ScotteVests – Now Guaranteed Pick-pocket Proof

It is fairly difficult to be too creative with how you promote something as seemingly generic as a jacket.  But Scott Jordan, founder and inventor of the ScotteVest range of products, continues to come up with new ideas and innovations.

In the past we’ve seen him send people around the world on extended journeys with the requirement that everything they travel with be contained within the capacious pockets of one of his jackets, causing him to get in public spats with airlines who feel (quite rightly) that his products are depriving them of the ability to charge excess baggage fees – or, for that matter, any baggage fees at all.

With as many as 26 pockets, it is possible to stuff a huge number of different of things into the jacket, something that has worked to my advantage when confronted by airline check-in staff wanting to weigh my carry-on bag and insist I check it due to it being too heavy.  The look of triumph on their faces turns to dismay as they watch me take things out of the bag and stuff them into pockets, then more things into more pockets, and so on.

As for me, I marvel at the idiocy of an airline policy that won’t let me take things onto the plane in my carry-on bag, but which will let me take them on in my jacket.  It is worth the price of a ScotteVest jacket just to be able to experience that small triumph against combined airline tyranny/idiocy.

More recently, Scott came up with a series of sales tools to help people resell their jackets on eBay – a bizarre concept perhaps, but apparently a popular one, with a quick check now showing 39 different ScotteVest projects being sold on eBay, and on Thursday, he announced his latest innovation.

As implied by the headline, he is now promising up to $1000 of reimbursement if you suffer a loss from pickpockets, if they succeed in taking something out of an inside zipped up pocket of a ScotteVest jacket.

You can see details of the guarantee here, and here’s a link to their home page.

I’ve seen people become extremely paranoid due to concerns about being pickpocketed, and adopt all manner of inconvenient hiding places for money.  That’s not to say pickpocketing isn’t a tangible risk – one expert says there are as many as 6,000 people pick-pocketed every day in Barcelona alone (here’s a great article that makes for very scary reading).

I’ve had my ScotteVest jacket for almost four years and it is still going strong.  I’ve even worn it in Barcelona and not suffered any pickpocket losses, either.  You should consider doing the same – it is truly much more convenient (and not nearly as gauche) to safely and simply retrieve cash, credit cards, ID, and other essentials you don’t want to lose out of a jacket pocket than to rummage down the front of your trousers or to unbutton the top buttons of your blouse.