Years ago, I worked in a Pacific Trails coat factory. We also made off brand coats. Sometimes a similar looking run followed the PT brand. The fabric was a lesser quality, the down was a lesser quality, the zippers were a lesser quality. We could feel the differences as we made the coats. Quality control also let more issues slide by them in the non-PT coats - if the pockets on a PT coat weren't exact, we had to reset them, a slight non-alignment on a non-PT coat would go on through the inspection. FWIW