We are involved with sponsoring the kit for a few leading tri teams – it is great for us to have pro triathletes training and racing in our kit for helping with product development and in Holland we sponsor the leading pro tri team SBDN Davilex.

The SBDN team have had a fantastic 2010 and they have just won the Veenendaal olympic distance tri – they managed to win male and female races which was a bit greedy…

Her is Edo van der Meer on his way to victory wearing our custom tri suit.

Now when you or I talk about going on a long ride, we might mean 150k and we would feel quite pleased with ouselves when we get home and put the kettle on. Some worthy souls might take it to the next level and perhaps try Land’s End to John O’Groats. Well Peter Gostelow is putting us all to shame – 25,000 kms London to Cape Town, unassisted and on his own. He is raising money for the Against Malaria Foundation.

You can imagine that as custom cycling jersey suppliers we get a lot of requests for free or cut price jerseys for charity rides. We would like to help them all, but as we get requests pretty much every day, we just cannot do it!

Peter’s effort was just so monumental that we decided to help him out in a very small way and here he is on some God-foresaken track in the arse end of nowhere with paniers stuck all over his bike and a look of grim determination plastered over his face.

If you are doing a charity cycling ride we have found a way to help you reduce your costs, whilst helping us to do a bit of advertising. The way it works is that you produce your design on our semi-custom cycling jersey template and put in an order with us. You then post the design on our Carvalho Custom facebook page and then tell all your mates to comment on the picture. For each comment you get, we reduce the design fee (normally €90) by one euro. So if you get 90 comments, you get the design for free and just pay the cost of the kit.

It helps us bring a bit of traffic to our facebook site and saves you some money, so everyone’s a winner!

We were very pleased to supply Wight Tri with kit this year, which they designed using our semi-custom tri kit option (as you can see in the photo they have semi-custom tri and cycling kit).

They have been a pleasure to work with and anyone who lives on the Isle of Wight and is thinking about getting involved with triathlon needs to get involved with a club whose motto is “The body is bad and must be punished” as well as organising the regular “splash and dash” events (don’t ask, they do things differently on the Isle of Wight).

We are very proud to say that we are now one of the largest supplier of club tri kit to the combined Irish and UK markets, supplying over 100 triathlon clubs in these countries. It has been a lot of hard work and the biggest lesson for us is that for triathletes product quality is absolutely everything. When we first started selling tri kit a few years ago, we did not have the cut of our kit quite right and we did not invest enough in the top drawer fabrics, but we found that triathletes just wanted the best. So we redeveloped our range and we have had a lot of success with it, although unfortunately for us, there is no time to rest on our laurels as tri clothing technology is just moving on so fast, we are constantly having to reassess things.

Carvalho Custom werkt samen met Cofides, de belangrijkste producent in Portugal van wielershirts en triatlonpakken naar eigen ontwerp. Wij zorgen ervoor dat onze klanten van over de hele wereld gebruik kunnen maken van kleding van topkwaliteit, met designs die exact voldoen aan hun specifieke wensen. Bovendien bezorgen wij de kleding binnen een maand.

Op dit moment voorzien wij diverse professionele wielerploegen in Portugal van hun tenue, naast een aantal grote clubs in andere landen, terwijl onze prijzen tot 40% lager zijn dan in de rest van Europa. Dit komt omdat wij direct vanuit Portugal bezorgen en niet via dure distributienetwerken opereren. In het Verenigd Koninkrijk en Ierland voorzien wij meer dan 200 winkels en verenigingen van wieler- en triathlonkleding, in Nederland dragen onder anderen de toptriatleten van SBDN-Davilex onze triatlonkleding naar eigen ontwerp, net als de leden van Vahalis. Ook zijn we er trots op toptrialtlete Mirjam Weerd te sponsoren, hier draagt ze onze zelf ontworpen triatlonkleren tijdens de Ironman in Zuid-Afrika, waar ze als vierde eindigde. Wij maken gebruik van full sublimation printing en zorgen ervoor dat uw wielerkleding en triathlonkleding met eigen design er precies zo uitziet als u wilt en gemaakt is van het beste materiaal.

Voor uw design betaalt u de eenmalige opstartprijs van €235 – u kunt zoveel kleuren in uw ontwerp gebruiken als u wilt, zonder extra kosten. Uiteraard kunnen wij ook een ontwerp baseren op uw eigen schetsen of bestaande designs kopieëren. Op onze website kunt u via onze fietsshirt online design tool uw eigen wielertenue ontwerpen, net als andere wieler- en triatlonkleding.

Het minimum aantal exemplaren voor een item met een bepaald design is 10 (verschillende maten zijn natuurlijk mogelijk); als u 5 tot en met 9 exemplaren van een bepaald item (bijvoorbeeld fietsshirts) bestelt, betaalt u 20% extra, als u minder dan 5 exemplaren van een item bestelt, betaalt u 50% extra. Bezorging vindt plaats binnen vier weken nadat u het ontwerp heeft goedgekeurd plus de tijd die het verschepen kost. De bezorgkosten zijn rond de €1,- per item voor aangetekende bezorging in 3 tot 5 dagen – wij rekenen u de exacte kostprijs.

De prijzen zijn exclusief BTW (21%). Als uw bedrijf, club of vereniging bij de Kamer van Koophandel is geregistreerd, hoeft u die niet te betalen, aangezien de kleding vanuit Portugal wordt geëxporteerd.

Wij produceren ook specifieke dameskleding voor wielrennen en triatlon naar uw eigen ontwerp en kunnen bovendien aan al uw specifieke wensen wat betreft pasvorm voldoen. Laat het ons weten als u nog meer informatie nodig heeft en wij horen het graag als u een aantal voorbeelden wilt zien.

Als u nog vragen heeft, neemt u dan alstublieft contact op met Nicole. Haar e-mailadres is nicole@carvalhocustom.com

While half the world still holds its breath for the World Cup, sports fans in England, Portugal, Italy and France, as well as cycling fanatics anywhere else, are ready for the biggest race of the year: the Tour de France. And what a Tour this will be. Not only have the organisers picked out a terrific stage plan, but on top of that a lot of riders seem very keen on making a splash this year in the Tour.

First, of course, there is the most successful Tour de France rider of all times, Lance Armstrong, who has left Team Astana and together with his excellent domestiques Klöden and Leipheimer joined Team Radioshack. Lance has promised that this is his last Tour de France ever, and he had a much better preparation than last year (he still came in third), a second place in the Tour de Suisse confirming his top shape.

Then there is 2007 and 2009 winner Alberto Contador, the talented Spaniard who has focused on nothing but the Tour this year. Contador has one new vulnerability, though: Alexandre Vinokourov. The Kazak is having a pretty good season and it is not sure whether he is willing to step aside and help Alberto wherever he can. As sponsor Astana is a Kazak city, a new schism within the team might just prevent Contador from winning this year. A similar conflict with Armstrong did not stop him last year, so he is still top favourite by a pretty wide margin.

Another major contender will be the younger of the Schleck brothers, Andy. The young Luxembourger who finished second last year, is not only a top climber, but has also improved his time trial abilities a lot. With a strong team by his side, including his own brother Fränk, Andy seems more than ever ready to go for gold. Or yellow, actually.

Those three being the top favourites, a lot of others will want to disturb their supremacy. Among them are Giro d’Italia winner Ivan Basso, world champion Cadel Evans, England’s Bradley Wiggins, Russian crack Denis Mecnhov, 2008 winner Carlos Sastre and Dutch prodigy Robert Gesink. Enough to provide for a very interesting Tour for 2010.

The first week will traditionally be for the sprinters. Last year the mass sprints were completely dominated by Manx Marc Cavendish. He won six stages, but this year he has not demonstrated such an outstanding form as he did then. This gives Tyler Farrar, the American who has already won stages in both the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España, a possibility to complete the treble. German Gerald Ciolek and Norway’s Edvald Boasson Hagen are outsiders, while household names Alessandro Petacchi, Thor Hushovd and Oscar Freire will want to prove that they are not over the hill yet. They are not of course, as some sprinters always leave the race as soon as any hills come in sight, as all sprinters are essentially lazy show ponies

That will be in stage 7, when the Alps are reached. The riders will have taken the first truly difficult hurdle already then, which is stage 3. This stage will lead the peloton over some bits of the Paris-Roubaix course. More than 13 kilometres of cobbled sections will challenge even the most hardened classics expert.

This year the decisive moments will probably arise in the last week of the Tour. Apart from today’s prologue, there is only one time trial, which is scheduled on July the 24th (stage 19). Two days before that, the last Pyrenean stage will finish on top of the famous Col du Tourmalet, giving climb specialists their last chance of many to gain enough buffer time to survive the time trial.

If you are going to make some custom cycling kit made and you like the look of one of the team strips riding, you can always ask us to adapt it to your team/club. We often work from photos of existing team kits and then just change colours, text and logos where necessary.

First things first though, today our eyes are on Rotterdam, where the 97th Tour de France will have its Grand Depart. Bonne chance à tous!

Carvalho Custom Favourites

*****
Contador (Spain)

****
Armstrong (USA), Andy Schleck (Luxembourg)
***
Basso (Italy), Wiggins (Great Britain), Sastre (Spain)
**
Evans (Australia), Menchov (Russia), Vandevelde (USA), Vinokourov (Kazachstan)
*
Gesink (Holland), Fränk Schleck (Luxembourg), Leipheimer (USA), Klöden (Germany), Kreuziger (Czech Republic)

Written by leading cycling pundit, Frank Tieskens