Most people come to JAM’s website to look at our Adaptive Clothing, but some may be surprised to see an item that isn’t technically a piece of clothing. We consider it an accessory, some may consider it a piece of ‘equipment’. It’s a little bit of cord with a u-shaped rubber piece at the end of it, that together makes a zip puller! This accessory may be small, but the impact it has is huge and can provide a large amount of assistance in so many different ways.
When you hear the word zip puller, it’s usually followed by questions like “what part of the zip is that?” and “do all zips have pullers on them?”. It can be a bit confusing, but essentially a zip puller is an additional accessory that is attached to a pre-existing zip that provides an easier object to grasp onto when using a zip. They come in all different shapes, sizes and materials but most people would recognise them from activewear. Particularly a lot of jackets that are created for exploring or really cold temperatures will feature zip pullers. We think one of the reasons these types of products often have zip pullers is because people are having to use the zip whilst wearing gloves or maybe have really cold hands and being able to do the small movements required for a zip without a puller is a lot harder.
When we first introduced zip pullers to our range, it was for our magnetic zip hoodies. We knew that the magnetic zip would make the task of putting on and taking off the hoodie so much easier, but we still felt like being able to pinch the small zip and pull it up and down could be difficult for a lot of our customers. For this reason we decided to look for a zip puller that could be easily attached to the zips of our hoodies for those that wanted that additional level of functionality. A lot of zip pullers out there are smallish rectangular pieces of rubber. Whilst this type of zip puller looks good, and can be helpful for some, it still requires the pinching motion to be able to grab onto it. This pinching position can be really tricky for a lot of people to get their fingers to do, especially those with spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, arthritis and many more who have limited fine motor use. We wanted a zip puller that people could just hook their thumb or finger through and use the strength in their wrist and upper limb to pull on the zip. This resulted in us choosing a u-shaped zip puller.
The u-shape of our pullers means that your fingers don’t necessarily have to be able to do the pinching motion, and as long as you can put a finger through the loop and pull up, you will be able to independently use the zip on our hoodie. The u-shape is defined by a piece of rubber in this shape, without this piece of rubber the puller would likely lose its shape as it is just a loop of thread, that would be much harder for people to hook their fingers through. The last piece of the puzzle for our zip pullers was the thickness of the thread. We soon realised that zip pullers could be useful for a range of things, not just our hoodies. This meant that if people wanted to use our zip pullers for items other than our hoodie, we would need to make sure they could be attached to different shaped zips. The zips on our hoodies are pretty generous in size, but for example the zips on our Chino Pants are much smaller. To be able to thread the zip puller through a smaller hole, the thread needs to be thin.
We believe we’ve struck the perfect balance of functionality and style with our zip pullers so they can be used for so many different purposes and provide a great level of assistance for more than just our hoodies. Some creative ways we’ve seen our zip pullers being used is with other pieces of clothing (such as the fly on a pair of pants, or the side hip zips on our chinos), hand bags, wallets or even a lunch box. For so many people, zips are a part of clothing they have given up on ever being able to use. But with the use of a well-designed zip puller, the functionality of a zip can be returned and a sense of independence can be achieved one zip at a time.
