Ex-motorcycle racer and "motojournalist" Lee Parks has turned his years of experience into a product company. As Parks explains it,

As the editorial director of Motorcycle Consumer News and Auto Restorer, I had the privilege of scientifically testing hundreds of motorcycle and automotive products, often to destruction. This taught me a great deal about materials, production and quality. I now put that experience to work in every product I design and market.

One of the Parks' resultant products are his extremely well-thought-out deerskin/elkskin riding gloves, designed to provide comfort, protection, and durability. We like that Parks eschews trendy materials and styles in favor of functionality and durability, as explained below. While Parks' description of the gloves detailing "The 4 Big Secrets Glove Manufacturers Don't Want You To Know" is somewhat sensationalistically titled, it is informative:Secret #1: U.S. deerskin is superior to cowhide in comfort, protection & utility. The reason most gloves are made of cowhide is because over 90% of motorcycle gloves (including Harley-Davidson's) are made in China and Pakistan where labor is dirt cheap and deerskin is not readily available.

Secret #2: Most gloves fail at the seams. With the majority of manufacturers more concerned with adding flashy features than real protection, they end up with overly complicated designs with too many seams. Each seam is a potential failure point. Count how many seams are in your own gloves. Most have as many as four seams on every finger, but Lee Parks Design gloves have only have four seams in the entire glove! Fewer seams mean real safety.

Secret #3: Thin Kevlar thread reduces seam strength. Unlike textiles, more threads per inch in leather makes it weaker, not stronger. Kevlar is a very strong aramid fiber made by DuPont but it makes a lousy thread for motorcycle gloves because it doesn't stretch when the gloves undergo stress. That makes it act like a cheese knife cutting through the leather and letting the gloves rip open. Lee Parks Design gloves use a special dual-duty design that has two strong nylon threads per hole, engineered with just enough elasticity to maximize the seam strength.

Secret #4: Hard carbon fiber shatters (not deforms), creating a safety hazard. Popular carbon fiber knuckle guards turn into dangerously sharp shards of fiber-reinforced epoxy resin which can aggravate a wound.