After kicking and stroking half a mile through murky reservoir waters and, while drying out, peddling another 12.4, Taylor Jones still faces over three more miles on foot, pushing her Gumby legs to the finish line. And that’s what they call an abbreviated triathlon. Two months away from competing under Colorado’s blazing August sun, Jones will need all the time she has left to continue preparing her body for each trying leg. But where race-day apparel is concerned, she’s already well prepared.

“I purchased a Danskin tank from the Danskin Triathlon collection,” Jones reports. The performance tank’s fabric is moisture wicking and resistant to chlorine and pool chemicals, she says, so it can double as a top for training and competing. Her bike shorts, she explains, are equipped with fast-drying padding, allowing her to wear them during all three race stages comfortably. “My ultimate goal was to have a top and bottom I can be comfortable in during the whole race. With this set-up, I am covered for all three events!” She stresses the importance of multi-functional performance gear and, through her purchases, demonstrates the demand for performance-apparel components seen all the way from dedicated athletes to general consumers. With comfort and overall functionality, performance athleticwear carries a purpose, and deserves no less than purposeful promotion.

Find comfort in characteristics

Vapor Apparel’s Chris Bernat names durability as one detail decorators can convey to strengthen performance apparel’s appeal. “Performance apparel does not shrink like cotton and tends to last longer for people like landscapers, touring companies and others who want the shirt to last for a long time in physical environments,” Bernat states. “Comfort is another critical feature,” he adds.“Performance apparel comes in many different types of fabrics. If you are sublimating the performance apparel, then the hand and full-color graphics are big features.” While not technical in nature, common comfort is an important selling point because it’s the ultimate goal of moisture wicking, breathing and many other performance-fabric features.

To attain that comfort, Chris Cassidy of LaxWorld finds the patrons at his athletic-apparel store buying roomier performance styles. “For my business I would say that we’re selling more of the looser-fitting stuff,” he states. Cassidy sees people giving up Under Armour-like snugness in favor of more T-shirt-typical cuts. “I think they like to wear it because it’s a little more versatile, so it’s not something that you’re only wearing underneath your lacrosse pads before a game, but something that you can also wear to work out in.”

Moisture wicking is another comfort-related feature that’s frequently found, and Mark Collins of Halcyon Printing brings up a creative point to articulate in sales presentations. “People who work outdoors long hours realize that a performance-fabric shirt that wicks moisture during the summer will give them energy for longer periods of time,” he reports, explaining that when a shirt pulls moisture off the body, it allows the skin to thermo-regulate more efficiently, taking up less energy and therefore affording the wearer more. “Once they try a performance fabric shirt, they realize not only do they get a longer work day out of an employee, but this shirt’s easier to clean. It’s a little more stain resistant than a traditional cotton garment,” Collins explains. He adds that lawn and maintenance crews are prone to up their budget from the three or four dollars they typically spend once they’ve experienced the difference between a regular and a performance T.

When selecting what performance styles to offer and market as a decorator, Cassidy advises paying particular attention to elasticity and polyester content, being sure that not too many other materials made their way in. Because, according to Cassidy, when it comes to performance wear, more cotton equals more problems: “It’s going to probably retain the sweat, the water and stuff that gets on the shirt more than something that’s say an all-polyester.”

As crucial as it is to a garment’s performance, polyester construction plays an even bigger role in this specialty genre’s decoration.

Merging markets: Performance fabrics are part of a trend in which different genres of clothing are bleeding over into each other. Where street meets couture, sports blends to high fashion, and corporate mixes with sports, sublimation and performance fabrics spill to cover these junctions. (Images courtesy Mark Collins, Halcyon Printing.)

Embellishment endeavors

“The number-one choice is sublimation,” Collins asserts with regard to performance-athleticwear embellishment. To be rendered sublimatable, a garment must posses some polyester component and, as with moisture wicking, the more poly, the better. “If it’s a one-hundred percent polyester garment, you’re going to have the best possible print with the fabric being affected by heat the least,” explains Collins. “Quite often they have seven to ten percent Lycra or spandex to give them flexibility and the ability to stretch.” Collins likens heat’s sometimes dramatic affect on those non-poly threads to an old rubber band that is cracked, dried and all but broken. “You try and pull it for it to flex, it’ll snap. Well, heat will have the same affect on Lycra and spandex. After you apply heat to them, it compromises the structural integrity of the thread and, after the printing process is done, you might not see a problem, but if you were to stretch the fabric the way it were to be stretched while being put on a human body, quite often it will not have the elasticity to spring back into shape.”

Commanding components: Today's performers build their body's endurance and expect from their clothing durability to match. It is these and other performance properties which, should never go unmentioned, lest they go unnoticed by interested athletes. (Images courtesy Alo.) To make things even more particular, it takes more than just any old 100 percent polyester shirt to produce a successful sublimation print because precise chemistry is involved. “I would say the number one issue is that the majority of garments are created with performance and style in mind, but not sublimation,” says Collins. “And sublimation does require that fabric to be able to hold a high heat. Polyester has a memory; it remembers the highest heat that it comes in contact with, and as a result, heat can change the fabric.” One change he mentions is piqué or other knit performance fabrics’ tendency to take on a permanent and undesirable shine after being heat pressed to the required activation window of 385 to 405°F.

With these variables in mind, Collins strongly recommends thorough research and development, being sure that test garments come out successfully before producing an entire order. “I always tell my crew and customers as well, if you’ve got a hundred-piece run and you have a hundred people that need garments, you need to go ahead and build in two to five percent overage into the run,” Collins says. With this method, he explains, the order will still be filled should misprints or problems occur. “And that also gives you a garment to test print and put through and try the different methods on. Your front-end testing, even though it may take half hour, forty-five minutes, that is much less costly than getting a job of a hundred-plus shirts returned because sufficient testing wasn’t done off the bat.”

Even when being proactive, there is only so much experimentation decorators can do within those temperature parameters, below which sublimation inks will not permeate a garment. “You can experiment with your settings and your pressure and your heat and sublimation,” Collins remarks. “But if, after your initial testing, you still can’t get a perfect print without damaging the garment, that’s when you would want to switch to a different type of embellishment.”

Where sublimation leaves off, screen printing and heat-transfer alternatives pick up, especially with sublimation’s biggest limitation: dark garments. Collins suggests turning to screen printing when a one-color job on dark is in order, being sure, once again, to run a few test garments: “Obviously, with screen printing you have to cure the ink, so the ink goes through a tunnel dryer at a very high temperature. If we’re printing on a new fabric that we’ve never attempted before, we’ll put a test print on the fabric and send it down the dryer at our standard cotton curing speed, which we know will cure the ink that we’re using, the plastisol ink, on cotton.” After that, standard stretch, rub and wash tests can determine whether the ink is completely cured.

Digital heat transfers take the stage when the job calls for multi-colored prints on dark garments because, according to Collins, they offer a lighter, more colorful print: “The need for very thin print is even more important on performance fabrics because most are very thin, breathable fabrics.” Collins reasons that screen printing multiple colors on dark substrates requires at least one layer of white underbase for opacity, weighing down the lightweight shirt with multiple layers of ink.

There are, of course, more decoration options for performance athleticwear, but whichever method is chosen, embellishers must take special care to work with the performance characteristics. For instance, fabrics with built in moisture-wicking capabilities will also wick away water-based inks down the length of the tread through channels, making this combo a difficult one. However, water-based inks have been used successfully on garments treated with a moisture-wick coating, according to Collins. For sublimation, he reiterates the importance of choosing garments dedicated to that technique because, otherwise, the molecular chemical change that occurs may interfere with those molecules’ ability to perform.

Unfortunately, the garment selection is not always the decorator’s. “Quite often the customer comes to us and says they’re being sponsored by Adidas or Puma or somebody who’s making performance fabrics, and that performance fabric has not been tested for sublimation or has not been engineered for sublimation,” Collins cautions. “So that’s when you bring it in house and you do your own testing; you want to do that prior to accepting the job.”

Decoration sensation

While most consumers approach athleticwear for the performance, they ultimately purchase for the embellishments. “The tank is a solid color with hibiscus flowers near the waist and ‘Danskin’ near the chest,” racer Jones reports. “I thought the subtle flowersreally added to the tank and were very appealing to me. Theswim cap also has hibiscus flowers so I thought they fit nicely together.” Jones admits that she was mainly focused on performance characteristics with style coming in a close second, but was pleased to find performance apparel she actually enjoys wearing. “Most athletic clothing for women is either too girly for me—ie: pink—or just a solid color,” she remarks. “I think that is what I really liked about the Danskin tank I purchased. It had a small girly touch but not too over-the-top."

Feeling is believing: Let customers touch, feel and experience performance athleticwear's capabilities and, despite a higher price point, they're more likely to stick with a performer. (Image courtesy Vapor Apparel.) On what other athletes and general consumers are purchasing, Chris Cassidy sees off-center prints cycling through his store. “I call it almost surfer or skateboard type stuff,” he comments. Instead of front and center, these embellishments end up in the top corner or down low and off to the side. Also referred to as a graffiti style, Cassidy sells surfer/skateboard-influenced gear with lacrosse-specific designs or details based around some part of a customer’s logo.

“Sublimatable hoodies that redefine placement options are great for all kinds of organizations,” Vapor’s Bernat agrees. He lists a number of innovative markets in which to introduce performance styles when incoming business slows, including on-location events, club-level organizations and active-lifestyle venues. “The best opportunity lies in the ‘mezzanine’ level market—too small for the big guys to focus on but big enough where they want their brand available in performance tops,” Bernat offers. “Kayaking tours and other outdoor-related day trips are great examples of where to go. Another good market is companies with a lot of outdoor employees.” He also stresses opportunities with non-commercial organizations: “Go after clubs! The motorcycle club, the running club, the cycling club, the hiking club, the garden club, the kayak club. Parks, resorts, teams of all types and people seeking photographic art find themselves considering performance apparel.Athletic venues buy decorated performance apparel as do tournaments. Yoga is another great area and don’t forget the spas.”

However performance apparel gets in customers’ hands, this gear is sure to increase the comfort and cool factor for lounger to marathoner alike. With garments that take her from training to event day and seamlessly from one triathlon segment to another, Jones’s apparel will all but compete for her. And regardless of her final standings, she can at least be certain her clothes will perform just as hard as she does.