What’s the difference between Woolrich and Eotac?
It seems that Eotac is no longer in existence, but Woolrich Elite is still out there. Its no secret that Fernando Coelho was involved with designing and marketting both product lines at some point the products like very similar. The answer we always tell customers is the designs are different. We did notice there has been some production changes to the original Woolrich Elite Series product line and the pants and shorts do have a much wanted change in the ID or wallet pocket. The Woolrich Elite pants pocket designs were a little tighter and the fit was baggier but some people wanted that.
Woolrich has been around forever and it looks like they have survived bad economies and the tactical clothing shake down. A few weeks ago we got word that another major clothing manufacturer just pulled out of China and is now making clothing in the Western Hemisphere. Woolrich Elite pants are still made in China, and we have gotten price increase on all of their stuff, but according to the number of disgruntled 5.11 customers that we have, Woolrich Elite pants are the next best thing.
We’ve been selling Woolrich Elite clothing since the beginning and have seen the changes in the tactical pants market over the last 5 years. One thing we have noticed is the tactical pants sales change like the seasons do. Our customer base knows that certain types of clothing just can’t be worth in hot climates, but for working in other environments, lightweight material just won’t hold up to the heavy use, and won’t shrink as much. We get a lot of people calling or emailing us about whether or not the clothing shrinks, and they answer to that is not as bad as some of the other apparel companies that have been on the market for almost 10yrs. We still don’t understand why some of these companies haven’t cleaned up their quality control.