Rapha Custom, its new online kit customisation tool, promises an easy way of creating a unique look for team, club or group riding kits.
The platform is simple to use and offers a multitude of possibilities for head-to-toe (or, more precisely, neck-to-knee) customisation, including fabric pattern and colours, text with various fonts and colours, and plenty of spaces to upload your own logos.
- Create a unique helmet design with Giro's Aether MIPS Custom
- Custom builder Mosaic offers stock titanium frames
- Buyer's guide to ordering custom cycling clothing
This means there's great potential to lose hours changing the look of your next riding kit, swapping logo and text positions, zip and gripper colours and scaling and transforming patterns. Play, adjust, order and within eight weeks, Rapha says, your kit will arrive.
Rapha Custom Pro Team and Classic kit
The tool launches with a limited range of products, but plans are already afoot for further additions to the range. Currently, men’s and women’s Pro Team and Classic ranges are available from Rapha Custom, plus some accessories.
Available kit includes The Pro Team Midweight Jersey, Pro Team Bib Shorts and Pro Team Long Sleeve Aero Jersey, all of which are made for “training and competition, with lightweight, technical fabrics that are cut close for speed,” and the Classic Flyweight Jersey, “for the weekend ride and longer distance touring.”
A Pro Team Lightweight Gilet, Pro Team Sleeveless Base Layer and Lightweight Arm Warmers are also ready to customise.
Rapha Custom's personalisation and order process
To help grasp what a custom kit might turn out like, online mock-ups help to gain a visual on the final outcome, while Rapha Clubhouses (the company’s stores) are equipped with Rapha Custom tool boxes, including brochures and inspirational design ideas, fabric swatches and kit samples.
Rapha Custom is intended for groups, not individuals, and therefore orders start at five minimum units. Scaled pricing means popular Rapha products might even work out cheaper than their standard-issue counterparts, at least for those ordering bulk quantities in the dozens or even hundreds.
The fact such quantities are factored in listed pricing alludes to the brand’s serious intentions for the tool.
For comparison, a standard Classic Flyweight Jersey is priced at £100 / €120 / $135 / AU$175, while the custom version ranges from £110 / €130 / $155 / AU$200 per unit (for the minimum order quantity of five) to £75 / €90 / $115 / AU$140 per unit for orders of over 100 units.
So you get all the performance of Rapha products but with your own look, be it as bad or beautiful as you wish.
