All posts tagged Blackhawk lightweight pants

Movement and fit with tactical pants

Although I might blog about tactical clothing for the majority of the time, I’m really not a big fan of the whole industry.   If you want concealment, putting the name Blackhawk or 5.11 on your clothing falls under the category of “Not Really” if you want to be running stealth operations.  I’ve seen enough drug busts go down that anyone working in Narcotics knows this.   I’ve often been impressed by the types and looks of some of the people that run Narcotics operations in Philadelphia and how good they are at tricking the bad guys.  Sometimes the guys running behind the scenes sitting in cars get to wear the tactical clothing, but not the front men.

Normally the guys doing the fence jumping are the hardest to impress.   Those are the guys that call up a day after the wore the clothing and tell us they blew out the tactical pants.   I must have worn about 20 different types of pants in the last 4hrs trying to find something that fits me right from my personal experience, movement is something that is really important to me.  The  number one place guys blow out pants is at the gun range.   As soon as they kneel down on the ground they’ll know what the fit and flexibility is.   What is claimed as tactical might be all about the looks and pocket designs, but they may not operate with the operator.

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Tactical pants and movement

While studying up on some of the new tactical clothing coming  out in 2012 I was reading some of the reviews and comments on YouTube about them.  It’s funny how often you see people reference that everything is a rip off of 5.11 tactical pants.   I’ve only been in the tactical clothing business for about 7yrs and I have to say that, that is partially true.   It was 5.11 that really had the entire market and nobody came close.   The truth is they still have the market but there are several competitors that are pretty close.  Tru-Spec and Blackhawk probable gained the most ground but Proper is still a monster in it’s own category.

One conclusion that one must come to with tactical clothing is along with quality control, tactical pants must allow for movement.   There are plenty of styles of tactical pants that have been pushed out in the market only to die a slow death when people realized there were design flaws.   One thing that is absolutely a reality about tactical pants is that a gusseted crotch is a must.   The old standard stitching, double stitching, triple stitching isn’t going to cut it. It’s about reducing stress not fighting it.

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Buying trash and wearing it

I don’t think I’m going to run out of info on discussing these tactical clothing issues because I hear it all day long.  I just got off the phone with a customer that was bitching about the Eotac clothing being discontinued, and the “now what am I going to do?” is starting to set in.   I noticed a ton of gun shops in my area have stopped carrying clothing because I get it.. selling clothing is a royal pain for a gun shop because nobody wants to deal with the sizing issues and exchange rates that you have to expect whenever  you sell something like that.  Nobody buys an LWRC M6A2 and returns it because it doesn’t fit right, but we have sold hundreds of dollars of clothing and had it all come back for exchanges, it goes with the business.

At a recent show in Atlantic City, we walked around various tactical booths and checked out the stuff that was there.   One guy that use to sell the stuff for some of the big names said he hated wearing the tactical pants from one company because they felt like they were made of cardboard.    I didn’t disagree with him because that really is about where the tactical clothing market is at.   There is a lot of uniform style clothing but when you get down to comfort and durability, it’s almost down to about 3 or 4 clothing companies and then after that you have to decide if you want tactical or casual, and then it’s an even small market.  I wonder if anyone in the tactical apparel market knows that ?

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