CyclistHow by women, for women brands are pushing the cycling clothing industry forwardAcross many sports, women feel short of suitable options: a survey of around 500 women by Womens Sports Store found that 82% of active women said sports products did not fit them properly.In cycling, some women are responding to the issue by creating their own performance apparel, challenging a market they see as treating womens clothing as an afterthought, with womens ranges often amounting to a more feminine version of mens kit: the shrink it and pink it approach.But with many established brands now offering extensive womens ranges and testing their kit on women, are by women, for women brands genuinely doing things differently?What is a by women, for women brand?Madbees is founded by two experienced triathletes who wanted to help women feel confident and empowered on their bikes and in their kit. MadbeesBy women, for women brands are women-founded brands that cater exclusively to women, or that started with women in mind, and whose founder is the target market. These have multiplied in the last decade, often emerging from frustration with the lack of well-designed, thoroughly tested womens cycling clothing and a desire to build products around womens own ideas of what cycling kit could and should be. The result can be new products, or redesigned versions of known products, often with more inventive colours and patterns.Iris, Madbees, Viva Velo, Jelenew, Luca and Trail Bloom are among the brands taking this approach, while Velocio is an earlier example of a company that pioneered technical womens cycling apparel.What connects these brands is not necessarily that they make better cycling clothing. Rather, they tend to start with problems that have been overlooked by the wider apparel industry: how women use their kit, how different bodies need it to fit, and what might make more women feel comfortable and confident on bikes.Their impact can therefore be seen in three areas: product innovation, more considered approaches to fit and inclusivity and the communities they build around their products.A driver of innovationLucas All-In-One suit is one of a few genuine innovations created by by women, for women brands. LucaOne of the clearest markers of the added value of by women, for women brands is their role as innovators in the world of cycling apparel.Velocio was created in 2014 by Kristy Scrymgeour and Brad Sheehan and originally only offered a womens line. One of the first brands to design highly technical cycling gear specifically for women, it was a pioneer in selling bibs that allow for nature breaks without removing most other clothing. Quick-release bibs have since been adopted by many apparel brands.Newer brands have been showcasing innovations on a similar scale since. In 2020, Veloine, a German brand, was the first performance-oriented brand to produce maternity cycling apparel. While it has since gone out of business, the concept is slowly being picked up by other manufacturers. Jelenew came up with the idea of a sports bra with a cutout for a heart rate monitor to avoid chafing caused by two competing bands at the same level. Wilma created a removable, quick-dry menstrual chamois.Some garments are redesigned from the ground up: Luca manufactures an all-in-one, a chamois-equipped one-piece suit with a crossover front instead of traditional bibs with braces that often get in the way of breasts and are revealing with an open jersey. This has become a flagship product and customers are now wearing it as a standalone piece without a jersey. A conventional bib design assumes a particular way of using a jersey; Luca questioned that assumption and designed the whole garment around womens experience.All of these innovations represented major changes for users and perhaps more importantly, showed that there is still much scope to improve womens riding experience.Fits and cuts designed by women, for womenIrisStarting from womens needs doesnt necessarily mean inventing a new product. It can also mean reconsidering existing models to solve an issue or serve women better.Lucas cycling shorts are short-legged and high-waisted, a combination previously unheard of in performance apparel, although high-waisted padded shorts are increasingly common in by women, for women collections, mirroring what already exists in female-dominated apparel industries such as yoga or pilates.Trail Bloom founder Emily Hughes encountered the problem in mountain biking, where she says many women were resorting to mens clothing or generic sportswear. One example she gives is the wide neckline of many mountain biking tops, which can sit loosely around a womans neck. Her criticism is not necessarily that brands deliberately design badly for women, but that womens patterns sometimes begin with an existing mens garment rather than with the body they are intended to fit.The existence of womens bibs marketed for endurance or ultra-endurance that still require the wearer to remove most of their clothes for a toilet stop illustrates shortcomings in conventional design: a feature that seems fundamental to the use case can still be treated as optional.The offer of a wide range of sizes is another common feature of many by women, for women brands. Including very small and very large sizes comes at an extra cost, as these are not just zoomed-in or zoomed-out versions of the average model and necessitate an adapted cut to fit different body proportions, and they also sell in smaller quantities, which can result in leftover stock, but is instrumental in fostering inclusivity.Community buildingMadbees is a brand focused not only on kit, but on creating a space for like-minded women to feel confident cycling and be free from intimidation and judgement. MadbeesThe biggest difference from mainstream brands, however, is not always in the garments themselves. For many of these businesses, the idea of designing for women extends beyond what they sell to the kind of cycling experience they want to create around it.For small brands, organising group rides is often a way for founders to get direct feedback from consumers, and founders report that many of the improvements they make to products are the result of remarks wearers have made during group rides or similar events. From a commercial standpoint, having such an accessible feedback mechanism is very valuable, but this is more a side-effect of the community building effort than its intent.Madbees founder Maddy Adamson explains that apparel is one part of Madbees, but our wider aim is to create an environment where women feel confident getting on their bikes, meeting other riders and pushing themselves without feeling intimidated or judged.Communities created by these brands often target inclusivity and confidence building: many organise social no-drop rides; Viva Velo offers brunch & bike workshops, a social space for women to build mechanical knowledge and independence around their bikes; Iris runs the Cheer Squad, a womens fan zone designed to bring together the worlds of recreational cyclists and professional racers, welcoming cooperation with other cycling brands.The role of style in womens cyclingIrisFinally, it is worth asking whether marketing terms such as cute, soft and stylish sometimes used by these brands serve women or whether it pressures them to be attractive while exercising and performing.Viva Velo director Lisa Hofmann argues that wanting beautiful, thoughtfully designed apparel is not trivial; it can be part of feeling confident and excited to participate in sport. Women deserve both functional excellence and design that feels expressive and considered.Whether fun designs, increasingly present in mens and womens lines alike, encourage impulse buying and consumerism remains a valid question. Sarah Leishman, GM of Velocio, considers that fashion screams lack of sustainability and explains that Velocios approach is to deliberately use more traditional and timeless colours to avoid this, making sure that each kit issue offers colours that can be mixed and matched with previous editions.Performance-oriented by women, for women brands are often highly transparent about the choice of materials, operate a model of small production runs to limit waste, and reject the traditional yearly discount model. These practices may have more to do with being small, founder-led and direct-to-consumer than being women-led, as they are also true of other emerging small brands, like Kostme or GRVL. When asked about this topic, female founders often explained that they see a link between being community-led and relying on ethical values.Madbees Adamson considers that there is a natural connection between community-led businesses and thinking carefully about what we produce. For us, that means thinking about the longevity of products, producing thoughtfully rather than encouraging people to constantly buy more, and considering how and why we manufacture what we do.What are the true strengths of by women, for women brands?LucaMany mainstream brands have come a long way and are taking the womens market more and more seriously, so the strongest evidence is not that by women, for women brands make better cycling clothing.Claims related to better-designed women-specific fit and more extensive testing are difficult to verify without investigating the design and production process of every other brand.However, the availability of truly inclusive sizing, pregnancy and menstrual designs remain dominated by by women, for women brands.Finally, while body-specific design and innovation remain important pillars, the communities these brands build and their confidence-building initiatives may be their biggest point of difference. Their real strength is identifying overlooked needs and turning them into products, services and communities built around how women actually ride.The post How by women, for women brands are pushing the cycling clothing industry forward appeared first on Cyclist.