There are some Wicklow 200 jerseys available to buy at the event registration area on Saturday and Sunday, but there are not many left and it is first come first served. Price is €40.
You may know Carvalho Custom as one of the sponsors of the Race Around Ireland – we supply direct from Portugal into principally northern European markets, offering pro quality kit at southern European prices. If your club might be interested in getting a quote from contact us for club cycling or triathlon kit.
Our patent pending halterneck bib shorts are selling like hot cakes! It has taken a while for female cyclists to wake up to the idea of using a halter strap for their bib shorts rather than male style bib shorts with conventional “braces”, but the revolution is now officially underway. In case you have not yet heard, using a halterneck strap allows the shorts to be pulled down at the back without removing the jersey (or removing the strap from round the back of your neck), which means it is a whole lot easier to go to the loo.
We have a series of deals set up or under negotiation with some major brands that are using our invention under license, so don’t be surprised to see more and more halterneck women’s bib shorts on the market. Our most recent client is Gripe from Korea and here are some photos of our halter bib shorts in action:
You can see that we use a thick and very stretchy strap that goes round the back of your neck so that you do not feel the strap pulling down on your neck when you are riding. The strap is so stretchy that when you want to pull the shorts down, you can just crouch over to help release the tension on the straps and then the shorts will just pull down at the back. We also use laser cut silicone coated leg grippers and a foam injected chamois, to make the comfort of the shorts complete!
If your brand is interested in using our patent under license, please contact Charlie at Carvalho Custom for more information.
We put in an a lot of work to constantly upgrade our fabrics and we have a new fabric, Ultra Power, for our cycling shorts. It is super soft, comfortable and breathable whilst offering an optimum degree of compression; it also allows us to print brilliant bright colours and the colours do not dull even when the Lycra is stretched. We have started using Ultra Power for our EVO custom cycling shorts and our patented female halterneck cycling bib shorts.
Here is a video explaining about our new custom tri-suits with the new tri-skin fabric, which is hydrophobic (water-repellent), to cut through the water faster and super fast drying as water beads off. It is also extremely lightweight. Available in both male and female versions, with laser-cut silicone leg band grippers as optional.
We have added fluorescent yellow to the colours available for our entire range of custom cycling clothing. We also have silver reflective strips that can be added to existing designs to make you more visible in murky conditions – these are typically added to the backs of jackets and on shoe covers.
If you need help with developing or improving your club cycling clothing design, then please get in touch with us and one of our graphic designers will work with you directly to come up with a fantastic looking design. We do not charge any extra for this development work.
We are back this year to support the Race Around Ireland, one of the world’s most famous cycling challenges. It is 2100kms, which you need to finish within 5 and a half days – sleep is for the week and it loses you time. This year the race was overbooked and the 2016 race is already nearly booked up.
We made the custom cycling jerseys for the race and here you can see the solo competitors at the start presentation, trying to hide their fear with a carefree grin – it doesn’t fool us though.
The race starts in Trim in front of the castle and also serves as a qualification for the big daddy of endurance cycling racing, the Race Across America.
10 years ago, cycling was for the most part a gritty unglamorous sport, all about suffering and camaraderie, whilst triathlon was a minority sport for nutters; equipment tended to be functional and choice was limited. Things could not be more different now, with all sorts of premium brands bringing some bling to the market and a seemingly never-ending choice of exotic equipment available, be it bikes, clothing, electronics, drinks, nutrition, training regimes and so on.
Sometimes it is easy to get lost among the glamour of the big brands that spend millions on advertising and sponsor the top teams and athletes; meanwhile, there are a few companies like Carvalho Custom that have eschewed the bright lights and kept plugging away focusing on producing pro quality kit but without the astronomical price tags. We have managed to keep our feet planted firmly on the grand and have never spent any money on marketing campaigns, instead relying on word-of-mouth and generally keeping our costs down to a minimum (for example by selling direct from Portugal to the world, rather than having regional distributors). It means that we can pass on these savings to our customers, so our prices are very attractive for the quality that we supply.
Having said all this, the bad news is that because of the increase in our costs of raw materials as we have upgraded many aspects of the kit we supply, we are making our first price increase for 3 years (an increase of around 5%). The good news is that if you are buying from the UK, then the 20% decrease in the value of the Euro against the Pound over the last 6 months or so means that our kit will be a lot cheaper for you! We are not going to apologize for putting our prices up because we still believe that we are the most competitively priced supplier of high end kit.
So if you are after a glamour brand on your custom cycling jerseys or club tri suits, then we are probably not for you; but if you want the best value-for-money available for top end kit and a team that is truly dedicated to customer service then perhaps we are the right custom cycling & triathlon kit supplier for you.
In a heroic effort, Shusannah Pillinger has become the first British woman to complete RAAM, 3000 miles cycling across America in 13 days. Averaging around 250 miles a day and sleeping for just an hour or two each day it is truly a superhuman achievement. We were very proud to be her custom cycling kit sponsors – if our chamois was good enough for Shu during her 13 days, then it is pretty much good enough for anyone!
Here she is just after crossing the finish line, somehow with the strength to lift her bike aloft:
We also supplied the custom cycling jerseys to Generali Race Around Ireland team, who finished RAAM in a very creditable 6 and a half days.
The Race Across America is the world’s toughest endurance cycle race – 3000 miles without stopping, to be finished within 12 days. Carvalho Custom sponsors Shusannah Pillinger’s custom cycling clothing, and she has just set off in her attempt to be the first British woman to finish. Last year she made it most of the way, but then fell asleep on her bike and broke her collarbone – I suppose we can forgive her that after spending 9 days riding 300 miles a day on a couple of hours sleep a day….!
You can follow the race at http://ridefarther.com/ and via her facebook page. There is also a good BBC article about her attempt here.
Best of luck to Shu and please show her your support on social media!
We have been getting our head down and doing some more product development here at Carvalho Custom – our latest piece of cutting edge technology is the Carbon Biofit custom cycling jersey. Using carbon fibre threads mixed in with microfibre allows us to have a super lightweight jersey that is still very strong, which makes it very resistant to threads being pulled and general wear and tear; meanwhile it has a very high wicking capacity (so it helps sweat to evaporate from your body), helps to regulate body heat and won’t stick to you when you start to get sweaty.
The perfect club cycling jersey has to be lightweight, soft to the touch, not cling to skin, hard-wearing, moisture and heat regulating and have an attractive appearance – we think we have pretty much done it all with this new fabric…. This new jersey will replace our current Bio-Cerâmica fabric, which has been a fantastic product for us, but we think the Carbon Biofit is even better!
