to come with the incredibly talented people that we have here at ThruDark. As a team, we have that unrelenting pursuit of excellence, so we always look at how to improve things and products. We’re never satisfied.”

OM: What’s next for ThruDark? Any exciting new products coming out soon?

LT: “It’s global reach. Not to say that we’re not a global brand already as we do see significant sales for such a young brand internationally. But I think it’s just more reach and more of a global presence. How do we reach more people with our messaging and continue to motivate and inspire? That’s what we’re aiming to do. We’re in for the long run and we want to elevate the brand in the right way to the right people, while keeping the heart and soul and the messaging.”

AS: “What we’ve done quite well up until this point is that we’ve been unique and obvious in terms of who we are, where we sit and what our products are about. The brand has got its own kind of unique silhouette in terms of look and feel, so it’s really exciting to keep pushing this forward. We’re looking into adding backpacks and footwear and sleeping systems, for example. I get excited just thinking about it!”

OM: Is your overall aim to connect more people to the outdoors?

LT: “Yes, absolutely, but it’s much more than that. I guess our current product range enables people to be more comfortable outdoors, but I still think that the core of that is the inspiration for betterment.”

AS: “They’re intrinsically linked, right? Being in the outdoors is so important to everybody’s health and wellbeing and the way that they improve themselves.”

OM: How are you trying to achieve that?

LT: “Through storytelling mainly. I think we’ve done a good job in that respect, and we want to continue to tell unique stories that connect with people on a different level, not just people from our background but from other backgrounds. That’s where we rely on our ambassadors and athletes who perhaps have different stories that are equally inspirational and aspirational. For us, it’s about learning different ways to connect to people through storytelling.”

OM: What’s your connection to the ocean?

LT: “My connection to the ocean really began during my time in the Marines. We conducted a lot of operations at sea, I’ve spent a lot of time on massive sea freight and sea ships and have done ocean operations in the Middle East and in the Gulf. We did many different operations where we had to dive and conduct special boat service. It’s probably a very different experience to most recreational diving experiences because we tend to do our operations at night which is quite humbling. The ocean has made me feel very inferior.”

AS: “That’s what I wanted to touch on as well. In general, the military takes the fun out of everything (laughs). Skydiving – not fun in the military. Diving – not fun in the military! I just remember feeling the power of the ocean and helplessness in terms of how small and insignificant we were compared to the ocean and mother nature. On a more personal side, the ocean is probably the reason why we are where we are currently. When we finished military training here in Poole, it would’ve been easy to go to London or back to our hometowns, but I love the feeling of the ocean. It really draws me in and I love having that sense of feeling and connection to the ocean.”

OM: Do you have any affiliation towards the ocean? Have you done any recreational scuba diving after your service?

AS: “The special boat service melted the fun off it. I had a near-death experience. It was night and I was wrapped up in kit and equipment three metres underneath the water and I couldn’t quite get up to a space where I could regather my breath of a rebreather. There is an element of that where it makes you hyper vigilant of your vulnerability in that environment.”

LT: “I’ve had more positive experiences. I’ve been away surfing in Costa Rica for the first time recently. I’ve never surfed before, and it was just sensational. So, there is the fun part of that, but I think it’s probably tarnished a little bit from the service, but we plan to expand our product range with wetsuits, dry suits and boating gear in the future.”

OM: Why is the conservation of our last truly wild places so important and how is ThruDark helping with that?

LT: “As a brand, it’s difficult for us to do that. I guess it’s not often that we find ourselves in these very remote places. They’re few and far between, and even more so as we go on, because everybody’s exploring, everybody wants to go further and go to these places. We rely on our ambassadors like Lizzie Daly to tell their stories. She recently went to Greenland, and it looked amazing. I think the importance needs to rest on storytelling. We need to be able to tell the stories about the importance of these places in an authentic way. The more we do that, the more people will understand the importance of it. We lean on our vast network of inspiring ambassadors to do the storytelling.”