Evolution Tri Club, based in Windsor, is one of the UK’s leading triathlon clubs and has been a Carvalho Custom client for club cycling & tri kit for a few years now. They have a great balance between training hard and enjoying their sport and it has been a pleasure to supply them over the years.
They make an annual pilgrimage to Lanzarote every year and here is the head coach at the club, Kev (known as Kevolution) cycling up the legendary Fire Mountains – one hell of a place to ride a bike….
We have been out to Holland 3 times over the last few months, as Carvalho Custom has been the sponsor of the Dutch Winter Triathlon Series 2011/2012, which consists of 5 events starting in October and ending in May. Winter Triathlons are run-bike-skate, which makes sense in a country where skating is the national winter sport!
In March we were in Groningen where we exhibited out custom triathlon & cycling kit and also presented jerseys to the race winners and here is a video of the day. Our thanks to the organizers of the event who made us feel so welcome and congratulations to the winners.
In de afgelopen maanden zijn wij drie keer in Nederland geweest, daar Carvalho Custom de sponsor was van de 2011/2012 Nederlandse Winter Triathlon Serie, waarin van oktober tot mei 5 evenementen plaats vonden. Een Winter Triathlon wil zeggen hardlopen – wielrennen – schaatsen, logisch in een land waar schaatsen de nationale winter sport is!
In maart waren we in Groningen waar we onze individueel gespecificeerde triathlon en wieler kleding toonden en waar we ook de shirts uitreikten aan de race winnaars. Hierbij vindt u een video van die dag.
Onze hartelijke dank aan de evenements organisatoren, die ons zeer welkom maakten en onze felicitaties aan de winnaars.
We are in the business of constantly updating our range and here is the latest. Our new custom hipster female tri shorts are lower cut than standard triathlon shorts (more like a hipster cut) and they have a wide elastic support band round the top that will not cut into your tummy, making them extremely comfortable. As well as the practical aspects to the shorts, they also look fantastic and more feminine than higher cut tri shorts – after all there is no reason why you shouldn’t look your best when you are training/racing in your club colours.
Anyway, the low cut ladies triathlon shorts also incorporate teflon treated Power Lycra so that they are super-quick to dry and offer compression to help soothe your aching limbs.
It used to be a simple business finding a supplier for your custom cycling or triathlon kit. You just had to find the manufacturer who made custom kit not too far away from you, give them a call and then send them a cheque. But now the choices are just endless, so where are all these suppliers coming from? Well there are essentially 4 business models selling kit to Northern Europe:
1. Domestic manufacturers – increasingly few and far between, because it is just so expensive to produce clothing in northern Europe these days.
2. Local distributors selling kit made in Southern Europe – this has become more popular in recent years, but it does have the problem that you effectively have to buy from an agent, so you don’t get to deal directly with the factory and of course the distributor takes their 30% cut, which gets stuck on top of the price of the kit.
3. Buy direct from the Far East – generally this business model uses local agents to sell, but not always. The major problem with this is that air freighting the kit is just so expensive and also if there are any problems with the final product it can be very difficult to put right, dealing with such far away countries.
4. Buy direct from Southern Europe – here you get the benefit of low prices, but of course you do not have a local distributor who you can go and speak to, which is important to some customers.
At Carvalho Custom we work on the 4th option of course and we have worked extremely hard to give prospective clients the confidence to buy from us, even though we do not have a representative based in their country. We have been exporting from Portugal for 7 years and over that period we have grown steadily to become the leading supplier of club triathlon kit to the UK and Irish combined markets and one of the top club cycling kit suppliers to these markets, so that gives us a good deal of credibility. We also make regular trips abroad to sponsor races and appear at trade shows and similar so that we get a chance to meet our customers and we send our free samples to anyone who is interested in seeing our kit (we only ask that they get returned within two weeks). Finally, as far as we know, we are the only supplier in our industry that offers a 2% discount for every day that we deliver late after our stated deadline and this can give our clients some confidence that we are a serious supplier who sticks to their promises.
We get asked regularly by sports companies in Northern Europe if they can become a distributor for us, but we know that if we did that, then we would have to increase our retail prices by 30% or so to allow the distributor to make some money – then we would be the same price as other premium custom kit suppliers, which is why we only sell direct from Portugal. (In fact we have also been contacted by several of our main competitors who currently make kit in Northern Europe, but know that it is no longer economically viable and want us to make their kit for them – we only produce kit with our branding however, so the answer is always no!).
At Carvalho Custom we have a simple business model – we believe that by being an honest and reliable supplier, who above all believes in the quality of the kit we produce rather than marketing or hype that we will continue to grow and serve our customers, wherever they may be in the world.
Charlie has just spent a week cycling in the Swiss Alps with his older and slightly slower brother. It was great whipping his backside up a few cols and of course we wore Carvalho Custom kit.
Having spent so much work on developing our new custom cycling shorts, it was fantastic to have a chance to wear them in the big mountains – we are really proud that we have made some bib shorts that we feel will compare favourably with anything available in the market. You can see on the photo below that they incorporate lycra leg grippers rather than silicone, so that they grip your leg gently rather than pinching.
Anyway, if you have got any photos wearing our kit on a big mountain somewhere, please send them in. And if you haven’t tried our new bib shorts out yet, you really need to give them a go (and please note we have just produced our first prototype of new female bib shorts)!
We have just got back from Groningen in the north of Holland, where we were sponsoring the latest race in the Dutch Winter Triathlon series. The Dutch like to do triathlon differently when it gets cold, so they do RUN-BIKE-SKATE (sprint distance is 5k run, 25k bike and 10k skate and the middle distance is 10k run, 50k bike and 20k skate).
Carvalho Custom sponsored the winners’ jerseys for the event, so Nicole from our office got the job of giving out medals, flowers and the jerseys to the podium girls and boys and of course brought a bit of glamour to the event!
Carvalho Custom is sponsoring the complete series, which is 5 events, the last of which takes place in Twente on the 24th of March. We really like to sponsor events like this as it is our way of giving something back to the sports that keep us in business and it is also a great opportunity to meet some of our clients, some of whom we only ever get to communicate by phone and email. Our heartfelt thanks to the organizers of the event in Groningen who made us feel very welcome and of course to the Dutch triathlon association, which has done so much to help make our sponsorship of the series worthwhile.
Wij zijn net terug uit Groningen waar wij de laatste race van de Nederlandse Winter Triathlon serie hebben gesponsord. Zodra het te koud wordt passen de Nederlanders de triathlon aan aan de omstandigheden: HARDLOPEN-FIETSEN-SCHAATSEN (korte afstand is 5km hardlopen, 25 km fietsen en 10 km schaatsen, middel afstand is 10 km hardlopen, 50 km fietsen en 20 km schaatsen).
Daar Carvalho Custom de sponsor was van de winnaars shirts, kreeg Nicole van ons kantoor de eer de medailles, de bloemen en de shirts aan de winnaars op het podium te overhandigen wat zij natuurlijk met veel stijl en glamour deed.
Carvalho Custom sponsort de hele serie d.w.z. 5 evenementen. De laatste vindt plaats op 24 maart a.s. in Twente.
Wij sponsoren dergelijke evenementen graag want het is onze manier om iets terug te doen voor de sportwereld, die ons bedrijf staande houdt. Het is ook een goede gelegenheid om enkele van onze klanten persoonlijk te ontmoeten met wie wij anders alleen telefonisch of e-mail contact hebben.
Onze hartelijke dank aan de organizatoren van het evenement in Groningen, die ons zo welkom hebben gemaakt en natuurlijk aan de Nederlandse Triathlon Associatie die zoveel gedaan heeft om ons het sponsoren van de serie de moeite waard te maken.
We are delighted to say that having sponsored the Race Around Ireland in 2011 we are signed up again for 2012 – amongst other things we will be providing custom cycling jerseys for all the riders (and the mascot – pictured below!).
The Race Around Ireland is a similar sort of race to the Race Across America, in that it is a non-stop endurance race (in this case about 2100 kms) and any time the riders spend sleeping is time lost in the race. Some certifiable riders do it on their own and finish in around 5 days, having slept for an hour or two each day, but most choose to do it as part of a team (2, 4 or 8 riders) riding in relays. So as one person rides, the others get to sleep and eat in the van. This year the race takes place on the 9th of September
Having been to the race last year, we can say that it is a fantastically well organised operation and we would love to support anyone who is interested in doing it. If you are a member of a club that is already supplied by Carvalho Custom, then we will be happy to supply you with a free pair of our new bib shorts in your club colours to do the race in (a good chance to see just how comfortable our new custom bib shorts are!). For anyone else wishing to do the race, we will make you some kit up using our semi-custom design system with no design fee.
If you you would like to find out more about the event then you can either contact us at Carvalho Custom, or speak directly to Alan (alan@racearoundireland.com) who is extremely helpful and generous with his time. Events like this are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to do something truly amazing and tick off one of the great cycling challenges in the world!
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.
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!
