UKC

just bought some;

an 800+ fill micro weight down jacket similar to an MHW ghost whisperer for 900RMB
some (im hoping) fantastic bouldering trousers and a merino beanie

anyone got any experience of this brand?

In reply to andic:

ha, yeah. didnt know they were still around (symbol of squiggly sun, right?)

really good stuff. as far as i know they were a high end brand coming out of china that was eventually bought out by the asian branch of one of the big companies (maybe columbia, due to its likeness to MHW, but i heard TNF once).
its possible that the producers were part japanese owned (as much of the asian regional wings of all the big players are), and if so maybe a company called Goldwin.

i found what i had to be as good as anything by the big guys pretty much, but that was 7 or 8 years ago. i had softshells and a synth jkt. bought it all in a shop in lanzhou. have seen it in chengdu as well.

easily the best stuff from a chinese company i think. ozark has always seemed tacky in comparison.

In reply to andic:

just saw they have a site.

stay the hell away from their hardware!
when a company, when listing their certifications for things like ice screws, puts TESTED where it should say CE, and then cant consistantly spell it right its a bad sign.

clothing seems fine tho.

In reply to ice.solo:

eeek! I saw they had walking axes (grivel munro style) didn't look closely not sure it would fit in my suit case.

The buy out idea might be true, there are a few little design features that probably have filtered down from the main brand. Build and fit seem quite good overal.

Bought in MOI in ShenZhen if anyone is interested.

In reply to andic: Their hardware seems to be mainly copies of other brands. But it seems pretty reasonable. I know a few people out here using it and falling on it and i've not heard of any of it failing.

The CE marking thing is interesting, as china uses CE in exactly the same font and style to mean made in China.

The "China Export" marking is subtley different: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Export#China_Export

Clearly intended to confuse though.