Archive for category: Life

I had the opportunity to do a day of cycling out of Geneva the other day, and we chose the Col de la Colombière. It is a typical alpine climb, 16.3 kms at an average of 6.8%, with a kick in the teeth at the end with 3 kms at over 10%.

It was pretty embarassing to get my backside whipped by my brother, but was made up for by the sight of another guy who was riding with us when he hit the top. Jake was not in the best of shape, but through brute will power he charged to the top and suffered like a dog, in the best tradition of amateur cycling. Pictured here at the top!

If you’ve got a summit photo of someone looking worse off than this, please send it in and we will publish it here (especially if you are wearing Fernando Carvalho kit!).

It is pretty impressive for anyone to ride the Marmotte, so well done to Tom Aikens for completing the course. You can read about it here http://www.menshealth.co.uk/Fitness-&-muscle/active-cycle-challenge/v3.

He was riding with Wyndymilla, which is a new cycling team/cycling coaching outfit, run by ex elite rider Henry Furniss and his gorgeous wife Nasima. They help everyone from complete novices to established cyclists get the most out of riding a bike, with none of the hassle. See their site at www.wyndymilla.com.

Given that they demand only the very best quality cycling clothing and equipment for their members, we are very pleased to supply them, having supplied Henry’s Bike and Run team when he was an elite rider.

We are really happy to be working with AtoZ Adventures who work with us to run cycling holidays in Portugal. They have an outstanding range of moutain bike, road and hybrid holidays on offer and they are fantastic guys as well! They can do guided tours and self-guided tours with GPS or old-fashioned maps, so they have something for everyone.

We used to do a lot more work on running cycling holidays, but our cycling and triathlon custom clothing business has grown so much that we can no longer spend the time required on cycling holidays so we had to hand this side of the business over to a partner company.

We miss out on a lot of sales because potential clients think that we can’t possibly supply pro quality kit at such reasonable prices, so how do we do it?

Our business was set up in 2001 and from the start we were determined to keep our costs down to an absolute minimum. Now that we sell half a million euros of kit a year, the rules are still the same. That means:

* no advertising (word-of-mouth is free!)
* no brochures (the internet is almost free!)
* no free sponsored clothing for high profile teams
* no buying stock on credit and no offering of credit to clients
* no company cars (or company bikes!)
* distributing directly from our factory in Portugal (rather than through agents taking a 30% cut)
* cycling to meetings where possible and videoconferencing even better to avoid travel costs
* setting up long terms deals with suppliers where we guarantee them business if they can guarantee rock bottom prices

Then we have an obsession with 2 things to keep clients coming back:

* First the quality of the kit, so that we can be confident that our kit will sit quite happily next to anything pro athletes use (no cost cutting when it comes to quality!)
* Second a devotion to customer service so that we can be confident no competitor will look after clients better than us (we aim to anwswer emails within two hours of receiving them, but never let them go unanswered more than 24 hours for example).

So that is the secret! We run a business in one of Europe’s lowest cost economies and obsess with keeping our costs down. Then we obsess with delivering pro quality and unbeatable customer service. No secrets there….

We have added an old style cycling cap to our range – we use microfibre for the main body of the cycling cap to wick away sweat, a felt sweat band to fit snugly round the head and a traditional stiff peak that can be worn in the up or down position.

We use the same sublimation printing technology for our custom cycling caps as for the rest of our custom kit so you can print exactly what you want and where you want it on the cycling cap.

At 6.85 euros it is very competitively priced for a sublimation printed cap, continuing our tradition of offering pro quality kit with excellent value for money.

In the interest of fully testing our cycling clothing in a range of different environments, Charlie has just spent a week cycling on Lake Como in northern Italy with his slightly slower brother, Tom.

It is an unbelievable place to ride a bike, with great quality roads (most of the time) some monster climbs and unbelievable scenery. One of the major benefits is that the whole area is so stunning, if your other half doesn’t ride s/he will probably be quite happy chilling by the lake and looking at the beautiful people (George Clooney has a place there!).

We stayed in a tiny village called Dorio on the northeast coast, where by unbelievable luck there was a café on the main drag (Elsa Bar) that was owned by a cyclist (Big Lugo) who knew every possible cycling route in the area, spoke good English and was generally a very nice chap. Definitely worth a visit…..

There is a new girl at Fernando Carvalho Ciclismo! She is Nicole, who lived in New York until moving to Portugal to go to University in Braga. She was competing for a place on the US diving team before a car accident stopped her from competing.
Nicole is extremely good at developing designs for new clients, so you can always turn to her for inspiration and guidance for your custom designs – you will have to forgive her New York sense of humour however!

The technical sports garment industry is in a very rapid state of development at the moment, with new fabrics able to contribute an enormous amount to the performance of technical sports clothing; this means we have had to constantly adapt our range to reflect the latest thing available. We have just launched a new chamois for example with better contouring to give padding where it is most needed and a microfibre, anti-bacterial cover to wick away moisture and improve hygiene.

Our company has been growing very rapidly over the last few years, particularly in the custom triathlon kit market – it has meant that we have had to work extremely hard to meet our 4 week lead times and we have had to take on more people, but we are still proud to boast the shortest lead times in the custom cycling and triathlon clothing industry.