Stuart Brooke

BLUE ASSOCIATES SPORTSWEAR LTD

SPORTSWEAR DESIGN AND SOURCING

A high performance sportswear apparel design and sourcing consultancy working with blue chip sports brands within cycle, golf, outdoor, marine, country and fashion markets.

Full turnkey services from concept through to delivered goods on performance apparel that include waterproofs, soft-shell, mid + base layer and accessories.

Sourcing from a trusted network of factories in the Far East that enables target costs and required performance standards to be met.

BLUE ASSOCIATES

We were established in 1997 and have been designing, developing and sourcing high performance sportswear for blue chip sports brands around the globe ever since. Our products and clients often win “Best in Test” against their competitors due to the product we design and produce for them as we approach product development in a different way to most sportswear brands.

Working with sportwear brands in different sports we are ale to look at the sportswear market as a whole rather than focus our research into a specific activity. This allows us to share technologies, fabrics, research, manufacturing techniques and garment features from one sport that may not be obvious to another.

For this reason we are often brought into established high profile sportswear brands that have an internal design and development team to bring some fresh thinking and new concepts to the brand. Most of the product we are asked to design are their top tier, highest performance product.

We also work with many start up brands who have no idea about how to design, develop or source sportswear but have a great idea, route to market and funding in place. Many of these start up brands are now successful brands with some now established as brand leaders within their sports sector.

When we work with any client we ALWAYS start with a blank page and break each garment down into its basic ingredients, right down to which fibres to use to extract the highest performance for the end use. We then source fabrics from our library of technical mills around the world and if we can’t find a suitable material we start to develop our own specifying which fibres to use, how they are blended and the performance finishes required.

Once we have determined the fabrics we start to design the garment based on the required features and build style around these features. We also design and develop all the bespoke trims such as cord locks, buckles, buttons, adjusters and swing tickets.

Sourcing is predominantly Far East based as we find the quality, service, technology, infrastructure and price are all favorable over other alternatives and at the end of the day, if the product is the best quality and is the right price the you sell more, which means everyone wins.