W. L. Gore Associates

It is a privately held corporation headquartered in Newark, Delaware, with operations around the globe. Although best known as the developer of waterproof, breathable Gore-Tex fabrics, Gore’s products are also used in a variety of industrial and consumer products, such as electronic signal transmission, diverse industrial applications and medical implants.


History
The company was founded in 1958 by Wilbert (Bill) Lee Gore and his wife Genevieve (Vieve) Walton Gore in Newark.

Bill Gore had spent 16 years with the DuPont Company in a number of technical positions that included fluoropolymer research when he decided to form his own company. While working in his basement, he set out to develop a process for insulating a series of parallel electrical wires using polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a fluoropolymer discovered in 1938 by Roy Plunkett, a chemist with DuPont. His son, Robert W.

Gore (Bob), in college at the time, suggested a method for encapsulating the wires which proved successful and led to the company’s first patent. The resulting product was called Multi-Tet cable, a multi-conductor ribbon cable used in computers, communications, and process control equipment.
The company operated from the basement of the Gores' home until 1960, when an order from the Denver Water Company for seven and a half miles of Multi-Tet cable made it necessary to expand manufacturing capacity.The Gores built a new facility in Delaware, not far from their home, which is still in operation. By 1970, Gore and its subsidiary companies had manufacturing plants for wire and cable in Arizona, Scotland, Germany, and Japan.
Bob Gore joined the company in 1963 upon completion of a Ph.D.

In 1969, he was researching a process for stretching extruded PTFE into pipe thread tape when he discovered that the polymer could be “expanded.” The discovery followed a series of unsuccessful experiments in which he was attempting to stretch rods of PTFE by about 10%. As it turned out, the right conditions for stretching PTFE were counterintuitive.

Instead of slowly stretching the heated material, he applied a sudden, accelerating yank that unexpectedly caused it to stretch about 800%. This resulted in the transformation of the solid PTFE into a microporous structure that was about 70% air. The company initially referred to this new material as “fibrillated PTFE”.One year later, it was given the name of “Gore-Tex expanded PTFE”. Today, expanded PTFE (ePTFE) accounts for the vast majority of the company's products.
In 1985, Bill Gore received the Prince Philip Medal for Polymers in the Service of Mankind, which honored Gore’s Medical Products Division.

The award is given in recognition of polymers that have provided a significant service for mankind. Bill continued as chairman until he died in 1986 at the age of 74.

Gore and its subsidiaries employ approximately 8,500 associates at more than 50 facilities throughout the world in East Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas.
Gore Culture
In 2009, for the twelfth consecutive year, W. "100 Best Companies to Work For." Its European operations have also earned similar honors.Associate contribution reviews are based on a peer-level rating system.
Bill Gore articulated four culture principles that he called freedom, fairness, commitment and waterline:
Associates have the freedom to encourage, help, and allow other associates to grow in knowledge, skill, and scope of responsibility
Associates should demonstrate fairness to each other and everyone with whom they come in contact
Associates are provided the ability to make one's own commitments and are expected to keep them
A waterline situation involves consultation with other associates before undertaking actions that could impact the reputation or profitability of the company and otherwise “sink the ship.”
In the lattice organization, associates are encouraged to communicate directly with each other and are accountable to fellow members of their teams. This unusual organizational structure and culture has been shown to be a significant contributor to associate satisfaction and retention.
Product Portfolio
Gore’s product line builds around a core material set using expanded PTFE and other fluoropolymers.

PTFE has a combination of properties well suited to high performance applications. Extreme performance testing and reliability are important steps in the development process.
Gore Products
A representative list of Gore products follows:
Fibers
Weaving and sewing threads
Dental floss
High tensile strength fibers
Packing materials
Filtration felts
Tubes
Peristaltic pump tubing
Vascular grafts and stent grafts
Endoscope sheaths
Medical instrumentation cable sheaths
Oil exploration probes
Ground reclamation analytical sensors
Tapes
High frequency data cables
Space exploration wire and cable
Microwave transmission cables and connectors
Flat cables for extreme environments
Guitar strings
Shifting and braking cables for bicycles
Membranes
Waterproof, breathable laminated fabrics
Static and reactive filtration laminates
Fuel cell electrodes
Battery electrodes and separators
Super-capacitor electrodes
Dielectric shields
Vents
Custom forms
Surgical implant patches and meshes
Sealing gaskets
Electromagnetic interference shields and gaskets
Applications of Gore Products
These products are utilized in a wide variety of industries and end uses, which includes the following:
Aerospace
Automotive and transportation
Chemical process industries
Clean room operations
Communications
Computing and electronics
Energy
Environmental reclaim and composting
Healthcare and medical
Industrial manufacturing
Military and defense
Outdoor apparel and sports clothing
Pharmaceutical manufacture
Safety and protection
Trademarks
The company has more than 200 active registered U.S.