Hi, so my friends and I are thinking if starting a cycling club (roadies only!) at our high school this fall. We were thinking of getting custom jerseys with our school name and colors. Do you know of any places that are fairly inexpensive?

We were looking for sponsors but thought local small business sponsors wouldn't genorate a lot of funds. We were thinking big, something corporate. Our first choice, The Gap, yes, The Gap. The HQ is in our wonderful city and the original founder is an alumni of our high school, although he isn't the CEO anymore, he still owns 25% of the company. This is just an idea which we aren't sure if we should pursue. Should we? Is it too much to ask for?

I don't know who the current CEO is but the founder is almost 80 years old, but he is worth more than 3 billion dollars.

It would not hurt to ask. The worst would be he's says no. The best- he helps you out.

Next best is tapping his connections. He may know of other resources that you had not thought of.

Alumni are most of the time more than willing to help their alma mater.

~jg

Write up a proposal and clearly explain why sponsoring your team is going to benefit him and how much commitment you and your teammates are willing to have towards the team. If you are only going to be out as a team of five guys on ten ocasions, then tell him that so that they know how much exposure they can generate.

The same proposal can be used for smaller local merchants. (more money is better than less)
Big Sponsorship - $1,000-10,000
Small Sponsorship - $300-500

The big guy gets all of the major space on the jersey (shoulders, side panels, collar, back), and the little guys get rear pockets and upper chest space.

check out champion systems, pactimo, and voler for good jerseys, but you can search the Road Biking forum for additional names as this topic has come up many times before.

I know The Gap already sponsors a domestic U19 team, because I've raced with them. I dont recall the name of the team, just that they had Gap logo's on their gloves and jerseys.

was it a small logo or a big one? it could just be ONE gap store sponsoring, not corporate.

No, I dont think they had a full sponsorship. The logos were small.

Try www.champ-sys.com

Full color, dye sublimated jerseys

Minimum order is low, 10 I think. $45 each. Check out there gallery and you'll get an idea of their work. I'm getting ready to order from them, and they've been great to work with so far.

About sponsorship. I don't race, but someone out there might be able to answer this. If you get corporate sponsors, does that monkey with your amatuer status if you ever want to race in sanctioned events?

Consider Voler, from velowear.com: https://www.velowearcustom.com/live_overview.asp.

I like the Verge stuff, myself.

Corporate sponsorship is difficult because the decision has to go through a whole approval process. It has to be justified at a lot of different levels, and one thing you might find is that it is much easier for a corporation like the Gap to come up with $50,000 of sponsorship money than $1,000.

Your best bets are local businesses like your favourite bike shop, cafes, restaurants, real estate brokers, travel agents. Even better, sometimes, is the high-technology start-up headed by a recent graduate of the local highschool.

Offer sponsors at more than $500 a free jersey for their trouble [cost on a jersey will be @ $50] to sweeten the pot. Charge more for high-viz locations: jersey and shorts side-panels, the shorts rear-panel, etc.