Creating a bike jersey?

[Tim Kelley]

We work with Mt Borah (http://www.mtborah.com/) on the BikeArlington jerseys and have been quite pleased with their customer service. Ask for Kimberly and tell her that we sent you!

[eminva]

Wow, that is fantastic that you are sponsoring a school bike club! Thanks so much for that. Would love to hear more about it.

One thing to consider is how you want to pay for the jerseys — my understanding is that with a lot of manufacturers, you order xx jerseys and have to pay up front. So somebody has to figure out how many to order, front the money and go through the hassle of collecting from everyone else. If you want everyone to be able to order and pay individually, Voler does that and we had a good experience with them when the cyclists at my company ordered jerseys.

Good luck.

Liz

[Jason B]

@eminva 31923 wrote:

Wow, that is fantastic that you are sponsoring a school bike club! Thanks so much for that. Would love to hear more

Good luck.

Liz

Thanks for the kudos and suggestions. Biking at our school has exploded to the point that the second teir of bike racks that were just added this year, are already getting close to not enough. The other teacher and I take the bugs on group rides, hold basic bike maintence class, and simply try to connect them with other bikers in the school. We set up a little shop in the back of the room so the little commuters have a place for a patch, pump, oil, tube and tighten something. The other teacher took a wheel building course this summer and has become pretty good at wheel building, so hopefully we will be doing a few wheel demonstrations for the kids. We have a lot planned.
Truthfully, so many of the kids were Pheonix Bike groupies that they are really teaching us.
Again thanks for the suggestion, there are many kids, including several commuting teachers, who would want one.

[elcee]

One thing to consider is whether to design a real bike jersey or a biking-themed t-shirt. There’s a considerable price difference between the two. And a technical t-shirt is much more versatile.

There are usually several price levels, ranging from full-custom (you control all aspects of the design) to semi-custom (you’re given front and back areas to play with) to standard (limited options). This site has a good explanation – note that I haven’t used AK Apparel but I found their site useful. I also liked Voler’s options, and I own one of their jerseys.

[txgoonie]

I’d echo what elcee said. I have a Primal jersey that’s basically a pick-your-design kind of thing, not full custom.http://www.primalcustom.com/ I think Pactimo might have something like that, too. I’m actually waiting on a kit from them, so I can’t yet speak to the product.

I’ve had customer service/QA issues with Sugoi and Champion Systems (btw, for reference, CS requires half the money up front, the other half after fulfillment). My team is considering Hincapie, but they’re super chi chi (i.e. $$).

Anyway, to circle back – the jersey is super awesome, but check with the kids and parents to make sure you’re getting what they really want and what they’re looking to spend. I can’t imagine a custom jersey, after tax and shipping, will come in under $50-60. If you get a technical tee instead, you could pick a local shop (everybody does those these days) and save some dough.

[Certifried]

@Tim Kelley 31922 wrote:

We work with Mt Borah (http://www.mtborah.com/) on the BikeArlington jerseys and have been quite pleased with their customer service. Ask for Kimberly and tell her that we sent you!

The Bike Arlington jerseys are awesome and I’ve had other good stuff from Mt Borah, so I second this recommendation

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

[dasgeh]

@Jason B 31924 wrote:

Thanks for the kudos and suggestions. Biking at our school has exploded to the point that the second teir of bike racks that were just added this year, are already getting close to not enough. The other teacher and I take the bugs on group rides, hold basic bike maintence class, and simply try to connect them with other bikers in the school. We set up a little shop in the back of the room so the little commuters have a place for a patch, pump, oil, tube and tighten something. The other teacher took a wheel building course this summer and has become pretty good at wheel building, so hopefully we will be doing a few wheel demonstrations for the kids. We have a lot planned.
Truthfully, so many of the kids were Pheonix Bike groupies that they are really teaching us.
Again thanks for the suggestion, there are many kids, including several commuting teachers, who would want one.

It is so incredibly awesome to hear this is happening! You just made my week. Can you tell us which school it is?

The optimist in me hopes that there’s a business out there that will sponsor the club and foot the the bill for the jerseys. Maybe the BikeArlington folks could suggest a particularly bike-friendly and kid-happy business?

Oh, and can you put in a plug with your students for the Arlington Fun Ride on October 6? It leaves from Pheonix bikes — 8:30am for the long ride (if you’re at a HS) and 10:30am for the “family ride”, at which all ages are welcome! Thanks!

[areabike]

@Jason B 31921 wrote:

I am a sponsor of a local school bike club and the kids are interested in creating a jersey, and I have never done it before. Does anyone have a positive experience with a company that they could recommend. When I Googled it, it is somewhat overwhelming how many create-your-own bike jersey companies are out there.
Thanks for any advice

well , I have some customized jerseys from China and Pakistan, very cheap, zorro-cycling.com.
if you like you can contact or PM me .

[Tim Kelley]

@areabike 59081 wrote:

well , I have some customized jerseys from China and Pakistan, very cheap, zorro-cycling.com.
if you like you can contact or PM me .

Seems a bit spammy, but on topic. I’ll keep an eye on things…

[Dirt]

I’ve worked with 5 or 6 different companies over the last 3 years. I just finished working with Pactimo on a project and, though the jerseys turned out great, they were NOT very easy to work with.

By far the best I’ve ever worked with was Sommerville Sports. http://sommervillesports.com/ They’re a smaller company, but growing their business. They were the folks that did my “I My Commute” kit and they did an awesome job. The design process was easy… I told Dave what I had in mind and he sent me 3 designs. I picked the design I liked best, made a couple of suggestions for improvements and he sent me back the final proof. Once I signed off on that and sent a deposit, stuff happened very quickly. Turn-around time was supposed to be 4-6 weeks. I had stuff in hand in a little over 2 weeks.

I really like their ideas on how they do minimum orders. 5 is the minimum for each category (tops, bottoms, etc) and you can mix and match within that category. For instance, I ordered 2 sets of shorts and 3 sets of knickers to make the minimum. You could do 2 short sleeve jerseys and 3 long sleeve to make up the minimum order. It is a cool idea. Follow-on orders can then be done on a one-off basis. The prices were very good too.

The shorts are so good that I’ve been using them for pretty much all of my rides. Great stuff!

[Bilsko]

@Dirt 59250 wrote:

I’ve worked with 5 or 6 different companies over the last 3 years. I just finished working with Pactimo on a project and, though the jerseys turned out great, they were NOT very easy to work with.

By far the best I’ve ever worked with was Sommerville Sports. http://sommervillesports.com/ They’re a smaller company, but growing their business. They were the folks that did my “I My Commute” kit and they did an awesome job. The design process was easy… I told Dave what I had in mind and he sent me 3 designs. I picked the design I liked best, made a couple of suggestions for improvements and he sent me back the final proof. Once I signed off on that and sent a deposit, stuff happened very quickly. Turn-around time was supposed to be 4-6 weeks. I had stuff in hand in a little over 2 weeks.

I really like their ideas on how they do minimum orders. 5 is the minimum for each category (tops, bottoms, etc) and you can mix and match within that category. For instance, I ordered 2 sets of shorts and 3 sets of knickers to make the minimum. You could do 2 short sleeve jerseys and 3 long sleeve to make up the minimum order. It is a cool idea. Follow-on orders can then be done on a one-off basis. The prices were very good too.

The shorts are so good that I’ve been using them for pretty much all of my rides. Great stuff!

I’ve checked out their website in the past when you’ve mentioned it – they look great.
Just a tad steep for what I can spend solo, but partnering up with one or two (or more) other people for a bigger order would make a lot of sense.

[Author]

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