Brolly Boot started with a soaked pair of leather boots and a cheap umbrella that turned inside out on a windy corner of Portland's Hawthorne Bridge. That night, our founder, Maren Olsen, sat with wet socks and a laptop, trying to find an honest answer to a simple question: which umbrella actually survives real wind, and which boots actually keep water out? She found plenty of listicles padded with affiliate links and recycled marketing copy, but almost nothing written by someone who had tested the gear in genuine weather. So she bought a dozen umbrellas, borrowed a wind meter from a kite-surfing friend, and started taking notes. Brolly Boot grew out of that notebook.
Who We Are
We're a small, independent team of gear testers, former outdoor retail staff, and one meteorology nerd who insists on checking the Beaufort scale before every field test. Maren leads product selection and editorial direction, drawing on eight years of experience buying for a regional outdoor goods store before going full-time with Brolly Boot in 2021. She's joined by Theo Ruiz, who handles footwear testing and has a background in leather goods repair, and Priya Chandran, our data and research lead, who builds the spreadsheets that keep our comparisons consistent across all 50 products we cover. Together we've tested rain gear in conditions ranging from drizzly Seattle mornings to full-blown nor'easters on the Maine coast.
Why We Started This Site
Rain gear is a strange category: it's cheap to make poorly and expensive to make well, and the difference rarely shows up until you're already standing in a downpour. We wanted a resource that treats that problem seriously — one that tests umbrellas in actual wind rather than describing them with adjectives, and that judges boots by how they perform after three hours of standing water, not by how they look in a product photo. Brolly Boot exists so that the next person googling "umbrella that won't flip in wind" or "waterproof boots that don't leak at the seam" gets a straight answer from people who checked.
How We Review and Pick Products
Every item we recommend goes through the same core process before it earns a place on the site:
- Hands-on testing first. We purchase the majority of products ourselves at retail price. When manufacturers send samples, we disclose it clearly and still buy a second unit anonymously to confirm consistency.
- Real weather, not simulations. Umbrellas are tested in sustained wind of at least 25 mph using a handheld anemometer, plus a controlled fan test for repeatability. Boots and rain jackets are worn through standing water, puddle-jumping, and multi-hour wear to check seam taping, sole flex, and breathability.
- Long-term tracking. We keep a rotating set of products in active use for three to six months and update reviews if a canopy frame bends or a boot's waterproofing starts to fail.
- Scoring criteria. Every product is rated on wind resistance or waterproof rating, build durability, comfort, materials, and value for money, using the same rubric across every category so comparisons are fair.
- Independent verification. We cross-check manufacturer waterproof ratings (like hydrostatic head numbers) against our own soak tests rather than taking marketing claims at face value.
What Makes Brolly Boot Trustworthy
We don't accept payment for placement, and no brand can buy a higher score. If we recommend an umbrella, it's because it survived our wind test and our team would genuinely buy it again. Our affiliate links help fund the gear we purchase for testing, but they never influence which products we recommend or how we rate them — our scores are locked in before any link is added. We also update older reviews when products change, get discontinued, or when a reader lets us know something failed in a way we hadn't caught. If you've found a gap in one of our reviews or tested something differently, we want to hear about it; reader feedback has shaped more than a few of our retest decisions.
At the end of the day, Brolly Boot is written by people who've stood outside in the rain longer than they probably needed to, just to make sure the gear we recommend actually works when it matters.