All Roads Lead to (somewhere near) Rome
Although starting a new cycling brand and making everything in Italy may seem like a bit of a cliché, we’ve come to understand how and why the Italians have formed such a formidable reputation in fabric and garment production.
Our road to Italy was far from straightforward. As anyone who has a startup clothing business knows, getting a new product off the ground requires endless months of sampling and development, along with various other considerations at every step of the way. But with each product we've developed, we've learned a little bit more about the industry. In particular, the importance of finding partners who listen to your ideas and understand the vision of your brand.
While it’s true we didn't set out with the goal of producing our clothes in Italy, one of our founding principles at Angry Pablo was that we'd like as much of our production as possible to be in Europe. Why Europe you might ask? Well, it's not just because of the wine and pasta (although those are nice perks). We wanted to be able to visit the facilities that were producing our garments, improve efficiency in product testing and sampling stages, and deliver complete transparency across our supply chains.
Our search for a high quality cycling apparel manufacturer began back in the summer of 2021. We scoured the internet, reached out to contacts, and organized meetings with potential partners. But after every meeting, we were gently let down with the news that we were 'too small'. While this brought back childhood nostalgia (for Felix) of being told you're too short for a rollercoaster ride, we're not ones to give up easily, and so the search continued.
After over a year of setbacks and frustrations, we finally had a breakthrough. A contact put us in touch with a factory in Italy that had forged partnerships with global sports brands such as Nike and Fila. We reached out to them, half-expecting to never hear back. But, after a few zoom calls where we outlined our project, its size and our plans for the future, they invited us out to Italy to visit their factory.
Our new partners share our concerns about the future of the clothing industry and are doing everything in their power to minimise carbon emissions. They work with some of the most innovative performance fabrics currently available, such as Econyl®, an infinitely recyclable nylon yarn made from waste materials like industrial plastic, waste fabric, and fishing nets retrieved from oceans. Econyl®'s production doesn't deplete fossil fuels, pollute the air, or introduce any new materials into circulation.
Moreover, our partners' sustainable practices extend beyond the fabrics they use. Over the past 20 years they have made significant investments in solar technology, and they are now capable of producing almost all of their internal electrical energy and steam generator power in-house.
Over the coming weeks we’ll be putting the final touches to these new collections and we can’t wait to share them with you soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to stay up to date with the latest news and get early access to new product releases, you can do so by signing up to the Angry Pablo Social Club.