A YKK zipper on a pair of J.Crew pants. Jacob Shamsian/INSIDER

The INSIDER Summary:

The letters "YKK" are on a lot of zippers.

They stand for the manufacturer, "Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha."

YKK zippers are prized in the garment industry for their impressive construction and reliability.





If you've ever taken a close look at the zippers on your clothes, you've probably noticed the letters "YKK," in all capitals, on a lot of them. They're on everything from jeans, to coats, to sleeping bags.

Those letters stand for "Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha" which, from Japanese, roughly translates to "Yoshida Company Limited." It's a zipper manufacturer named after Tadao Yoshida, who founded it in 1934. By one estimate, the company makes half the zippers on Earth, which is more than 7 billion zippers each year.

Yoshida didn't invent zippers. In fact, zippers were invented by an American, Whitcomb L. Judson, in the 1890s. He called it a "chain lock fastener." His company now exists, with an improved zipper design, as Talon, Inc. The company is also a major zipper manufacturer, and it's used by brands like Brooks Brothers and Uniqlo.

But YKK has a reputation unrivaled in the fashion industry. Its completely vertically integrated, which means that the company controls every part of the zipper manufacturing process, from smelting the metal to packaging the finished zippers. As Seth Stevenson wrote in Slate, "YKK makes incredibly dependable zippers, ships them on time without fail, offers a wide range of colors, materials, and styles, and never gets badly undercut on price."

Because of its reliability, YKK is popular for manufacturers. We've all felt the pain of a zipper breaking, ruining an entire garment. It just makes more sense to go with a reliable brand. And that's why YKK zippers are everywhere.