CyclistGobik or go home: How the Spanish clothing brand went from garage project to global powerhouseFor many cyclists, Gobik may bring about a sense of dj vu youve definitely seen the name before, but where and why? Gobik is the Spanish clothing brand that youll have seen being sported by Tadej Pogaar and his UAE Team Emirates squad as the Slovenian dominated the 2021 Tour de France, and more recently youll have seen the kit on Ineos Grenadiers, Movistar Team and FDJ-Suez riders. So how did Gobik come out of nowhere to winning the Tour de France? Well, for starters it didnt entirely come out of nowhere.GobikGobik was actually started in a garage in Yecla, a town in Murcia in the southeast of Spain, by Jos Ramn Ortn and Alberto Garca in 2010. The pair were childhood friends, working at the time in motorbike helmets and architecture respectively, and would ride together in their spare time. One day they decided to make some customised kit for themselves, and they spent the next few years experimenting and refining their ideas. Eventually other cyclists around the town started asking if Jos Ramn and Alberto could make something for them too. Hype had started to build and the whole thing was quickly getting a bit much to be a hobby, so three years since that first creation they quit their jobs to focus fully on Gobik. Its safe to say it paid off. A little over ten years later Gobik has grown dramatically; it has become a world leader in custom cycling kit production, has dressed champions in road, gravel and mountain biking, launched its own designs, scaled up massively while keeping manufacturing in-house where possible, and its by no means settled.Its like HP or Apple, jokes Gobiks marketing and sales director Albert Medrano. Jos Ramn and Alberto are obsessed about quality, even when it was a hobby they were always looking to keep improving the products, choosing better fabrics, changing how to transfer colours, et cetera. They were always non-conformist, they just tried to improve and improve. Thats taken them to now, with around 200 people working at Gobik in Yecla, with 200 more working for the company elsewhere.GobikWhile the business started in custom designs, these days its a balance, Medrano says its a 50/50 split between custom and the collection, and both get specialist treatment at Gobik HQ. When Gobik was a hobby, Jos Ramn and Alberto were outsourcing production, but when they launched the brand they started producing everything in house and putting all their money back into new machinery, bigger facilities and things like that. It wasnt planned to build new facilities after a certain timeframe, it happened very organically, but now were planning for the future. Our latest new facility was finished last year, and we decided to keep the offices in the old building to leave space in the new building to grow the factory even more we have space to double production, which well need if the demand keeps growing as it has been. GobikInnovation is a big focus of Gobiks project, with part of its space already reserved for new machinery being purchasing in order to broaden the possibilities of the designs it can create, and part of the space for a sewing team purely focussed on prototypes and, importantly, pro teams.Joining with UAE Team Emirates in 2021 was a huge milestone for the brand. Not only did it bring international exposure but it helped us learn a lot, Medrano explains. The technicality of our products jumped exponentially because the demand from the team was way bigger than the demand wed had before then. And now working with Movistar Team and Ineos Grenadiers, the teams and the riders are asking for a really high level.The teams are lucky to have us as a sponsor though, because since we control everything in terms of production, we can easily do tests and have a back and forth. When we were with UAE we needed to develop the technology a lot, but right now the regular products of our collection are meeting the standards already. But then there are lots of conversations with team directors and riders, so we can have one product for the first race of the season and change and adapt the features throughout the season to keep up with the needs of the riders. We have one person whose job it is to keep in regular contact with the teams to be able to know what they need and keep up with the pace of how that changes.Gobik has already won on the biggest of stages and is everywhere in its native Spain, so the next target it the world. The next part of the companys growth is international. The phase kicked off with the completion of its new facility and recently continued with a new brand identity under the slogan: What a Ride, which not only signifies the joy of cycling and the call of the commentators during a race, but also journeys in life. And for Gobik as a business, its been a hell of a ride so far, and this is just the beginning.The post Gobik or go home: How the Spanish clothing brand went from garage project to global powerhouse appeared first on Cyclist.