Room for improvement
Posted by Gavin
Wouldn't it be nice if we only ever made things that were meant to be simply put on a shelf and admired. Or garments that were only ever worn once a year [thinking ball gowns / DJ's here]. The reality though is that we design and make performance gear for high-energy sports that, by definition, are pretty demanding. In fact every time you train [unless you're a football who has logged onto the wrong site] you will be pushing your body - and the clothing you are standing [or sitting] in - to it's limits almost every day. And let's be honest - do you really look after your kit in the same, delicate, way that you would a ball gown?
Anyway, on the assumption that you don't, we know that we have to make our clothing as 'bombproof' as possible and we know that over the years it will have to withstand an enormous amount of abuse. Fortunately [over the last few years especially] we've got pretty good at it - as we know that spending time repairing garments benefits absolutely nobody.
Inevitably though, as we all sadly live in that thing called 'the real world', occasionally things will need repairing [unless of course you follow our preferred option and simply frame the kit for posterity] and this of course applies to any [and all!] clothing manufacturers. If any supplier ever tells you they never have any problems, you had better duck quickly as their nose will be getting longer by the second]. Is there anybody out there who has never taken anything back to a clothes shop? We'd be surprised to say the least. We often hear stories about problems with some of our competitors gear but the one thing we don't do is gloat. Instead it just makes us concentrate even more on what we're doing ['there but for the grace...']. To put it in some context though, over the last few years we have had problems reported with less than 0.5% of our garments. Not a bad statistic we reckon.
In fact we're so confident in the durability of our garments [bluntly we can only do this as we have such a low return rate] that we offer a full lifetime guarantee on the 'construction' of all our garments. What does that actually mean? Well, it means that if you send a garment back to us [providing it's been through the wash - something to do with Health and Safety believe it or not!] we will always repair it for you as much as possible, as soon as possible and for free. If you get a receipt for the postage to us, we'll even refund that.
It's also inevitable that occasionally we will encounter a recurring problem that can then effect a number of garments. The one silver lining to this is that at least it is then possible to get to the root of it quickly. Normally problems like this relate to fabrics [the idea behind our test pilots and 'Product Development Partners' is that they iron out any problems with the design before we introduce a garment] and, once again, they are pretty rare. So needless to say we've had two come along at once over the last few months [bit like buses...].
The first relates to the stretch waterproof panels we use in our Reflex Jacket. The Reflex has been amazingly popular since we launched it a couple of years ago [and of course it's the jacket that both Boat Race crews chose] but this year we did 'tweak' a couple of things on it - including the waterproof stretch side panels. Up until then we had been using a fabric that was coated specially for us by a Nottingham company [who also do work for Polartec] and it worked really well. But we also felt that it was a little too heavy.
So this year we swapped it for the VentX fabric - coming from a Scottish mill who also supply companies such as Craft [www.craft.se] - which is a lot lighter. Our initial testing showed that it worked well as a direct replacement, however [there had to be a 'but'] it is now becoming clearer, as we are starting to get feedback from a number of clubs [including one Oxbridge club in particular] that it is not quite strong enough and can tear [although only in certain circumstances and in one particular place on the shoulders]. Does this mean that all the Reflex Jackets will be effected? No, of course not. Although it's bound to effect a few more than we know about at the moment. What it does mean though is that we are already looking at a replacement fabric and in fact it's being tested as we speak [you don't hang around when you know there is a problem brewing]. We'll of course have samples available for everyone to have a look at when we start to get out and about at regattas this summer [starting at BUSA].
The other problem that has reared it's head recently relates to colour 'running' in suits. Again, does that mean that every suit we have produced over the last few months will suffer from it? No, of course not. Compared to some of the other manufacturers we have always been very lucky with this [so it had to catch up with us at some stage]. In an ideal world we wouldn't produce skinwear that had any white in it at all [the fabric dyers would certainly appreciate this - they hate rowers]. Dreaming over though, we are of course now working with the specialist mill [who knit all our enhanced Meryl fabrics] to sort out the problem. In theory it's something that the knitters and the dyers will have to solve but in practice we never forget that you're our customer and therefore it's up to us to sort it out.
Will these be the last problems we ever encounter? No, of course not. Not unless we start to make ball gowns [getting more tempting by the minute]. Importantly though we know there is always room for improvement - the trick is to get to the problem before it becomes, well - a problem.
PS If you ever do want to return anything to us please just make sure that you send it back via the Post Office so that you can get from them a 'Proof Of Posting' [it's free]. We'll promise to repair it for you, what we can't promise is that Royal Mail will get it back to us safely and if you haven't got the receipt there's nothing we can do to help. 'Constant Improvement' is one thing, Mission Impossible is quite another....
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