I manage a cycling club and am exploring a new vendor for our custom kits. I’m looking into Voler, Cuore and possible Pactimo. I’m hoping for a higher quality kit that will fit a variety of bodies, and in particular, a company that makes a chamois that’s proven for long distance rides (up to centuries). I thought about Castelli but those are race fit as I understand and I’m not sure that’ll work for a lot of people.
Anyone have experience with any of these companies around quality and service?
Some history: We used Eliel for a couple of years initially (~2021) initially but they let us down very significantly a couple of years in (quality slipped but service was atrocious). We switched to Jakroo whose service was great but we didn’t have a good experience with them this year – they just kept dropping the ball. Their kit quality was just ok – no one was especially happy with them (jerseys sagged, people were generally not happy with the chamois) but they were cheaper and had more flexibility around sizing. People wouldn’t wear them unless on our club rides. Since service was Jakroo’s main differentiator but that has now faltered, I’m looking for a new vendor for next year’s kits.
(I feel like this could be an ongoing thread for people who design kits for their clubs!)
Our team/club used the same companies and had the same issues with Jakroo. We also used Voler and Pactimo in the past and their kits and chamois wasn’t highly praised especially when longer rides were key. Likewise with the different body types, those companies didn’t seem to fit with our varied sizes.
As of the last 2 years our designers found a very quality kit and best pricing depending on quantity. Highly recommend them - Tineli.com The chamois pads, quality and even design are top notch. After many miles, race number pinning, overstuffing jersey pockets, these kits are still performing well.
Anyway, just my two cents for another alternative to look into.
My club used Voler a few years ago. They were ok. The biggest complaint was the bibs. They would suffer from see-thru lyrca death with about a years use.
We now use Cuore. More expensive. Has fits from sport to skin tight racer. Quality pretty good. Sticking with them for now, but feel like there might be a company out there with similar quality that is not as expensive.
My club has used Pactimo for the past 5 years. We have ups and downs but generally it works and the ordering is easy via team specific website so everyone can buy and pay for what they want. I have been involved in the design side of the kit and that’s been fairly good but sometimes they have issues with color matching between bibs and jerseys especially if the materials are different. Their sizing works well as long as you take into consideration their descriptions and different body types. Quality is OK and their bibs generally are great in the Summit and Ascent lines.
We found that with Jakroo. They weren’t able to find variants of color that would be noticeably close. I think this is probably a “reasonable” problem but I had hoped that the company might put more effort into trying to match how they looked when printed versus just defaulting to the same color codes.
Yeah that may be a challenge for most of these companies that outsource their production to independent producers in SE Asia. It’s hard to “supervise” from 1000s of miles away and not explode costs. Pactimo produces in the Philippines as of this year. color matching is why we went with neutral black bibs this year.
Interesting comments about Jakroo. My club has used Jakroo since 2018, and have had nothing but excellent service from them. I’ve also seen improvement in their quality of materials and chammy - they’ve introduced the ability to choose different chammies, as well as different lengths for bibshorts. If you would like to have a conversation with an actual person at Jakroo, let me know and I can connect you with my club’s rep - she has been fantastic and is pretty honest about things. She keeps up with the different other companies. I do know that all of these companies are going to be struggling with the changes in the tariff world and de minimus elimination, but they’ve done a really good job communicating with us about things and we just signed another 2-year contract with them and are working to finalize our design for next year with them. Let me know if you want our rep’s contact info - I will dm it to you (or anyone else who wants it!).
(ETA regarding color matching: we always do a test print of our kits, and we have had extensive discussions about color choices for our kits. It’s actually been a terrific process and as I said, our rep is great about all of this.)
Our original rep at Jakroo was pretty good, very proactive and responsive. He left and we transitioned to a new one, but then she went on mat leave and things continually dropped. I had to keep bugging them to get updates and our kits were shipped without any confirmation or communication. People were not getting their sizing recommendations and one person got the wrong size made. We have not been on a contract with them (I didn’t know that was an option) and have just been going project to project.
Thanks for the heads up on Assos. I didn’t know they did custom and will look into it. It does look like their minimum is 20 per piece which might be high for us. Though, I don’t think people would generally complain about quality there (price might be another issue).
We switched from Jackroo to Primal last year and overall it has held up a little better and received more positive feedback, though a few liked jackroo better, fit-wise. We’re sticking with Primal this year, but not terribly enthusastically.
I have heard good things about heavy pedal, but no first-hand experience.
Does anyone have experience with the increasing availability of heat-press logos? It seems all of a sudden that the custom companies are offering them and I wonder about their durability. And, they seem typically only offered in white.