All posts tagged Woolrich Elite CCW pants

The trend is towards pocket guns and it ain’t gonna stop anytime soon

The real issue that we are seeing with guns and accessories is not everyone has been able to keep up with the guns that are being made today.  If I were a holster maker I would be cautious about making holsters for everything out there because there are some firearms that are simply not going to catch on. When it comes to carrying in the pocket, the responsible thing to do is to use a pocket holster.  I had some issues with one maker because the hammer on my 537 Smith & Wesson was getting caught and I had to cut out part of the holster to avoid snags.

On your journey towards finding the right gun and holster that works for you, take your time before you end up with a box full of holsters you didn’t really want sitting in your closet.   When  you are looking for clothing that are not like the usual tactical pants that you see marketed for concealed carry but really aren’t, take a good look at the Woolrich Elite chinos.  People always ask us if their gun is going to print if they were something like this, but the answer to that is to use a piece of cardboard to prevent printing.   There are a lot of very nice .380 pistols and I would have to say that they do seem to be easier to shoot than the 38 special snubbies, but with proper training, you can get what you want out of both and be very discreet.

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What are you options for CCW pants now?

There’s only one pant that we will tell our customers is a CCW pant and that’s the Woolrich Elite Chinos.  We’ve been looking at Vertx pants for awhile now but with a bad economy I’m not so sure there is big money to be made on such an expensive pair of pants.   Even if they hold up to use, everyone needs 3 or more pair of pants to get through the work week without excessive washing or bad hygiene.
Lately I’ve been wearing the Chinos more and more because in all honesty, I’ve grown tired of the whole tactical clothing market and have lost a lot interest in wearing all of my tactical pants just to sell them.   Sometimes you need tactical clothing and other times you just want to be dressed down.   Tru-Spec has a very original design and the fit is very good but they still seem like tactical apparel to me.

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SHOT SHOW is around the corner

I guess because we’re already so busy at this time of the year the last thing we want to have to think about right after Christmas is learning about all of the new stuff coming in in 2012 that we’ll have to consider buying.   SHOT SHOW is the post Christmas shopping season for people like us and at first it’s fun and eventually it just becomes a business trip.   Out of the hundreds of new products that we’ll be looking at, it’s rare for us to find more than a half a dozen new products that really spark interest.

This year we do  have a wish list, we’d like to see more concealed carry clothing come out and not another clothing company making knock off 5.11 tactical pants.   We’re down to about 4 companies that we carry products for and although each has it’s strong points, we’re overloaded on tactical pants and listening to  our customers frustrations about the constant shortages or lack of product improvements has caused people to keep shopping.  We’ve had products that had good designs but the fit was not very good and people moved on, other designs were good for weekend warriors but for those that jump over fences, the products were failing.  Slight production changes would have sealed the deal, but did anyone listen in 2011?

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Tactical pants for fence jumpers

We’re going to go out on our soap box today and make the statement that if you’re tactical clothing manufacturer is not making pants with gusseted crotches, you’re going to be out of business in the very near future.   I remember when pants first started coming out like that and how much chuckling went on in the offices while sales reps were getting trained about the fact we all had to learn about the crotch area on the Blackhawk, Eotac and 5.11 pants.   While there are plenty of nice looking and nice fitting pants, they won’t work in the real world of fence jumping and Operator work.

It’s this time of the year where we run out of catalogs and listen to all of the hoopla about about what is going to be coming out around SHOT Show, but we never know for sure until later in the year.   As much as the tactical pants market has been flooded, there is plenty of room for fit adjustments and improvements on existing designs.   After all, everyone is basically just copying 5.11 tactical, right?   5.11 Tactical started it all and they still maintain the better part of it, but being that we’re dealing with a niche market, how big is the niche?

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More and more options for tactical clothing, but does the quality suck?

I answered an email from a customer that ordered several styles of shirts from us but they complained that they ordered all of the same sizes, but the fit was not the same.   We’ve been in the clothing business for long enough to know that sometimes styles and sizes get mislabeled and your wifes home cooking skills did not advance you to the larger sizes. All clothing manufacturers claim to be durable and consistent but the truth is that this is not a reality.   The same company may have variations in sizes and might even change the quality of the fabric just to save a few bucks.   Some clothing makers even out source stuff which compounds the quality control issues.

Making good clothing is a talent and you can have the best designs in a tactical pant but then wreck it with poor quality and poor consistency.  I’ve heard rock albums get ruined by bad mixing or poor recording.   Look at the And Justice for All album from Metallica and how many bass players are still pissed off at the bad mixing that went on.  The point is that great talent still gets wasted on tactical pants and tactical shirts.   There are some really nice CCW shirts from Blackhawk and 5.11 but sometimes when you hold them in your hands they don’t feel as good as they look.

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