best run colour choices by the spouse, OK?
Shorts, Stuff
Suggested by a reader, Australian company Eleven vélo manufactures high-end cycling kit to order- and to their customers’ designs. The idea is an interesting one: rather than making what they think riders want, Eleven will build whatever your imagination and pocketbook allow. Guided by firm environmental and labour principles, Eleven’s gear is sewn in Sydney using Merino wool from Victoria (Southern Australia), Lycra from Italy, thread from Germany, and zippers from Switzerland or the USA.
By far the coolest bit is the online kit designer. Going beyond simple colour choices, the Eleven vélo website allows visitors to choose things like jersey zipper length or to add features like reflective stripes and U-lock holsters. Even knee warmers and cycling caps can reflect your unique aesthetic. If that’s not enough customisation, a Eleven’s bespoke programme will build their pieces to fit the rider. A self-measurement guide and a number of personalisation levels are available.
Given the company’s commitment to first-world labour standards and environmental practices, pricing looks surprisingly reasonable. Merino Trail Jerseys start at AU$120/€76/£65/US$105 (today) and the more complex Premium Trail Shorts at AU$226.60/€143/£122/US$197. More at eleven.cc.
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Seems like a really good idea but there’s an awful lot of shipping involved. Would like to see a UK company doing something similar.
“Guided by firm environmental and labour principles, Eleven’s gear is sewn in Sydney using Merino wool from Victoria (Southern Australia), Lycra from Italy, thread from Germany, and zippers from Switzerland or the USA”
Then shipped to the UK to us?
Sounds really environmentally friendly to me
Hey STW (and the the reader who let you know about us), many thanks for the mention – it’s super appreciated.
I’d just like to comment on the above re. ‘shipping’….
The reality is everything manufactured is shipped, it just comes down to how and where…
For us, we mostly tap into suppliers that already have stock held locally. So the threads, materials etc. are drawn down from inventory already held in Australia (our Merino is already made here, so it’s just a direct overnight road trip from supplier to us). The only exception are the zips and pads, which come directly from Switzerland/Italy. From a production point of view, that means the transport involved is kept to a minimum – supplies are one step to us before we sew and dispatch to the customer direct from Sydney.
Compare this with ‘mass production’ somewhere in Asia:
For the same given supplies (i.e. suppliers that only have a single source of production – our, zips, threads and pads are ONLY made in Europe, not at secondary source in China) you need to ship all your materials into Asia, assemble, then ship out, either to a central distribution point (and then on to distributors globally), or direct to global distribution points and from there to either shops or customers. That’s a minimum of three steps of global level logistics transport before it gets into your hands – we have one step of global logistics before we ship to you the customer.
So on the scale of globalised design and manufacture, we are far more friendly than many of our counterparts when it comes to essential base level shipping.
Cheers,
Gerard
Really good to see an explanation of something I know very little about. There’s no guarantee that a UK based company would have less than 3-4 stages of “global level logistics” either. At least now if I order anything from eleven vélo I know something about the environmental cost. Thanks for taking the time to post a reply Gerard.
gbozo49, no problems! There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors that goes on these days; walking the factory floor of frame suppliers in Taiwan shows you just much smoke and just how many mirrors are used, depending on the brand in question. Same goes for most other sectors, including clothing… unfortunately.