Nathan Kukathas (Class of 2000)

Nathan is Founder of Grade VII Equipment , a technical alpine climbing and big wall climbing equipment company that manufactures specialized climbing tools and Cardamon , a brand of wallets, bags and luggage made from a proprietary material we developed called MeridianShell ™.

The Cardamon Wallet, currently on Kickstarter, is his newest project and is the culmination of three years of R&D which resulted not only in a surprisingly thin wallet, but the development of an new material called MeridianShell, which is a 300D weight Nylon-Polyester fabric that boasts waterproof and stain resistance properties. It comes in two sizes to accommodate most global currencies and measures just 3.5mm empty and 10mm when full (8 cards). The Cardamon Wallet comes in five colorways , which are all twists on your base colors. For example, the yellow is appropriately named mustard since it is a darker hue than the traditional yellow. Through the use of high-frequency welding and a heat press, they were able to construct a wallet with minimal stitching and virtually no stitching visible.