Made in the USA
What does "Berry Amendment compliant" actually mean — and why does Polar Skin care?
If you've looked into Polar Skin Ice Sheets, you may have seen the phrase Berry Compliant somewhere on the page. It sounds official — and it is. But what does it actually mean for you, the person using the product? Let's break it down.
"One of the goals was to produce it and manufacture it in the United States — from the get-go, from the ground up, because somebody told me I couldn't."— Russ Hubbard, founder of Polar Skin
First — What is the Berry Amendment?
The Berry Amendment is a U.S. law that applies to the Department of Defense (DoD). In plain terms, it says: if you're selling textiles, clothing, or fabric to the U.S. military, every part of that product has to be made in America. That means the fiber, the yarn, the fabric — all of it. No exceptions.
The law has been around since 1941, when Congress first passed it to protect American manufacturing during wartime. It was made permanent in 1994 and has been a key standard for military procurement ever since.
Why Polar Skin Had to Solve a Fabric Problem
Polar Skin was built around a simple but urgent idea: soldiers and first responders need a fast, portable way to cool down someone suffering from heat-related illness. Russ Hubbard — an Army veteran himself — watched fellow soldiers drop out during high-heat training and combat situations. He knew there had to be a better solution than frozen bedsheets in a cooler.
His Polar Skin Ice Sheets needed a very specific kind of fabric — one that could soak up as much fluid as possible, wick it away from the skin, stay lightweight, and pack down small enough to carry into an emergency. On top of that, since the product is designed for military use, it had to meet Berry Amendment standards.
That was the hard part. Textile manufacturing has moved overseas in recent decades, and finding a fabric that hit all those performance marks and was made entirely in the U.S. took real work.
The Fabric That Made It Work
Russ partnered with TVF, a textile supplier that works with DoD contractors, to find a solution. They landed on a 3.5 oz. polyester Spitfire fabric — a lightweight, tightly woven material normally used in cycling jerseys and athletic tops.
Compared to the original fabric Russ had been using, Spitfire was lighter, higher performing, and — critically — Berry compliant. Through testing, the Spitfire fabric proved it could hold roughly four times more liquid than the cotton material Russ had been using in the field. That's a big deal when you're trying to cool someone down fast.
The fabric also works well with the vacuum technology used during Polar Skin's manufacturing process, which drives fluid deeper into the material for even better performance.
A Supply Chain You Can Trace On a Map
One of the hidden benefits of going fully domestic? A tight, reliable supply chain. After the Spitfire fabric is manufactured, it ships from TVF's warehouse in Indiana to a conversion facility in Kentucky, then down to Polar Skin's headquarters in Kingsport, Tennessee — where it's packaged and sent to the distributor in South Carolina.
That entire loop takes about 9 hours on the road. That kind of speed and transparency is hard to get when your supply chain stretches overseas.
What This Means For You
Berry Amendment compliance isn't just a checkbox for government contracts. It's a signal. When you buy Polar Skin Ice Sheets, you're getting a product where every material was grown, processed, and manufactured on U.S. soil — by American workers, with shorter lead times and tighter quality control.
For a product designed to respond to life-threatening heat emergencies, that kind of accountability matters. You want to know that what's in the bag is exactly what it's supposed to be.
Russ built Polar Skin to save lives — starting with the warfighters he served alongside. Berry compliance is just one part of how he made sure the product lives up to that mission.
