Almost daily on all of our socials we’ll see spammy ads/dms/etc. from rando race suit manufacturers. Who are they and are they any good? Probably somewhere between scam and junk.
Why Suits Are Hard
There's quite a bit of engineering that goes into them. what panels need to stretch and which to flex and which stay solid? what parts need to be doubled/tripled up and which dont (so the suit doesnt weigh 30lbs)? where and how to place the armor? what kind? how to adjust it? how to make the suit serviceable after offs? venting without compromising protection? What thread and how many seams (so it doesnt cut the leather and so it's not going to disintegrate in an off). what leather (cow, deer, elk, kangaroo, stingray, etc) and where to put what?
sure they can make something that looks like a suit, but these guys dont even know that they want to advertise that they made these kinds of decisions. all they ever say is "i make custom for you" which means fuckall to anyone.
Do you want something that looks the part, or something that will actually do the job?
guys like vo2, heroic, plus, spartan, at least have a presence here where you have someone to QA the work, look for failure points, and work with if you have a problem. direct from pakistan is like... tossing the dice. and since most of us aren't gear engineers we wont even be able to find out until we fuck ourselves up because of their poorly made decisions.
Yay wish.com suits... so after you crash you can say "I wish I bought a real one"But hey, maybe they actually dId tHEiR reSeARcH!
If that’s actually the case, they then need to amortize the cost of that across their product line… and guess what, it will end up costing the same as a reputable company.
why do you think they resort to spam rather than actually dealing with distributors etc?
Someone Serious About Testing Gear
if you have the time, check out https://www.motocap.com.au/ these guys are doing actual science and testing without being paid by manufacturers. So they have 0 interest in making things look good or bad, just a realistic independent test. They post their methodology and detailed test results for every item.
TLDR
If you wanna roll the dice on your hide by using some unknown hide… go for it. But medical bills for skin grafts are much more expensive than suits. So yeah… should be an easy choice.