Why should I buy a suit from you when I can pay far less for one out of a catalog?
When you buy anything, there are always choices to make. There will always be "knock-off" copies of everything produced -- low-priced items that are named similarly to the real things, made quickly and cheaply by someone looking for a fast dollar to come in. One example which comes to mind is buying a new car. There are GEO's, to be sure. But there are also BMW's. You get what you pay for.
Can you tell me how to make a ghillie suit for myself?
The answer, unfortunately, is "No, we can't." Can't? Yes - we can't tell you how to make a ghillie suit for yourself at home. The reason for this is very simple. The processes we use combine the experiences we've had with all the burlap we've processed since we started working with different types of burlap to find what is the best for our purposes with a lot of advice we've had from so many people in so many walks of life that there is no way to put the sum total of our experience and knowledge into a little kit and explain to you how to use it properly.
What's so special about what you do at your plant?
The equipment we use is specialized, and in many cases was made specifically for us to use. The artistry of the seamstress in positioning each and every panel on the suit to balance and blend is a detailed-oriented skill which comes from having done enough suits to know, without having to test the placement of each panel, what the suit will look like when it's done. This is learned by discussing what is needed or desired, then planning ahead for color and weight placement on the base platform. It's a lot of learning, and it takes time and practice. Training a seamstress is a lot more than just showing a person how to run an industrial sewing machine - it's almost an art class.
Training a dyer takes weeks, and even then, it's a long process after that person has learned the basics before that person is ready to be left alone to produce panels to order. Mixing the dye to produce the required colors, then timing the process to make the panels reflect the necessary shades is something that takes weeks of learning simply because we dye to order, and there are weeks in which we simply don't have orders for all the possible color combinations we can produce. When the orders come in for colors which are new to a particular dyer, that person becomes the student again under the master. It takes time.
No part of the process can be rushed. No matter what we build, each panel takes a minimum of two days to prepare. Simply put, hours must pass. We have the space to hang and dry and treat panels and to do all the things we do.
Do your suits work against electro-optical equipment?
Although unintended in most cases, yes, they do. We do make a specialized suit for military and law enforcement use which works extremely well, but this suit is cost-prohibitive for the general public. Most of our suits work to some degree against electro-optical equipment due to the manner in which our construction is done, not to any special additions to the suits.
Can you sell me the platform and the burlap so I can build my own suit?
We could, indeed, sell you the parts that go into building a ghillie suit. The problem in selling those is that you wouldn't have the experience to know what to do with them.
Simply put, there is no way a person can sew a suit the way we do without the experience we have. Your home sewing machine won't go through the materials we use, and hand sewing won't produce the even seams and the permanence our machines produce.
If we were to send you ALL the components necessary and ALL the instructions necessary, we have no guarantee that you will actually follow our instructions and attend to all the details the way we will. We'd end up with you having a suit made up of our components, possibly telling people it is our suit, and it wouldn't be even close to being one of our suits. We have our company reputation to maintain. The government of the United States has seen our suits and their examination of them resulted in our suits being classified as munitions, even in civilian styles. Our suits are extremely high quality, and we have to maintain that.
The bottom line is that if you want a suit like ours, you have to buy a suit from us.
Why do your suits cost so much?
In a word: Labor
Our suits are built by professionals. It takes hours of training to produce a professional, and they must be paid professional wages.
We are not a minimum-wage employer. We attract highly creative employees with wages according to the ability we require. It's tedious work which requires intense concentration from the workers, long hours, and careful attention to the use of the chemicals necessary to the process.
Once the employees are hired and trained, the hours they work are expensive, and worth the cost. Each suit takes a different number of man hours to produce simply because each panel color combination differs in the necessary steps to produce it, each option requested takes a different amount of time to add, each sizing change must be made, and every step of every suit is taken according to what the finished suit will be.
There is, simply put, no possible way to automate most of the processes we use in building ghillie apparel. At each and every step, the mesh and the burlap are considered separately and in different areas of the plant, yet must be considered as one unit in order to come together to make a suit that is what the customer has come to expect from Custom Concealment, Inc. The professionals who produce the individual pieces which are added to the base platform, such as thumb loops, pockets, skids, or even the straps and belts we include to roll each suit into a backpack for carrying, must at all times consider whether the finished suit will be large or small, which color will be most appropriate for use on that particular suit, and all the details of the suit. Everyone gets a list of what will go onto that suit, and each area of the production team handles the details necessary to make it all come together in the sewing room under the hands of the skilled seamstresses.
What you are paying for is the quality and care we put into each and every piece of apparel we build.
Why do you give a discount to Law Enforcement and Military personnel? Can I get this discount, even though I'm not in either group?
We give this discount to the people in Law Enforcement and the Military because they are out there with their lives on the line, protecting our lives. We are attempting to make it possible for the people who are in these professions to have the best possible concealment to use in their work, which makes it possible for us to personally live the lives we lead.
We also offer this discount to those who have served in the Military in the past, as our thanks to them for keeping us safely at home.
Can you get this discount, even though you're not in the Military or Law Enforcement? No. It's just that simple.
Do you have a showroom where we can see the suits before we buy them? Can I visit the plant to see how you do things?
No, we don't. We don't make things ahead of time, so we don't have a showroom. How can we possibly have a showroom with all the possible combinations of all the possible colors in all the possible styles? We build to order.
At times, we have many suits hanging after they are finished, waiting to be shipped. At those times, we do have suits you can look at as examples of what we've done. If you happen to want to drop in on one of those days, you'll see suits. We have no guarantee of when those times will be, and we do not claim the ability to show you any finished products at any given time.
Visitors to the plant must understand that we use chemicals which must be handled according to careful steps. We cannot allow people into the plant areas where we apply these chemicals because we have no safety coverings for visitors. We use industrial respirators and aprons and training - we just don't have time to train visitors, nor do we have the apparatus to protect the casual visitor.
On the other hand, if you are determined to visit and see for yourself what we do, we are happy to welcome you into our plant and show you around the processes as long as you understand that you must advise us of the time and date you intend to visit ahead of time, abide by the rules we set out, and not interfere with our employees as they work.
What's the difference between the Special Operations, the Tactical, and the Military Styles of ghillie suits?
The different styles are intended for different purposes. The Special Operations Styles are intended for uses in which your life is not on the line and being seen will not likely result in your being dead. These are for hunters, nature lovers, and paintball players, basically. The Tactical Styles are intended for Law Enforcement Officers who must get into position for surveillance and sit there for hours on end, invisible from all angles, close-in, where any chance sighting could very well result in gunfire directed at the Officer. The Military Styles are intended for snipers who must crawl long distances over hostile terrain, wait for the opportunity to make that all-important shot, and crawl out undetected.
What color should I order?
This seems to be the one thing people ask without fail. Our answer is always, "If you tell us what types of vegetation or surroundings you will be using the suit near, we can match it."
We custom-dye ALL of our burlap. We blend dye to make the colors we need. If you give us accurate information on your surroundings, we will give you a suit which will blend into those surroundings. We've made over 10,000 items of ghillie apparel, and we can match your area, too.
But there is no one color for you to order. We dye each panel according to where it will be used, but we also have steps we use in the dye process which result in panels we label with names like "All-Season Brown, with a green emphasis" or "Scrub - Light" or "Yellow, Light Urban Tones". These names for our colors will not make sense to the buyer, but they tell our personnel almost exactly what we expect of the finished panels. Each dye lot will differ slightly, so when we make a suit using panels which are all called "Green Season" in our dye department, we use panels from at least three different dye lots and end up with a suit of many colors.
Why do you use so many colors when nobody else does?
Because our customers' lives depend on our suits matching the terrains in which they are used.
All of our new employees get the same speech, part of which says, "We're not doing brain surgery here, but people's lives depend on every step we take here, so we have to do it right."
We hope that these answers have addressed your concerns. We've tried to condense as much information into as little reading as possible. If you still have questions, please don't hesitate to ask us.
We can be reached by phone at (740) 453-3702
or we can be faxed at (740) 455-3865 or you can e-mail us at cci@ghillie.com or you can even send snail mail to Custom Concealment, Inc. P O Box 455 Zanesville, OH 43702-0455
We welcome your questions. The more you know, the better we look, and we know that well.