So a few people have tried to tell me that the EB First Ascent BC 200 is eVent but the company has no knowledge of this or the fabric in general nor it seems any one else that can verify. ?

It's not eVent.

It would be hard to image they wouldn't be banging the drum if they were using eVent. EB is buying a lot of waterproof/breathable fabric somewhere!

Well, since GE is allowing manufacturers to re-brand eVent now, it's entirely possible. There's no accounting for the belief of large businesses to believe creating some vague random re-brand is actually better for them, it makes no sense to me, but they seem to all believe it.


Case in point: Dry-Q Elite from MH, that's an eVent membrane laminated to an alternative (than supplied by GE) face fabric.


There's really no way to know what BC-200 fabric is.

"Well, since GE is allowing manufacturers to re-brand eVent now, ..."

Hmm...how about Cubic Tech taking a ride on that horse.

*There's really no way to know what BC-200 fabric is.* correct, unless they do what mh did and say that they are using a ge product, which would make sense as a marketing stratagy.

I'm not an expert but after comparing a few other eVent garments to the BC-200 jacket I'm fairly certain it is. I have no idea why they would rebrand it though.

By touch and feel, and looking at it (especially the inside).
My rab drillium pants (and momentum when I had it), bc 200 and ems helix jacket feels and looks very similar...

It's proprietary just like MontBell's tech. GE wasn't allowing the eVent tech to be used in custom fabrics until after the BC200 came out.

Edited by simplespirit on 01/27/2012 06:16:04 MST.

Well, I'm sure you are right Chris but I agree with David it looks and feels almost identical.

Edited by hamerica on 01/27/2012 07:02:14 MST.

> to believe creating some vague random re-brand is actually better for them, it makes
> no sense to me, but they seem to all believe it.

It's a marketing thing. Once customers come to recognize and respect a brand, they're more likely to purchase it, since most buyers don't do useful things like research before making purchasing decisions. So, having a brand that other vendors share dilutes their own brand identity. If EB says that their WPB fabric is eVent, then in the eyes of the average consumer, the EB (or First Ascent, or whichever) brand is weaker, because the eVent brand appears on stuff from all sorts of other vendors, including REI and The North Face (etc), and then it's harder for EB to convince the least common denominator consumer that their WPB is better than the one that REI and The North Face use.

Seems that cut both ways, though. If the "brand" the user respects is eVent, then EB misses out when a customer is out looking for alternatives to the REI and TNF eVent jackets.

My impresson is that the deciding factor is price. If you want to overcharge for an eVent jacket, you are better off trying to pass it off as some prioprietary fabric. If you're selling it cheaper than everybody else, then you call it eVent so people don't think it's some cheap, generic, not-so-waterproof-or-not-so-breathable fabric.

This EB jacket is substantially cheaper than the REI eVent jacket (although with lesser features) and other eVent jackets I've seen, so it seems odd that they wouldn't say it was eVent if it was.

Maybe EB hired cheap marketing "gurus" instead of good ones ;)