Gore-Tex: Quality -> Marketing ratio

marketing. its one of the better products but no better than various other products on the market, pertex is as durable. event is good but needs to be cleaned regularly. marmot and the north face have their own membranes, their best ones are are as good.

Gortex was first. Its only come out of patent in the last few years. Event is a similar substance but has been created a different way supposedly making it transfer water vapour with less humidity variance. Until recently all the other breathable waterproof fabrics used a polyurethane membrane instead of expanded teflon. Now most of the higher quality ones use there own copy of gortex. The pu could achieve similar results to gortex but often it was sold with a much lower waterproofness. It wasnt as durable although the original gortex wasnt known to be very long lived. All of these jackets relly on the DWR coating on the outside preventing the fabric getting wet in order to breathe Once that goes the jacket becomes just as much a sweat box as a cheap pvc Warehouse jacket. You can reproof but most of the after market replacemet treatments are not up to the job. Only one Ive found that works is made by Earth sea Sky. Its the only one that still has a flourocarbon polymer in it. Greenpeace want to make this stuff illegal but it works.

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.

That's an awesome write up @waynowski. Thanks for taking the time to write that all up.

no problem, if it helps better inform people. the thing is with brands like gore tex, because they do so much of their own marketing, pouring massive money into it, its effectively free marketing for the clothing manufacturers and retailers and just saying you use gore tex helps build your own brand, its like dairy owners where distributors will paint the outside of their dairy for free in their brand colours to blend in with their adverising hoardings. Arguably some brands have made a name for themselves by using gore tex, and they dont want to risk not using gore tex because of the lost free marketing they get and potential of people buying products because they have gore tex in them rather than buying it for the manufacturer brand look at gore tex in boots, the amount of models with gore tex in them is far too many, its often hard to get the footwear you want without gore tex only the really open knit materials may be without it and they can let in too much dirt to be useful... you wonder how much gore tex are in the shoes to improve marketability of the product. i remember when only really well off people had gore tex, a minority of people, i just had PVC and I coped with its non breathability. i couldnt spare the $500 in the eighties for a raincoat. i never bought into the hype, when it rains a lot you get wet inside your raincoat regardless. i bought cheap alternatives and i was ok with that. most trampers were happy enough not using gore tex... but today its reversed completely, outdoor shops sell little in the way of non breathable rainshells and they dont promote them much, they are more for a just in case raincoat if it might rain a bit... outdoor shops sell the more expensive products that make them more money. people are in a shop where there isnt the alternative, dedicated outdoor shops selling only expensive stuff people think they have to buy it if they want to buy something suitable for tramping, but non breathable cheap gear used to be considered suitable and i think various official outdoor education organisations even advise to use breathable wet weather gear. i didnt know anyone who died who was wearing a non breathable raincoat, and seldom knew o anyone personally who got hypothermia in one. even when i got to the stage where i could afford gore tex, i still didnt think it was worth the money to buy it, i was sceptical of how good it could really be back then that belief was even more justified than it is today. my mates didnt bother with gore tex and i idenified with a crowd that didnt wear it and didnt need to to fit in, no one was going on about a need to buy it, it wasnt on our radar, it was more for people where money was no object and they bought the best of everything... at one stage they were putting gore tex into tents and they had to stop doing it, it wasnt that useful in the end. it was a bit of putting the cart before the horse as it can be with footwear... it was like gore tex trying to see what they could put their product in next and be able to sell it and the manufacturers went along with it and to a certain extent still do... dont think the outdoor industry is that much different from the fashion industry, people sick with what they recognise its why marketing works even though on a practical level its often not even truthful

@waynowski - learnt heaps so thanks for that. Early tramping days were oilskins for me, then a new parka came on the market called Z-Kote or some such name. The whole family bought them. Similar to the oilskin as it was made from cotton but was treated with an impermeable coating. Highly effective at deflecting even the most violent downpours in the Matukituki... It smelled really bad however. I now own two Gore-tex jackets and one has been a disappointment as the DWR wore off within a year. It's been retreated but I've heard it will never be as good. It's also too short so that's why I bought a second longer one from Macpac made from Pertex Shield AP. Both were heavily reduced as I never, ever pay full retail - I just don't have that sort of dosh to splash around.

remember, you cant just go out and buy gore tex material to make garments with, gore tex pretty much control who can buy, they have to approve you as a company to buy their product... they decide whether a company is the sort of company they want selling their product that complies with they way they want it sold and what other rivals they will allow that produc to be sold alongside by a manufacturer

"i just had PVC and I coped with its non breathability" I was the same untill not many years ago. The trick with everything proof pvc is to wear woolen swandris not fleece. Fleece will be soaked and cold within minutes Wool will be dry warm and heavy after all day

I started out in PVC and then various brands and fabrics (best raincoat of that period was a swazi one tough mutha) but with the sort of tramping I do I was finding I was lucky to have a coat last a year maybe two (even following all the recomended washing and recoating). I don't like spending that sort of money (even though I only buy at sales) on regular basis so now I use an oringi flexothane coat. Not as pretty but very waterproof, quite robust and considerably cheaper so I don't mind replacing when needed. I do need to dry it thoroughly after use or it will smell like cat pee and I do get a bit damp from sweat in it but then I get pretty damp from sweat when I'm not wearing a raincoat too.