These guys basically went viral with a video of one of the owners shooting himself while wearing the jacket.
I loved the concept of a casual looking bullet proof jacket and after receiving an offer for a 4th of July sale, decided to pick one of these bad boys up!
Following the sizing chart, I believed I was a Medium. Seems the fit is terrible…
Apparently they Ran out of Kevlar?
After placing my order for the July 4th sale, I patiently waited for a shipping update. I waited some more, until it has been more than a month, to which I received this email:
So, after a month of waiting, it seemed that I would be getting my order soon! Very exciting.
I waited, again, and not surprisingly, no update. I decided to reach out to their customer service again, to which I received this response:
Can you guess what happened by the day or “at the latest” day I was supposedly going to receive a shipping update?
By this time, it was September 4th, exactly 2 months since making my order, I was a little more than upset that the company had provided expectations and failed twice to deliver on them, as well as the fact that somehow a bulletproof company didn’t have Kevlar in stock???
However, as far as I can see, I never received any response from that September 4th email.
You guys know how badly I really wanted to review this!
After making this Facebook post, magically our order was updated the same day.
So, after more than 2 months of waiting for this, I finally received the order. Was it worth the wait?
Oh yeah, did I mention this was more than $300!?!?
A Bulky Design Or a Poor Fit?
After installing the Kevlar panels, I have to say, the design is quite bulky. When wearing the jacket, it looks nothing like the guy in the video. Perhaps Medium is too large for me?
I emailed their customer service the day I received this, and as you could probably guess, at the time of writing this I still have not received a response!
So am I forever suck with this jacket which might not even be the proper fit for me, that I paid $300 for and waiting more than 2 months to receive?
This is the middle panel, since the jacket has a zipper, this middle flap sits inside to provide protection for the gap between the zipper.
I feel that this panel is not mounted very well to the jacket. It flaps around, it’s heavy, and very uncomfortable if the Jacket is not fully zipped up.
Why Wouldn’t You Fully Zip it Up?
Comfort. This jacket is quite hot. While being protected is nice, not becoming exhausted from the heat is also desirable. This is not a light jacket by any means.
I feel it will work nicely for camping or hunting, however, for daily use, unless you live in a very cold area, it just does not seem practical.
So if I walk around with the jacked unzipped, it looks ridiculous with two huge flat panels flapping around and a middle flap also wiggling around in front of me!
Some Info from their Site
The version I bought was the IIIA Version, so probably it is a little bulkier and heavier.
Not Well Concealed
Another reason that I wanted to remove this stupid middle flap is because the shape of it sticks out when I wear the jacket!
If security doesn’t stop me for wearing a suspiciously large jacket, they may surely stop me because it looks like I’m hiding some kind of weapon under my jacket?
I Decided to Remove the Middle Flap
Another problem occurred for me, the jacket is composed of two layers, the inner bullet proof layer and the outer jacket; which creates a weird situation considering the fit.
You can zip up both, or you can only zip up the inner layer if you want to look fashionable…
However, the bulletproof panels stick out like a pyramid!
Because of the fitment of the bullet proof Kevlar panels, and the jacket clearly not the right size for me, this thing just protrudes out like I’m wearing some kind of bulletproof jacket or something!
Wow, totally defeats the purpose…
I really wanted to wear this in public, but after seeing how poorly concealed the Kevlar panels were, I really don’t want to step foot outside with this jacket on.
So my $300 jacket sits inside my house collecting dust now and customer service still has not responded. What should I do with this now?
Why Not Zip up Both Layers?
The main problem stems from the protruding armor.
I have to get the zipper over this hump if I want to zip up the outer layer (this is not even counting the middle panel), so this already causes the jacket to feel very uncomfortable when wearing it zipped.
This may also have to do with the massive gap between the Kevlar and the bottom of the jacket.
So this is an extremely tight fit when fully zipped, which is probably the cause for the armor protruding and not even being very well concealed in the first place?
Also, defending yourself with a bullet proof jacket is one thing, but I might also want to defend myself by stopping the assailant from causing any more damage.
When the jacket is fully zipped, it makes drawing a firearm very challenging. Every second counts in this sort of situation and I don’t want to waste a second with a clumsy system like this.
Armor Mounting
I figured the armor would be mounted on some sort of inner “rig? that holds everything together nicely.
Instead, these heavy bulletproof panels are hanging by thin pieces of fabric. The whole design really does not feel very stable.
Overall, I am not impressed with this at all!
Fabric Quality
I will say that the stitching and fabric quality itself seems to be of good quality.
That is about all this jacket has going for it in my opinion.
In Conclusion
I really wanted to give this product a great review. I deeply respect this guy for believing in his own product and doing what he did on camera.
That being said, I was extremely disappointed with this company’s lack of respectable customer service.
It really seems like they are shooting themselves by having a nice looking product, paired with terrible customer service and now I feel like I am stuck with a $300 jacket that doesn’t even do its intended purpose which is to CONCEAL bulletproof armor under a casual jacket.
Why am I “stuck” with this jacket? Because the customer service still has not responded to me at the time of writing this article…
So now, I am stuck with this bulky jacket that limits my mobility, feels extremely hot and sweaty underneath, and makes me stick out like a sore thumb! Regretted this purchase.
Do Not Recommend
I am sure the Kevlar functions as intended. I don’t need to test it on myself. Great marketing campaign, but disappointed in their product.
Given the circumstances of their customer service and the final product I received, I can NOT recommend this product to anyone.
Update 8/20/2020 – I LIKE IT!
I have been meaning to post an update for a while now, it ended up taking longer and longer and eventually I totally forgot about this / didn’t want to wear the jacket for photos during the summer.
Shortly after writing this review, the guys from BullProofEveryone replaced my jacket with a new one. At the time, I was informed that this was an exclusive design for LEO only. Recently, I heard that they had completely switched over to this new design!
So what changed?
The new jacket does not feature the middle flap, which was my single biggest complaint about the original jacket.
I was told that it is also using a “hybrid” Kevlar material which is slightly lighter than the standard material. It is still heavy to wear, but definitely not as bulky or heavy as the first jacket I received. (This one is also a size smaller.)
The New Verdict
I like this new version much more! Hearing that they fully switched to this new design makes me more excited about this company now.
I will say that in my personal opinion, the jacket still doesn’t look like a completely “normal” jacket. It is a bit bulky on me and unzipped, the heavy flaps swing around, stay straight, and look like I’m wearing some sort of box jacket. Fully zipped, it looks much better.
In the future, I hope to release an exclusive article with improved photography to demonstrate the improvements.
For now, I just wanted to post a quick update because I had been pushing this off so much!
If you’re interested, you can check out their products here.
Disclaimer: This article and any claims, statements, or thoughts are merely my own opinion based on my experience with this specific unit and my own understanding / expectation of the product. Nothing here is claimed as a matter of fact, do your own research.Â