Club Clothing is the backbone of any organizations promotional effort. Every cyclist wears some form of advertisement for any number of manufacturers. It could be the clothing manufacturer, Equipment, a Cycling event, A Bike Store, etc. Purchasing and wearing the clothing your club has designated as the official apparel is the start of a club’s Identification on the road. When watching any of the Pro cycling events seeing your team in their kits working together may give you the satisfaction of a cohesive group or riders. OCW in conjunction with Paramount Racing has a unique opportunity to wear the kit of our racing team that we financially support. Put yourself in the position of the pro team’s sponsors that are financing thousands if not millions of dollars to keep the team competitive and in the spectator’s eye. OCW has done this for the first time by working with our race team to create a design that we anticipate to be around for the next few years. One of the many goals as president was to build more club pride and it starts with the purchase of the club jersey at a subsidized price to maintain as low a cost as possible for members.

 

I see some great things for OCW in the future, plans that include a jersey ride on certain dates. Events that we will require you to be in the club’s jersey, this might seem counter productive but this has been this way in any number of organizations, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Professional sports teams, and many other organizations that part of the uniqueness is the clothing. I hope that you don’t take this wrong but I find that not purchasing the club clothing and proudly wearing it is almost the same as saying I don’t care about the club and its future. It has been suggested that all future club members will as part of the initial club membership be required to purchase the Jersey and from then on the membership dues will be the normal rate. So far our sales have been lackluster since the launch last week. I find that disturbing and in need of some analysis of why. I welcome your insights and comments.