054 : ALL ACCESS : G “The cool thing about the Speed Shop is they are not constrained by our regular twice a year seasonal timelines, which allows them to be really creative and focused on innovation with our athletes,” said Pearl Izumi marketing manager Geoff Shaffer. “All of the advancements end up in the line eventually, but not until they are totally happy with the finished project.” The area is a true skunkworks. Any idea, concept or prototype material comes to life in this garage-tinkerer environment. If an idea pops into mind, it goes to sketch, and then they wheel a chair to the sewing machines and make a sample, which then goes into the hands of a pro athlete—whether DeBoom or Garmin-Transitions rider Dave Zabriskie—to test. By the same token, if one of their pros has an odd request, they can make it happen, usually the same day. They specialize in “odd.” In fact, while we perused the area, DeBoom chatted with Speed Shop designer Lia Bybee about this year’s race kit design and re-arranging panel placement. “It’s kinda byzantine—we can create anything, changing art in a day,” Bybee said, add-
ing with an innocent glance at DeBoom “but Tim is not one of those high-maintenance athletes! Honestly, he’s been amazing. He helps us so much understand the real-world needs as they apply to triathlon, like stitches and which are best against chafing.” Fellow Speed Shop designer Ron Rod explained that after a sublimation printer creates the custom design (with all sponsors in the right places), the process of creating a race suit from a white fabric to its sublimated design finish takes 45 seconds. But that’s not, as DeBoom says, the wonderment part. “For me, it’s the fact that it’s not gonna wear away, and you can’t feel it; it’s not like a screenprint; it’s in the fabric, so it moves and breathes so much better than anything screened.” When we visited, the Speed Shop team had DeBoom’s fully-sublimated season race kit— collar, sleeves, chest, back—laid out like a nearly finished jigsaw puzzle, ready for stitching. The Speed Shop is a testing ground for their overseas production. For the pros, it’s done in-house, but the Speed Shop serves as a testing ground for what eventually pass-
es merit for stocking in your local shop. So when DeBoom’s Kona kit is ready, it’ll be made about 20 miles from where he lives. “Flatlocking, cover-stitches, button-holers, bar tackers, all this in an industrial setting is great. Most places don’t have this, and it really speeds up the process of getting these things into our consumer line.” For example, one of the most significant advances from the Speed Shop in Pearl Izumi’s tri apparel line comes with the development of its Transfer Aero fabric, one of the first aero fabrics on the market. The grid pattern was developed by Pearl Izumi’s Japanese offices. Tested in the wind tunnel, company designers found that when stretched over the skin, the fabric’s checkerboard orientation created a boundary layer along the fabric surface, allowing air to pass over the rider with less resistance than occurs against bare skin. The technology was first implemented in the Garmin-Transitions time trial skinsuit and in Tim DeBoom’s Kona race kit. And in an example of trickle-down technology, the aero fabric is used in the top end of the retail tri apparel line.
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