BLUE ASSOCIATES SPORTSWEAR

We are specialists and advocates for sustainable sportswear and supply sportswear brands around the world with eco solutions.

Our Sportswear portfolio is vast and covers many sports. We’ve been established since 1997 and worked with over 250+ sportswear brands so can’t showcase everything. Here are examples of brands we have worked with to give you an idea of our capabilities. We design everything in house and always start with a blank page (No cut and paste or white label goods here). For more details about our portfolio or to discuss our experience within your sportswear sector, please get in touch.

We have provided freelance sportswear designer services that also include development, prototyping, sourcing, production and marketing support since 1997. The business was established to offer performance sportswear brands a quality service to tap into an external design team to support their existing design team and provide a fresh perspective on their design requirements. Since we launched we have worked with some of the biggest names in high-performance sportswear within the cycle, run, outdoor, ski, marine, golf and gym & fitness but over the last 10 years we have also worked with many start-up brands that have a great concept but lack the experience or knowledge on how to design, prototype, source and produce this concept.

Garments branded as made from ‘Recycled Polyester’ are made from PET bottles (the ones filling up our oceans). To make the Recycled polyester fibre, the bottles are collected, compressed and shipped to processing facilities where they are ground into small flakes and then melted into small pellets. The pellets are then heated and spun into a yarn-like fibre where they can then be made into different fabrics. The major benefit of recycled polyester is it uses approx 30% less energy to make garments from this recycled fibre than virgin polyesters. The recycling processes save natural resources and lower greenhouse gas emissions in the use of chemicals. Also, the amount of water used to produce virgin polyester is a fraction of that used to grow cotton, and recycled polyester actually requires minimal water to produce. Recycled polyester also doesn’t lose many of the benefits of virgin polyester, wicking moisture fast and drying fast, something cotton struggles with.

As a brand founder and owner, you know just how much work and investment go into the building of your brand and products in order to make it perfect. When you are putting everything into your collection, there is no room for any error that can jeopardise your success. One area that can become a common pitfall for many founders is sourcing. This is essentially deciding what fabric is going to be used when creating your sportswear garments and also who will manufacture the clothes? While this might sound simple enough, without the proper knowledge, sourcing can become a complete nightmare. Research, that’s the name of the game here. As with anything else, if you are going into it with no idea what you’re looking for, you aren’t going to get very far or select the wrong choice. When you choose a fabric mill or factory, you should have done a complete and thorough research and gathered enough information to know that you are making the very best choice for your brand.

We are 100% independent and produce the sportswear we design for our clients through a network of trusted suppliers we have worked with for many years. We manufacture sportswear across the globe and have partners in China, Vietnam, Portugal, Lithuania, Latvia and the UK. These factories all specialise in Performance Sportswear and produce everything from a simple fast-wicking merino base layer to a fully taped technical foul weather kit. Many of the factories have invested heavily in the latest machinery and manufacturing techniques such as stitch-free, seamless, bonding, heat weld and laser cutting. These factories are all very well established and pride themselves on making for some of the world’s leading sportswear brands around the world.

Looking for squat proof leggings? Trying to find the right factory to produce great squat proof leggings? Developing squat proof leggings is actually pretty straightforward. It’s all about using the right material and this is where you need to focus all your attention. Don’t leave this for the factory to source as they will only use mills or fabrics they want to purchase from their suppliers or worse, use fabrics they have used in past production. Instead, you need to create a tech pack that specifies the fabric quality and fabric mill. By doing this, you are guaranteed the factory will use the quality you require. You also know the quality of the fabric based on the test results you can obtain from the mill.

The word “Sustainable” is most definitely the latest buzzword used by so many brands these days. Most brands that have become “Sustainable” overnight scream from the rooftops about how earth-friendly or eco-friendly their products are; however, many don’t seem to really understand what environmentally friendly actually is. Sustainability …causing little or no damage to the environment and therefore able to continue for a long time [REF] Pretty simple eh? You would think so, however, we see so many brands getting this completely wrong.

Starting your own sportswear or activewear brand? Our Sportswear StartUp Pack provides information on all of the key aspects required to launch a successful sportswear brand.

At long last, the world has woken up to the devastation we have done to the planet over the decades and the latest story to hit the headlines are the oceans that are full of our unwanted plastic. The media has helped highlight this major issue to consumers that approach the use of plastic differently now that they understand the impacts on one-use plastic consumption. Packaging, bags and bottles are all changing, and the future will be to produce all of these one-use items to more environmentally friendly materials. The same is also going to happen to synthetic fibre sportswear with brands now looking to switch from virgin polyester to recycled polyester, utilising the waste that pollutes our oceans.