Printwear & Promotion The Total Promotional Package
Roland DG has enabled Peak UK to offer its Racer ST garment to Olympic teams and professional athletes across the world.
The Racer ST garment was the brainchild of Peak UK founder, Peter Astles, and it took the former slalom racer and his team of 10 staff nearly four years to perfect the garment. The Racer ST combines a jacket, life jacket and spraydeck into one garment.
This amalgamation has reduced the thickness of the life jacket by 20-30mm and with time penalties given to competitors if they hit a slalom pole, this reduction provides canoeists with a greater margin of error. In addition to this, the overall weight of the canoeist’s apparel is lighter, resulting in increased speed as they race down the course against the clock.
Mr Astles said: “From the very early stages of the initial idea, we knew we had a completely unique and ground-breaking piece of kit that could give athletes the edge over their competitors. With the Rio 2016 Olympic Games coming up, we decided to approach British Canoeing and explore the possibility of supplying the kit for the athletes.”
British Canoeing was won other and entered a partnership with Peak UK to become official supplier of the kit at the Olympic Games, however the garments needed to be personalised with Team GB’s branding.
Mr Astles continued: “As soon as we partnered with British Canoeing, it was clear that we needed to invest in a textile machine that could deliver the customisation requirements needed for branded garments. We were instantly drawn to the Roland DG Texart RT-640 Dye-Sublimation Transfer Printer because it was more industrial and robust than its competitors, with the open design making it easier to service, clean and maintain. We quickly got to grips with the machine and one year later, we still cannot fault it. The machine is truly faultless, effortlessly printing high quality prints to the extent where we haven’t had one bad print.”
Following the Olympics in Rio, there was a huge surge in interest for the ST Racer garment from other national canoeing teams and thanks to the RT-640, Peak UK was able to exploit this new business.
Mr Astles added: “The RT-640 enabled us to quickly and easily print the unique and bespoke designs needed to cater for national teams and professional athletes; from national emblems to sponsors to patriotic colours.”
Since last year, Peak UK has partnered with a number of the world’s top canoeists and their respective national teams to supply the ST Racer as part of their kit including France, Germany and the Czech Republic.
