It is a lot of work organising a photo shoot and we were lucky enough to have Tiago Santos around to record some of the work we did.
On the video you can see our custom tri suits, custom swimming costumes, custom cycling jerseys, custom running kit and even Charlie wearing a Carvalho Custom polo shirt! thanks to Tiago for putting together such a great video.
The world of sports fabrics is evolving at an incredible pace and some of the advances in recent years have really added dramatically to the performance of clothing to improve the comfort and speed of the athlete. We have made it our mission to source the very best fabrics available, so that we can offer our clients the most technically advanced performance kit around.
The latest fabric we have added to our specification list is Teflon treated lycra for our triathlon range: we already use the most technically advanced performance lycra so far developed (Power Lycra) and now we are adding Teflon treatment. As well as reducing the drag coefficient to help you to glide through the water, the Teflon is also hydrophobic, which means it repels water and causes it to bead, making the lycra super-fast drying. This of course means that in a tri race, you will dry off on the bike much faster, making for a more comfortable ride.
The focus of Carvalho Custom is to provide premium technical race kit at reasonable prices – because we are based in Portugal, we can keep our costs down compared to say northern European countries, but on the other hand we have no interest in competing with the cheap and cheerful custom cycling and triathlon kit that is now starting to come out of China.
You can see some more photos of our custom cycling and triathlon kit on our facebook page.
They are some really fantastic photos taken by Joana Maltez and Margarida Ramos. The girls did a fantastic job for us – have a look for yourself and let us know what you think.
Here are the winners of the Boretti Winter Duathlon in Alkmaar, which is the second race in the 5 race Winter Triathlon series, sponsored by Carvalho Custom. We were not able to come over from Portugal to see the race this time, which is a great shame, but we will be there in Groningen and Twente in March 2012. Well done to the 4 category winners, pictured here wearing the Carvalho Custom winners’ jerseys!
Hier zijn de winnaars van de Boretti Winter Duathlon in Alkmaar, de tweede race van de vijf race Winter Triathlon serie, gesponsord door Carvalho Custom. Helaas was het ons niet mogelijk voor dit evenement uit Portugal over te komen, maar in maart 2012 zullen wij zeker in Groningen en Twente van de partij zijn. Onze hartelijke gelukwensen aan de vier categorie winnaars, hier afgebeeld in hun Carvalho Custom fietsshirts.
We have just come back from Assen in Holland where we sponsored the first event in the Winter Triathlon Series (Run-Bike-Skate). It was an unbelievably well-organised event: only in Holland would you be able to find 312 volunteers to run an event for 600 people and we would very much like to thank the organizers for being so amazingly helpful to us. We really hope to come back next year and if you are based in Holland, please consider the next 4 events in the Winter Triathlon Series:
Winterduathlon Alkmaar – 13th November 2011
Wintertriathlon Inzell – 11th February 2012
Wintertriathlon Groningen – 10th March 2012
Wintertriathlon Twente – 24th March 2012
We are not, going to be able to come to all the events, but plan to be at Groningen and Twente, so please come along and see us if you are interested in custom cycling and triathlon clothing and we can show you some samples and have a chat!
We zijn net terug uit Assen, waar wij het eerste evenement van de Winter Triathlon Series (Run-Bike-Skate) hebben gesponsord. Het was een bijzonder goed georganiseerd evenement: 312 vrijwilligers die een evenement organiseren voor 600 mensen, dat zie je alleen in Nederland! We willen dan ook de organisatie heel erg bedanken voor de goede zorg die wij hebben gehad tijdens het evenement. We hopen dat we volgend jaar weer kunnen komen. Als je zelf in Nederland zit, hou dan de data van de volgende Winter Triathlon Series in de gaten:
Winterduathlon Alkmaar – 13 November 2011
Wintertriathlon Inzell (Oostenrijk)- 11 Februari 2012
Wintertriathlon Groningen – 10 Maart 2012
Wintertriathlon Twente – 24 Maart 2012
Het is voor ons niet mogelijk om bij al de evenementen in Nederland te zijn, maar we hopen in Groningen en Twente langs te komen met onze stand. Dus als je geïnteresseerd bent in onze custom design triathlon- en fietskleding, kom dan tijdens een van deze evenementen even langs om kennis te maken en een paar van onze voorbeelden te bekijken.
Here at Carvalho Custom, we love to get involved with events that help to drive our sports of cycling and triathlon forward. So we were delighted to be contacted by the Winter Triathlon Series in Holland who wanted sponsorship for the events they were running over the 2011/2012 season. This is triathlon with a twist though – since it gets a bit chilly in Holland over the winter, they decided that Winter Triathlon should be Run-Bike-Skate, which sounds like a good idea to us! So we decided to get involved and we will have a stand at some of the events, including at Assen on the 29th of October if you would like to come and meet us and see some samples. Please come along and say hello if you get the chance.
Bij Carvalho Custom houden we ervan betrokken te zijn bij evenementen die onze favoriete sporten fietsen en triathlon verder brengen. We vinden het dan ook ontzettend leuk dat de Winter Triathlon serie ons heeft benaderd als sponsor voor de evenementen die zij organiseren in het seizoen 2011/2012. Maar de Winter Triathlons zijn geen gewone triathlons. Omdat de Nederlandse winters nogal koud zijn, heeft de organisatie gekozen voor een race in de vorm ”run-bike-skate”. Dat vinden wij een fantastisch idee! Vandaar dat wij tijdens verschillende evenementen met een stand aanwezig zullen zijn. Tijdens de race in Assen op 29 oktober zijn we er ook. Dus als je geïnteresseerd bent in onze kleding en een aantal voorbeelden zou willen zien, nodigen we je van harte uit langs te komen bij onze stand. Hopelijk zien we jullie daar!
We have spent a couple of days riding, running and swimming round Portugal taking some photos of our kit to revamp the website and also to produce a pdf brochure of our custom cycling & triathlon club kit range, which a lot of clients have been asking us for.
So here is a taste of some of the photos we have:
Here we are setting up the first shots, bright and early…
About to get wet in the pool….
Giving it some welly on the bikes.
We were very lucky to have the exceptional talents of Margarida Ramos who took the above photos and is just starting out in her career and Joana Maltez who was the main photographer for the shoot. As well as being great professionals they were just such a pleasure to work with and I think the results speak for themselves, so thank you so much to both of them.
We flew back from Ireland on Monday morning having been there for the start of the Race Around Ireland on Sunday evening, which Carvalho Custom has sponsored. And here we are on Friday afternoon and the solo riders are still racing, with over 1500 kms cycling in their legs and less than 15 hours sleep over the 5 days and still going. To think that these riders have barely got off their bikes over all this time makes you realise the enormity of their achievement.
So you might be expecting these heroes of endurance cycling to be brash or full of themselves given the fact that they are some of the most amazing athletes on the planet; but having met them at the pre-race meetings, I was really struck by how humble and down-to-earth they all seemed. It made me think, that anyone who has had to face up to the unthinkable depths of suffering that ultra endurance racing involves, is bound to be humbled by it.
Here is Nicole from Carvalho Custom presenting the RAI jersey to 2009 winner, Joe Barr:
This is not a sport for the insecure – it takes enormous strength of character to deal with the sleep deprivation, exhaustion and pain and the people who do it are giants, but they must feel so small in the face of the magnitude of their task and it makes you respect them all the more for it.
We have just come back from Navan in Ireland where we attended the start of the epic Race Around Ireland cycle race. It is an Ultra Marathon race, which means riding 2172 kms in a continuous race (so if you sleep, you lose time) and they are looking to finish in less than 5 days.
We were delighted to be given the opportunity to sponsor the custom cycling jerseys for the riders and here is Nicole and Charlie from Carvalho Custom with some of the competitors, wearing the jerseys we supplied.
And here is Charlie watching the start in his Carvalho Custom jersey and arm warmers, although he couldn’t be convinced to race this year, citing a chronic fear of suffering.
And who could forget the RAI mascot, faithfully wearing his mini Race Around Ireland jersey! Best of luck to all the competitors and congratulations to the organising team for putting on such a fantastic event and making us feel so welcome!
We keep on trying to improve things here at Carvalho Custom to make things easier for our clients, so we have brought out a new excel order form that will allow the person who puts the order together for a club to easily add together all the individual orders received from club members.
So the idea is that the club clothing administrator will receive a load of orders from club members, which s/he will input one by one into our new order form; then when this is finished, s/he presses a button and all the individual orders are added together to make a total club order, which can then be emailed to us to produce. The order form can also be used in the traditional way of just inputting a total order for a club or organisation – the system is just more user-friendly than a standard order form and it will automatically calculate the final price for you based on the total quantities ordered.
So the order form performs three roles – it provides a convenient way of recording the individual orders of club members, it saves you the hassle of having to consolidate the individual orders into a total order and it will automatically calculate the final total price and the price for each individual. You can download the new order form here (please make sure you activate the macro when you start, by clicking on the option when prompted – you will get a security warning when you do this, but it is completely safe!).
When you download the order form (it is in excel), the first thing you should do (once you have activated the macro) is to click on the instructions button, although it should be reasonably self-explanatory. You can click on the red triangles scattered round the order form for further instructions.
Essentially the way it works is that you first select the items that you intend to order, then you can choose either input the total club order in one go, or you can input all the individual orders from the club using the ‘Add Multiple Orders’ button . You then just hit the ‘Calculate Total Price’ button and the program will finish off the order form for you.
This is a new system for us and we are sure to need to make some changes, so please let us know what you think!
