History

Mother Nature’s Invention…

In the 1940’s, Swiss inventor George de Mestral was hiking and came home with cockleburs on his trousers. His microscope showed that cockleburs were covered with hundreds of tiny hooks and that his trousers were covered with hundreds of tiny loops. The hooks engaged the loops and stuck! de Mestral decided to turn his discovery into something useful. He perfected and patented a hook product and a loop product that mimicked the cocklebur and trouser combination.

Nowadays, his invention is called “touch tape” or “hook and loop tape” or “hook and loop fastener”. The loop tape is soft and fuzzy while the hook tape has stiff little hooks on it. Hence the brand name “VELCRO”... derived from the French words “velour” meaning velvet and “crochet” to depict the hook tape. Today, what you know as “VELCRO” is the name of our company and the brand name for our fasteners, the resulting product is hook and loop.