I don’t always post press releases verbatim but when I do it’s gotta be important enough for rule breaking. I’m just stoked/relieved I ordered a bunch of jeans before they made the switch. Read why below.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
swrve, the urban apparel company widely credited with creating the world’s first cycling specific jeans, is leaving the market they helped create to focus their energies on a soon-to-be emerging category.
“Call it a leap of faith if you must but we believe the next step in our evolution as a company is in what we’re calling ‘religious cycling apparel’’’, says Muriel Bartol, swrve General Manager.
“The idea came to us in a vision a few weeks ago. Well, it wasn’t so much a vision as it was a pair of nice missionaries from the Church of Latter Day Saints who stopped by our storefront VeloLove,” she continued.
“I couldn’t believe how absolutely non-functional their clothes were,” said Matt Rolletta, swrve’s Chief Designer. “These kids said they’re on their bikes up to 12 hours a day and that at any given time, there are millions of them around the world doing the exact same thing. Talk about an untapped market.”
“I agreed to take a pamphlet if they agreed to be our beta-testers. One big perk of actually making our own stuff in-house is that by the end of the week, those kids were field testing our prototypes,” he added.
All it took was one day to find out they had a winner on their hands.
“They came back beaming from ear-to-ear about how much comfortable they were on the bike and asked if I could go to a meeting and measure up their fellow elders. The response was incredible,” said Rolletta.
Amid ever changing styles, the consistent look of the LDS missionary uninform is what appeals to Bartol the most.
“Black pants and a crisp white shirt. I can’t tell you what a relief it is going to be to have such a streamlined product line. Goodbye migraines trying to decide between Spanish or Catalina blue.”
If history is an indicator, swrve’s time alone in the new religious category will be short-lived as other, larger companies will try to hitch a ride on their coattails, especially those that could offer helmets and tool kits as part of their missionary package.
With that in mind, Rolletta is already hard at work on swrve’s next product.
“A bike friendly Buddhist Monk robe. Now that’s the holy grail of cycling apparel. It’s shaping up to be the most difficult project of my life but I’m confident we’ll have a working prototype by next April Fool’s Day.”
