outdoor clothing technology is a major interest of mine
i dont have forever to discuss it but i will correct a couple of comments that have been made here.
gore tex and event are made of exactly the same material... ePTFE
gore tex have covered their membrane with polyurethane to avoid it getting clogged with dirt and body oils, polyurethane has less issues around that, but it made it less breathable than eVent.
eVent use an undisclosed process to try and reduce the issues of dirt buildup on their membrane
recently gore tex have removed the polyeurethane membrane from some of their products and used a different three layer structure of membranes in those products.. making it as breathable as eVent.
no other companies are using the same materials as gore tex or event. except the odd company like Mountain Hardware that has a licence to rebrand eVent and give it a proprietary name of their own, almost all the others manufacturers are using polyurethane based layers.
developing a useable ePTFE membrane is far more expensive and difficult technically than developing a polyurethane one and polyurethane has been closing the gap in breathability, so no other company has bothered going down the epft road,
event and gore tex are made in a few factories in massive quantities and no one else can compete on construction scale and price.
some other breathable layers arent membranes, cheaper ones are just sprayed on in inconsistent thicknesses and breathability but are much cheaper.
other membranes are actually fibres stuck together randomly that offer good breathability but not the durability of membranes. nothing breathes better than a jacket with physical vents, and yes esp in nz heavy rain will overload the outside water resistant coatings and once the outside wets out no moisture will move through the membrane, if the outside humidity gets close to 100% then little if any moisture will move through the jacket, all the figures around how much moisture can move through the membrane are in perfect conditions when the outside humidity and air temp is low. so you can pay top dollar for the best gear and still end up wearing a sauna because of the weather conditions... I own or have owned rain jackets of numerous different waterproof technologies right through to the latest ones, some that arent sold in NZ. so I can tell you that from practical experience. including different versions of pertex, gore tex and event, plus neoshell and different versions of marmots technologies.
companies will always try and differentiate themselves from the opposition and claim and advantage with their product, but its like having a ferrari, if you're in a traffic jam, your cant use the extra horsepower, its of no use to you then... and if you're going to be stuck in town all the time it never will be.
there is a lot of competition between the different manufacturing companies.
gore tex refuse to supply companies that use eVent, a lot of companies wouldnt risk loosing the brand recognition of gore tex in their products. if you wanted to use gore tex, you had to use it in your top of the line marketed, storm proof garments. gore tex was traditionally marketed as superior to polyurethane only membranes, and had a premium price on, and they werent after the budget market, they differentiated themselves as a superior product and arguably were able to maintain an extra premium to make more profit.
early gore tex was apalling in quality, but it did get better.
they advertised as "guaranteed to keep you dry" which was pure marketing hype, their marketing budget is massive, pertex don't advertise to end users, but gore tex do, only the clothing companies will promote pertex, but they have to promote gore tex as the premier product if they use it as well. some companies have dropped gore tex recently, there are few companies that are adopting it as a new product. pertex has really gained a lot of ground in recent years in market share, event has stalled, macpac and Montane have dropped event completely in recent years, macpac dropped gore tex several years ago. there were manufacturing issues with event a few years ago that caused a lot of product defect issues from one of the factories.. macpac was affected.
gore tex successfully sued companies claiming they were as good or better than gore tex, then a few years ago one company made the claim of being more breathable than gore tex, gore tex took them to court and lost after proving in lab tests they were more breathable, neoshell from polartec came along and made claims to the effect they were better than gore tex and gore tex havent refuted the claim... neoshell hasnt stopped gore tex from remaining a market leader. it has a reasonably proven track recognition and high brand recognition that has kept it where it's been for decades.
This post has been edited by the author on 21 September 2016 at 14:39.