Outside does, in fact, have members of its Gear Army test products and offer more or less candid feedback on those products.

On the other hand, the Cocona Fabrics offer appears to be little more than a thinly veiled buzz marketing campaign (buzz marketing = http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/buzz-marketing ) How else can one explain the need for a gear tester to be familiar with blogs, twitter and other internet platforms? Heck, Cocona is brilliant on this one, not only will they get many reviews out of it, undoubtedly many of those selected with tweet/facebook/blog about being named to the “Cocona Xcelerator Test Team”. Brilliant! I wonder if Cocona is going to include the FTC’s blogger disclosure guidelines.

For the record, I’ve loved every piece of Cocona containing product I’ve ever owned.*

* Disclosure, I haven’t paid for any of them save for one associated with a charitable donation. All products were provided by the companies making the garments rather than Cocona itself.