What’s up with those cotton prices?
We got several warnings from some of the apparel companies we’ve been selling that prices are going to go up on all of the clothing that we are selling. This is entirely up to the fact that cotton demand has exceeded production capabilities and there has been a shortage of cotton. We knew something was wrong last year when one of our clothing manufacturers didn’t have any of it’s lightweight clothing available when Spring came and nothing showed up for Summer. Now that we have a large number of deployed Military and private Contractors being deployed over seas in hot climates, there is a large demand for lightweight tactical clothing. Unfortunately we couldn’t name one company that makes all of the best lightweight clothing because each has it’s own good and bad points. I’m still not happy that the Eotac Style 301 shorts stopped being made last year because I do not like the shorter inseam 302.
I have had some of the 5.11 tac lite pro shorts, but they are too tactical looking for most of my Summer adventures. I think it was smart to make them a cotton polyester variant especially since Cotton prices have gone up, it’s probable going to be more common to see synthetic materials blend into clothing. You sure can’t beat the 100% cotton ripstop tactical pants from Eotac though. We get a lot of requests from guys in Iraq and Afghanistan that love the Style 203 pants because the pocket designs and the fit is superior to the similarly looking pants from 5.11 tactical pants. I remember being at a trade show last year and some of the guys were joking about how hard it was to tell what clothing company made various pants because they all looked the same. The truth is, they don’t all feel the same.
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.