Bike Kit Close-Up: Blur Cycling’s Unique Jerseys
With only 75 of each jersey made, Blur Cycling caters to athletes who want a jersey their training partner doesn’t have.
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With only 75 of each jersey made, Blur Cycling caters to athletes who want a jersey their training partner doesn’t have.
The trio of cyclist friends who created Blur Cycling hold themselves to three standards when designing bike kits: Every collection must have a simple theme, each must be offered in men’s and women’s sizes and only 75 of each jersey can be printed.
“We decided that we wanted each jersey in our small-batch collections to look like it is part of a whole,” says one of the founders, Jonathan Gates. “They’re intentional. They’re planned. This way, it keeps us from getting bored and allows us to sort of re-invent our brand with every collection.”
Gates says that they generally hate the idea of wearing the same kit a dozen other people are wearing, so they keep quantities limited to foster exclusivity. “We’ve carried that through our packaging and will lean into that even harder on our next collection by individually numbering each jersey, i.e., ‘2 of 75,’” he says. “We think that’ll be something really special for people who can get their hands on a jersey before the collection sells out.”
First came the design, then came the hard part—finding the right materials to meet their quality standards. “We sampled materials and manufacturing from all over the world,” Gates says.
But in the end, they wound up using the highest quality fabrics they could find, which—of course—came from Italy (Gates says the fabrics for the jersey feel like “unicorn hair”). They created the Mono, Vol 01 jerseys as a summer collection to withstand hot summers with mesh paneling on the back and sides, and used an Italian Cytech chamois, a staple in the cycling industry.
“It also became really important to us that our kits were made ethically,” Gates says. They partnered with a Canadian manufacturer to sew their kits and are proud of the decision. “Yeah, it lowers our margins significantly, but it also allows us to sleep well at night knowing there aren’t some kids in Myanmar sewing our kits while we’re sleeping.”
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On Him
Check Yo Self jersey, $110, and bibs, $160
On Her
Slat jersey, $110, and bibs, $160
Blurcycling.com