Blog - Page 8 of 28 - Carvalho Custom

Carvalho Custom will be sponsoring the Race Around Ireland 2015

We have been sponsors of the Race Around Ireland for 5 years now and we are back again for 2015. The Race Around Ireland is Europe’s toughest cycle race and the rules are quite simple – there is a 2150 km course and you have to get round as fast as possible and when you sleep you lose time. So it is not for the faint hearted if attempted solo, but you can go in teams of 4 or 8. Such is the popularity of the race that they are now full up for 2015 both teams and solo riders and this year will be the biggest year ever in terms of number of participants; the fun/agony/ starts on the 30th of August in Trim and we will be there to wave the brave souls off.

For Carvalho Custom, the Race Around Ireland has been a chance to get involved with cycling as a sport available to anyone brave enough to give it a go and it has also been a chance for us to work with some serious endurance athletes willing to help us develop and test our kit; for example Shusannah Pillinger who we first met at the Race Around Ireland (and who is attempting Race Across America for a second time this year, in attempt to be the first British female to finish) has helped us develop our female cycling range and in fact our patented halter neck female cycling shorts (now licensed to Wiggle via their DHB brand) were inspired by Shusannah who really wanted to save time on comfort breaks for these ultra long distance events. It is also good to know that if she is happy with our chamois after cycling 4,800 kms almost non-stop across America, then we must be doing something right! Here is Shu half-way across America in 2014 in her Carvalho Custom cycling kit, before she fell asleep on her bike and fell off, breaking her collarbone…

Anyway, best of luck to all the riders taking part and we look forward to meeting you all in August!

Halterneck cycling shorts patent

It is very exciting to see our halterneck cycling shorts, developed by Carvalho Custom (with utility patents pending and design patents granted), going on sale under license to Wiggle and their DHB brand. We spent a lot of time developing this product – as with many of these things, the final result may appear deceptively simple but the road to get there was a long one! We knew that so many female riders were not buying bibs because it is such a hassle to pull them down when nature calls and we knew that there had to be an answer that did not involve zips, clasps or any straps that needed to be removed. Our halterneck designs with the back straps joining under the arm means that in the riding position the shorts are held up at the back as they would be by normal bib shorts, but when a rider gets off the bike and crouches down, the pressure is relieved on the back straps and the shorts can just be pulled down, as if they were non-bib shorts. The back straps also guide the front straps round the side of the chest, so also resolving the problem of straps rubbing on breasts.

For female riders who have never used bib shorts, the advantages of them are:
– the chamois is held in position up against your backside so it does not shift out of place at all, or rub
– the small of your back will always be covered by the back of the shorts, so there will not be a gap between jersey and shorts
– there is no elastic waist to dig in to your tummy

Wiggle producer a video to show how they work:

And here you can see how the straps allow the back of the shorts to be pulled down when you squat down:

You can buy our custom halterneck bib shorts here.

Any commercial inquiries regarding licensing and patents, please direct to charlie@carvalhocustom.com or write to us at:
Westfield Technologies Lda
Rua das Camelias, 38
3885-482 Esmoriz
Portugal

Club cycling & tri kit now 20% cheaper from your European supplier

Being based in Portugal has its advantages of course, not least the beautiful weather for us to ride our bikes in. There are also some good things about running a business from Portugal and selling direct into northern Europe and elsewhere in the world – it is one of the lowest cost manufactures in Europe as well as being one of the leading producers of high end sports clothing, with many of the top cycling and tri brands now making their kit in Portugal. This means that we are able to make premium custom cycling and triathlon kit at very reasonable prices, making us one of the most competitively priced suppliers of high end kit in the custom sector.

Recently with the bedlam that has been going on in the Eurozone, led by our good friends the Greeks, the value of the Euro has collapsed against the good old British pound. So in the last 6 months, the Euro has fallen from less than 1.20 to the pound to today reaching nearly 1.42. This means that our British clients will be paying around 20% less for their orders now compared to mid 2014.

There has been a lot of clothing coming in from China recently also and they have not been able to benefit from this collapse in the value of the Euro, so it means that Portugal is now the place to buy top quality kit at bargain prices!

Fall in the value of the euro means UK clients pay 10% less!

Yes that’s right, because of all the economic shenanigans going on with Greece and so on, it means that a British pound now buys you more than 1.30 euros, whereas a few months ago, it was less than 1.20. As a custom cycling kit & triathlon kit supplier, we sell directly from Portugal to the UK with no British footprint, so that means we can pass on all these savings to our UK customers. For those of our customers who live in the Eurozone, you will still have access to the most competitively priced pro-quality custom cycling & triathlon kit in Europe, you just won’t get the extra 10% off!

You can download our order form and price list from the footer at the bottom of this page.

New fast-dry, hydrophobic, lightweight custom tri suits

We have just finished trialing our new lycra for our custom tri suits and tri tops – is is a brand new fabric which is super lightweight and very fast drying, with a hydrophobic treatment that causes water to bead off. It is an amazing feeling to almost feel dry as soon as you take your wet suit off!

Our new fabric offers the same compression as our existing Power Lycra fabric, but is 30% lighter; it also incorporates a special thread that will prevents any transparency in the fabric even with light colours.

We are currently offering our new custom tri suits at the same price as our previous range (€71.90), but we will have to increase the prices shortly – so please get in touch if you would like to go just that little bit faster in your next triathlon (and a little bit drier!).

New silicone leg grippers for our custom cycling shorts

Our EVO pro bib shorts have had a lot of development work put into them – there are a lot of things to consider, but some of the things that we consider are: to make sure that they fit perfectly when you are in the riding position (rather than when you are standing upright to try them on!); that they move fluidly with the pedal stroke; that the seams are located where they won’t rub; the chamois offers rid comfort, antibacterial action and longevity; the straps sit comfortably on the shoulders; the right amount of compression is offered to the thighs; that they will not ride up your leg with the pedal action.

For this last issue, we have in the past offered to have a lycra leg gripper, which is a band of compression lycra at the bottom of the shorts, or silicone band leg grippers. Now we have moved on to offering silicone coated lycra as the gripper – this has the advantage of being more gentle on the thigh muscle than silicone bands, whilst maintaining the position of the shorts better than just compression lycra. Some riders prefer not to have any silicone for reasons of comfort, so our clients can specify. We are also now cutting the end of the shorts with laser, in order to remove an additional seam from the end of the shorts, as just one more small element in our bid to make our shorts the most comfortable on the market!

We have also now finished patenting a new halter neck women’s bib short, that will allow female riders to take a comfort break without having to remove their jersey (as with traditional bib shorts). It looks like our invention will revolutionize the women’s bib short market and we have decided to make this patented design available to other cycling clothing manufacturers, as the demand for them is just too large for our small factory to deal with and we will continue just to focus on custom cycling clothing and club triathlon clothing.

Pro quality custom cycling clothing & tri clothing at fair prices

I was speaking to a client recently who asked the more than reasonable question of why he should buy his custom cycling jerseys from us and not from one of the many other custom cycling clothing suppliers that have been sprouting up all over the place over the last year or two. The truth is that there are suppliers out there who have similar quality products to us and there are even some competitors that have lower prices than us, but for nearly 10 years now, we have led the way in supplying pro quality kit at reasonable prices and that is how we try to stand out from the crowd.

There are plenty of suppliers out there with clever branding and good quality kit, but generally you have to pay a lot of money for it. But for example, our new Biofit custom cycling jerseys with lycra side panels, silicone waist gripper and Bio-Ceramic fabric is a cutting edge cycling jersey, but our price is a fair one: €33.85+VAT (discounted for larger orders). For that money you don’t get any slick branding or celebrity endorsements, just a decent quality product.

lycrafit jersey

So our strategy is just to stick to spending our money on producing high quality kit and not on marketing (to date we have never paid for an advertisement or an endorsement) and our clients are the ones that are interested in having great kit at fair prices!

Using our order form to consolidate your club cycling or triathlon kit order

We have a smart order form that allows you to list out individual orders from club members and then automatically consolidate them into a single club order to send to us, your club cycling & tri kit supplier. To do this, you just need to:
– download our order form
– enable the macros
– add the names of the items that team members are going to order to the main order form (so for example you can add custom cycling jerseys, custom tri suits or whatever)
– click the “multiple orders” button and you will be prompted to say how many individuals will be ordering (you can always change this)
– you can now add the names of each person ordering (if you want to)
– a mini order form will be created for each individual, which you can fill in
– to generate the consolidated order, just go back to the main order page and click “calculate total price”

You can always go back add more individual orders if required, by clicking on the multiple orders tab, add the extra orders and calculate again.

So there you have it, a very easy way to manage your cycling or triathlon club clothing order, which leaves you with a record of what everyone has ordered and an easy way to consolidate all the orders into one order form that you can then send to us to produce!

We will be at the Race Around Ireland

Once again, Carvalho Custom is sponsoring Europe’s toughest cycling challenge, the Race Around Ireland – 2150 kms of non-stop racing, around some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. Hard core nutters race the 2150 kms on their own and complete it in around 6 days, sleeping for an hour or two each day. More reasonable people complete it as part of a team. The race starts in Trim on Sunday (31st of August) and Carvalho Custom is a lead sponsor, also supplying the custom cycling jerseys. We will be there in Trim, so please come along and say hello if you are going to be there!

Shu Pillinger talks custom cycling kit

I’ve been unpacking – I know I landed back in the UK nearly 2 weeks ago, but it’s quite difficult with one arm in a sling – and I found this. It is (half of) one of my beautiful shirts, which was cut from me after I broke my collarbone. It was too difficult to bend my arm out of it.

Anyone who has been to my house knows that it is the smallest in the world, a tiny Victorian cottage, where any spare space is taken up with bike kit. You can’t get through the front door without tripping over something. And now I have a dilemma – where am I going to store all this stuff I’ve amassed for RAAM? There are currently amber lights on my kitchen worktop and I need new wardrobes for clothes.

Shusannah Pillinger talks about the kit she wore in her 2014 Race Across America attempt:

Carvalhocustom were kind enough to provide me with the bespoke kit for RAAM – 10 pairs of shorts, 6 short sleeved tops, 5 long sleeved for various weathers, a gilet, leg warmers and the crew favourites – the star-spangled booties. I’d like to write something about this. In Race Around Ireland, we muddled along with bits and pieces of kit I had accrued over years of commuting. It all got drenched and became the crew’s biggest (smelliest) nightmare. We were all so happy when Nicole from Carvalho approached us in Ireland and said they’d like to support me.

Fast forward to RAAM and the change was remarkable. Gone was the kit favouritism (I liked one pair of my old shorts, that ended up always being “in the laundry”) and having to layer to get comfortable. Now, I felt like a professional in my custom kit. I’d been training all winter in the shorts (and windproofs) and knew they were going to be awesome, but I couldn’t predict what would happen after 12 days of cycling. In the end, I only had 9 days to test them in the race, but I can report a great experience. No saddle sores, just minor, but treatable abrasion – partly caused by an unexpected gear change! In addition the crew were able to choose when to change my shirts and jackets, from the excellent range we had. They didn’t need to ask me what I thought would be best – just one less thing to think about.

I don’t know if Carvalho kit has ever been used in this manner – but I cycled many miles with handfuls of ice stuffed into my back pockets, near my kidneys. Along with the predominantly white colour, this saved me from heat exhaustion in the desert and through the unexpectedly hot Kansas and Missouri. The shirts dried in no time – I need to test them in Ireland now!

I hope you agree the kit looked great too (although maybe not my severed shirt). Thanks to Eldon Costa for the design. I can’t wait to get back out on the roads in it – and maybe you guys will see it again soon!