Rumors and more rumors as to what is going on
The tactical market is absolutely flooded with tactical pants and tactical clothing. I just did some research online for concealed carry vests and found a few smaller companies making vests, but I also noticed they are making pants. I’ve heard enough bitching and moaning from our customers about the fact that they didn’t want to pay $50 for a pair of pants, and now I’m seeing a cluster of small companies making $80 + pants. As a dealer, I have serious doubts about the profitability of clothing priced that high even if you create a cult following. The reality is this, if you don’t have easy access to a manufacturing facility in China, India, or Indonesia, you really are going to have a hard time making money.
Now that cotton prices have shot up so much due to the inability to grow it fast enough, prices have gone up for even the big companies. With Eotac tactical pants swimming in rumorville, the easiest transition for customers is to Woolrich Elite apparel although Tru-Spec seems to have gotten a good nod from people we have been dealing with. One of the good things about selling tactical footwear is that Original Swat boots owns their own boot factory and they don’t have the scheduling issues that many clothing companies have. If they are sold out of something, they order it and produce it at their own scheduling time line. One thing that seemed to really due in Eotac was they never produced the right products at the right time and it was almost like the company never got its best stuff on the market.
We’ve been selling various tactical pants for the last 5yrs and one thing that I still find kind of odd is the whole knee pad insert. When i first started using the knee pad inserts it was with the Woolrich Elite 4447 pants and the knee pads didn’t line up to where my knees were. I later tried them on the Woolrich Elite 4429 pants and they worked on them, but you really only could get use out of them if you kneel on both knees at the same time. That position may work at Church, but on the firing line, when I think of kneeling, it’s on one knee. The knee pad inserts do hold up for a pretty line time, and for only $3 you can replace them for both sides.