All posts tagged Eotac Pants

Fall is around the corner, don’t get caught in the cold

This is one of those times of year that you have no idea if you should be taking the air conditioners out of the window or leaving them in.   Usually you decide to pull them out if after you wake up in the morning and it’s 45 F in your bedroom because the temperature dropped in the middle of the night.   There are also seasonal changes at this time of the year in the Northeast where you walk out the door and freeze until your car warms up and then by late morning you are sweating and have to take off your jacket or a sweatshirt that you thought you had to wear all day.   One way to avoid the shocks in the season changes is to stick with lightweight pants until it get’s really cold.

The best deal we have running on tactical clothing right now are the now obsolete Eotac tactical pants.   They are going for $29.99 for all sizes and colors and these are the lightest weight tactical pants that you can find.   Some people don’t like the fact that they can wrinkle but if you hang them up after washing them, they really aren’t a problem keeping wrinkle free.   100% cotton ripstop material is something invented during WWII for our soldiers serving in the Pacific where bugs and heat exaustion were a problem.   Going from wearing tactical shorts in the summer to where heavy weight pants in the fall and then sweating your you know whats off isn’t fun and the lightweight tactical pants are the way to go.

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Labor Day sale at Rogue Elite

We will be bringing in more tactical clothing this fall from 5.11 tactical and Blackhawk as well as Tru-Spec.  We have heard lots of good things about the Tru-Spec 24/7 pants and considering that they are Gunny approved, we’ll have to say they are Rogue Elite approved.   As the American economy slows down, we’re waiting to see what happens with the clothing manufacturing business.   Cotton prices are still way up and some of the t-shirts we have brought in are almost $2 more over last years pricing.

Some of the tactical apparel that we sell got really expensive while others have slowly worked their way up to the inflation that we have expected.   We’re still running a great deal on $30 tactical pants from Eotac that has sadly gotten run down to the minimum.   We pretty much just have OD Green tactical pants in lightweight and standard weight and if we don’t heard something big this fall, this is the end of something great.

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Major Announcements coming this Fall about the tactical apparel market?

One thing that we’ve been pondering recently is seeing all of the Make Ready DVDs coming out that still have the Eotac logo on the back of them.  According to the internet buzz, Eotac went defunct on March 31st 2011 and that was it.  No press release only an email to the dealers about the South Carolina location closing down.     We are awaiting a shipment of Blackhawk tactical pants as well as some of the Tru-Spec 24/7 pants and we’re going to see how our customer base handles the product change.   While most of our customers have gone back to Woolrich Elite for the items that we don’t have in stock.

Normally some of the major announcements about new products and press releases go out in September and we’ll see what kind of news gets released very soon.   There is always something new coming out and the tactical clothing market especially tactical pants market really needs to be thinned out.   There are some companies where, as a dealer, we really wish they would listen to their customers and just make some minor product changes like pocket alterations or fit improvements, and they’d have a perfect product, but after years of customer complaints, they just won’t do it.    Too bad,  Eotac was so close to perfection.

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Somebody needs to make a decent pair of denim CCW pants

I’ve seen a few companies attempt to do it, but nobodies done it right.  Woolrich Elite made the 4909 Denim jeans, but the color and cut was not very popular although the idea was good.   I know Woolrich has since discontinued the jeans, but they were pretty close to doing something really good.   Eotac which was basically a newer version of everything that Woolrich Elite had out did a better job, but it still could have been better.   There were more than a few complaints about the thighs being too tight on many of the early productions.

I believe there were only 2 production runs on the Eotac 205 pants, and the latter made the changes, but it still wasn’t quite right.   The other issue was although the side zipper pockets were liked, the back pockets were over done and they looked too much like tactical pants from the back.  If there was just a ID pocket, they would have almost been perfect for CCW.   The  5.11 covert pants were just horrible for CCW.   CCW pants really should just mean big pockets and comfort for carrying a firearm, not this hidden pocket crap all around the inside of the pants, which made retrieving gear almost impossible.  What’s the point?

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What kind of tactical pants ?

If anyone is reading this, I’m all ears on what kind of tactical pants  you are wearing and why you like them.  In a recent conversation with some EMS people, the discussion about 5.11 pants and all of the changes that have taken place with the company over the years.   The discussion about the EMS pants came up and all of the individuals I had in the room liked them, but they did mention that they wish the company would make some changes to the designs.

Tactical gear and accessories change over the years and the same goes for medical equipment.   Tactical clothing especially tactical pants can go over the same changes, or so they should.  Something like a cell phone has changed in size over the years and designing a pocket around a cell phone isn’t something that is going to last for 10yrs.   Probable in the next 3-5yrs most cell phones will be in the ear or on it.   I would like to hear back from people that were EMS pants from 5.11, Tru-Spec ect and see what they wish we sold.

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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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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.

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Mid Summer Sales

Rogue Elite now has a retail location and much of the area that we were using for storing tactical clothing, gear and accessories is being cleared out for our new retail location.   We won’t make this out to be a giant grand opening bananza right now, but many of our Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware customers have all wanted to try things on before buying them and now they can.

Rogue Elite is still primarly an internet based business but we are stocking more and more products at our Broomall location.  We are selling Trijicon ACOGS tactical vests, tactical pants, combat optics, Eotech, Wilson combat magazines, gun cleaning supplies and Original Swat boots.   We are always looking for customer feedback on what types of products they are looking for and using.

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Sale on Eotac apparel

We are running down the last of the Eotac apparel and most of our employees were acting like vultures grabbing their sizes before it was all sold off.   We only have a few of the odd sizes in the vest, shirts and jackets and most of the lightweight stuff is almost gone.   I think there is going to be a huge glut of tactical pants on the market because I noticed that with a bad economy and so many tactical clothing companies trying to get their foot in the door, I’m seeing $20-$30 8.11 and Blackhawk tactical pants all over the place.  Men and women are still going over to Iraq and Afghanistan so there is still a strong demand.

Now granted, there are some really bad designs and I recently tried out a few new styles of clothing, but after testing them all out, I ended up back with Woolrich Elite tactical pants.   It’ll be some what easier to sell clothing now that Eotac is gone because there won’t be so many people asking about the differences between the lightweight tactical pants and the regular clothing.   I am still waiting to find out what the situation is going to be with making clothing in China and cotton prices because we just got hit with a few more price increases and I doubt this will be the last of 2011.

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Where to go after Eotac?

We are now being bombarded with questions from our customers about what happened to Eotac.   We are out of various sizes of tactical pants from Eotac, but we still have a lot left and lots of people don’t believe we have it.    It’s almost like Eotac tactical pants are more popular and sought after now that nobody can get them.  It really is sad that the company was barely around for 2yrs and just when people are getting to know the product line it goes belly up.   We’re still waiting to hear from somebody at Remington on what the situation was.   We don’t know if they went out of business, were bought out, or merged with someone else.

After Fernando Coelho left Eotac last year, it’s no surprise that investors may have been concerned about it’s future.   Recently Fernando mentioned on Facebook on the Eotac page that if people are looking for something similar your best bet is with Woolrich Elite pants.   The fit is different and we’ll leave it up to our customers to say which is better, but considering how many disgruntled 5.11 customers we have, Woolrich Elite products are top notch and I would never bash them.   Designs are debatable and Woolrich Elite series shirts, pants and vests have a 95% satisfaction record with our customer base.

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