Speaking the Language of Performance Set athleticwear in action… B Y H E A T H E R B . F R I E D
You arrive early to visualize your selling points, stretch out your materials. Just before your spec- tators arrive, your mind warms
up with fabric functionality repetitions,
preparing to impress with your attuned
selling abilities. The competition has nothing on you. Your performance athleticwear
sales presentation is a guaranteed win. This
month, with coaching from some of the
pros, Printwear trains you to deliver peak
performance when presenting this category.
Wick works
First up in the game plan is understand-
ing and communicating performance ap-
parel’s technical terminology. The most
common, according to Imprints Whole-
sale’s Scott Lynes, is moisture manage-
ment, including moisture wicking and
quick drying. “Also known as Cool Fit,
the dry-wicking capability draws mois-
ture/perspiration away from skin while
transporting moisture to the outside of
the fabric where it evaporates, keeping
you cool and comfortable.”
This transportation and evaporation
equation is accomplished two ways, reports
Mark Mertens, A4, explaining that the
first is built into the fiber and the second
applied onto it. “Many of the yarns actu-
ally transport moisture, they’re channeled
or they’re micro-denier yarns,” remarks
Mertens, mentioning DuPont’s COOL-
MAX as one of the first to this functional-
ity finish line. Looking at a filament yarn
under a microscope will show the ruts in
the yarn, he explains. These ruts actually
act as little channels through which the
moisture moves away from the garment.
Chemicals, on the other hand, act as wick-
ers by causing moisture to diffuse: “If you
put a droplet of water on the fabric, the
42 • PRINTWEAR • JUNE 2010
water will break down and diffuse through
the garment,” he says.
Fight the funk
Another treatment applied to enhance
fabric’s performance involves antimicrobial abilities. “Antimicrobial fabrics are
usually treated with a chemical that kills
bacteria, eliminating odor,” states Margaret Crow of S&S Activewear. Cocona—
an activated carbon made from coconut
shells—and bamboo are naturally antimicrobial, Crow reports. A popular technical feature, Lynes adds that antimicrobial
treatment provides odor protection that
won’t wash out.
This is good news for hockey players
and wrestlers around whom the technol-
ogy was developed to help win the battle
against staph infection, seemingly trans-
mitted through equipment and uniforms,
Mertens reports. He argues, however,
that overall antimicrobial claims should
be challenged, being a hard property to
achieve, whereas odor repellency is fairly
easy to execute and makes a difference,
in his view, to the athletic customer. “I
don’t think there are too many things that
are truly antimicrobial, but if you can
do things that prevent the garment from
getting that terrible locker-room stench,
next to the wicking capabilities, that’s re-
ally important.”
Unappealing-aroma eradicator to the
rescue, charcoal has enormous surface
area to absorb odor, according to Mertens,
who mentions the substance in the con-
text of nanotechnology. With nanotech-
nology, the molecules that make up fibers
and yarns are made smaller, he reports.
Taking a polymer and subdividing it, like
nano-seconds, smaller molecules mean
more surface area. “We’re seeing amaz-
ing fabric developments, charcoal-based
gear, nanotechnology so that there’s much
more surface area to the molecules in the
yarn so they absorb faster, they wick bet-
ter.”
Stretch, compress, recover Zooming the microscope outward, a property Mertens sees accepted and asked for by the mainstream is stretch capabili- ties, and Crow encourages those peddling performance to look for such character- istics in athletic garments. “Four-way stretch means that the apparel moves with the wearer during intense physical activity,” Crow comments. “As an added positive characteristic, garments with four-way stretch will not lose their shape during a workout or game.” Said stretch has to do with the stitch and amount of spandex therein, Mertens explains, pointing to a new generation of yarns achieving mechanical stretch by taking a filament yarn, putting a crinkle yarn around it and “getting a fair amount of action just from the stitch and yarn.” Compression technology, he goes on, consists of a warp knit with great recovery in all directions. “It isn’t just pulling you north and south or east and west, it fits you like a sausage casing, and it compress- es you, it holds your muscles firm. Alleg- edly, it prevents injury, keeps you warmer, warms you up faster,” he remarks. A four- way stretch with warp-knit construction, compression gear has at least 13 percent Lycra, but usually incorporates 20, ac- cording to Mertens. “There’s stretch, and then there’s recovery, and these fabrics that they claim compress have enormous recovery capabilities,” he states. “The heavier you make them, the more they recover, the more the compression is.”
