My 2 cents...
All stretch materials are not made equally.
There are several new FIE materials on the market that have differing qualities. All of which I have looked at, made samples from Etc... In order in which I PERSONALLY find attributes of a fabric most annoying or undesirable:
1) "Piss yellow" colour I hope no one finds the term offensive but I find the color offensive. It is very hard and expensibve to make a WHITE stretch FIE material. I will accept very slightly off white but there is no way I would make an LP jacket out of the piss yellow cheap fabric some use. If you can deal with it then fine but it is a bugbear of mine.
2) Flexibility, some is as stiff as a board.
3) Stretchiness some stretch a LOT others don't.
4) Weight in g pre square meter or ahatever. It is relatively easy to make an 800 N fabric if it is very thick.
5) Thickness which ranges, for stretch material at least, from 1.3mm up to in excess of 2mm.
The more of these key attributes you compromise on the cheaper the cloth and the cheaper the garment. That is why absolute are able to sell such a cheap FIE jacket, some are mid priced and others are more expensive.
In the past I think I was probably comparing LP prices with Uhlman and they allong with Allstar of course are the only others who use the same cloth as LP.
LP have recently found a material that is white, has a good level of stretch, is 1.6mm thick and is nicely flexible. It is much cheaper than our Sydney range cloth and we will be releasing a new stretch range at some point soon.
It is as good or better than all the stretch cloth used by the manufacturers on your list (in fact better for the price) however; it is NOT as good as the material we use for our Sydney range which is EXTORTIONATELY expensive. The Sydney range material is, as far as I know only used by the one other company who you have missed off your list and I promise you it is the best material available. It is crystal white, washes well, stretches really well, is only 1.3 mm thick etc...
IMOHO to say that the only things you compare on are FIE, the fact that it is stretch and price means that it isn't really an apples to apples comparrison. It is a bit like saying all I care about is having a car that is fast and silver and drawing the conclusion that a Toyota supra is as good as Ferrari.
If you are interested FF I will send you off cuts of some of the materials we have looked at and the material we use for the Sydney range so you can compare what the cheap stretch FIE material that all of the other companies in your comparrison are using and the Sydney material?
As I say LP have a cheap stretch range coming soon... (and it isn't "piss yellow"
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Originally Posted by KD5MDK 
