We love making uniforms for roller derby teams, and it's all done at our base in Plymouth, in the South West of England. We aim to make the process as stress-free as possible. No minimum order, sizing from 3XS - 6XL as standard (and we can make larger and smaller too!) and 4 different lengths. The fabric we use for all the uniforms, scrim tops and referee shirts is now made from recycled fibres too. Want to know more? Read on, or get in touch with us to talk uniforms for your team.
HOW DO I ORDER UNIFORMS FOR MY TEAM?
The best way to order your uniforms is for us to create your own team store. Team stores usually take us 1-2 weeks to create and they're free to do. In your store we will include your team uniforms, arm bands, helmet covers, scrimmage tops and sleeveless hoodies - we'll send you a web link that you can share with your skaters and league members for people to order their uniforms whenever they need them. There's no minimum order, so each skater/league member can order what they want, when they want it. To start the process get in touch with us.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
Once your team store is set up, it usually takes 4-8 weeks for us to make your orders. This will vary at different times of the year, so please check our FAQs for our current order times or drop us a message to check current lead times.
CAN WE TRY THEM ON FOR SIZE?
Yes - we have a very limited number of sample packs, so if you want to try them out first, then get in touch with us for more info. It can be a bit of a wait before getting the packs, current wait time are a couple of months, so what most people do is refer to our size guide here, and we're happy to answer any questions about fits or sizing.
HOW DOES THE DESIGN PROCESS WORK?
We can design your uniforms for free – or you can send us your own design.
If you'd like us to design your uniforms, then you need to tell us your colours, and any accent colours you'd like included, your team logo and anything else you'd like to see. We'll then send you back some ideas and we can take it from there.
If you'd like to design your own, then just ask us for one of our uniform templates and you can get creative! We will need your designs in either a vector file (eps or ai) or a high res psd file. Please use the colour profile CMYK as this is what our equipment is set in and will give you the best colour match.
If you'd like some design ideas, then check out our uniform gallery here, or view our Instagram to see what we've made for other teams.
DESIGN POINTERS
If you're planning on designing your own uniforms then we'd like to recommend that you check out these handy blog posts - written by roller derby officials, these blogs ensure you think about how your design would work from an officiating point of view, preventing official brain melt down, and making them accessible to all participants with colour blindness. Check out Zebra Skew's 6 things you should ask yourself about your new uniform, and Errignton's super helpful blog on making roller derby accessible for people with colour blindness.
WE'VE HAD OUR UNIFORMS MADE BY ANOTHER COMPANY, CAN YOU MATCH THEM?
If you own the artwork i.e. you originally designed the uniforms or you have permission to use the artwork, then send it to us and we can use it to create uniforms to match your current uniforms.
If you don't own the artwork to your uniforms – i.e. the company you used before came up with a unique design for you and they own the rights, then we won't be able to match it exactly, however we can match the colours used, and use your team logo and come up with a design that sits well with your previous uniforms.
So that we can colour match as closely as possible to your existing uniforms, we can send you out a colour fabric swatch for you to choose from. The colour swatch is a piece of uniform fabric with all the colours on, so you can see what the colours will look like exactly on your uniforms. We prefer to send out swatches rather than rely on design files, as we know that colours can look different, depending on the device you're viewing them on, and even if you've got colour references from your previous uniform supplier, if they've calibrated their equipment differently, we may get a different result than them when printing them out.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
Our uniforms are £35 each, our prices include VAT, and there's no artwork fees.
If you're outside of the UK, then your prices will be tax free, so your price will be £29.17. Please be aware that the prices will show as the UK prices until you enter your address at the checkout, when it will be re-calculated. You may have to pay local taxes when they arrive with you. Usually this is around 20% so will bring your prices back to the same as our UK customers.
I AM ORDERING FROM THE EU, HOW DO THE TAXES AFFECT ME?
When you order from us, from the EU, then you will pay the tax free prices. For example, a uniform top is £35 including taxes, and you will pay £29.17 excluding taxes. Then, when the top arrives in your country, your customs authorities will get in touch with you to pay the taxes directly to them. Depending on where you live, this is around 20% so bringing the price back to £35.
As we make everything in the UK, you will not be liable for import duties. You can read about in full in our blog here
We are also in process of applying for tax registration in the EU, and this will mean that we will soon be able to deliver to you with taxes paid - so the pricing will return to £30 per uniform, and hopefully make the process much smoother for all of us.
WHAT'S THE MINIMUM ORDER?
There's no minimum order – you can order just 1 top, perfect if you have skaters join you mid-season or a team skater wants to order a spare.
WHAT SIZING AND STYLES DO YOU MAKE?
Our uniforms come in sizes 3XS – 6XL, in curve and straight sided, with 4 length options - short, regular and long, and our crop styles - you can see more info in our size guide here
WHERE ARE YOUR UNIFORMS MADE?
We make our uniforms right here at RDC in Plymouth, Devon, in the UK. This means you can be sure there's no sweatshop or child labour, our turnarounds can be pretty swift if you need your uniforms urgently and we're available during our opening hours to answer any questions you have.
WHAT ARE YOU UNIFORMS MADE OF?
Being skaters ourselves, we wanted to make sure our fabric is ideal for roller derby, so after copious testing with Velcro wrist guards in the office and skating in sample tops at training sessions and scrimmages, we found a fabric we're pretty impressed with. Our fabric is a blend of recycled polyester and elastene, which is ideal for roller derby – it's lightweight, sweat wicking and resists Velcro. It's important to us to be as sustainable as possible, and our recycled polyester is made from post-consumer waste - so things like plastic bottles - so by using the recycled fabric we're stopping plastic going into landfill, and not creating virgin polyester and essentially creating more plastic into the world.
Elastene gives our uniforms stretchiness for improved fit and comfort without being super tight.
Our team sleeveless hoodies and hoodies are made from polyester loop back jersey (like a terry jersey) or sweatshirt fleece fabric and feel like a medium heavy sweatshirt fabric.
HOW ARE YOUR UNIFORMS MADE?
We make our uniforms 100% in-house from design (if required) to fabric printing, to sewing together.
After designing your uniforms, we print them out onto heat resistant transfer paper, using a large format ink-jet printer. The printer has 4 ink reservoirs, cyan (c), magenta (m), yellow (y) and black (k) at different quantities to create the full colour print. Using this kind of printer means there's no limit to the number of colours, logos or details in your design. Whatever we create on the computer screen will get printed out directly onto paper.
We then press the the paper onto the fabric in our mega heat press, and this permanently dyes the fabric, which gives really vibrant colours that won't fade/flake off. This kind of printing is known as 'sublimation' printing and is more of a dying than printing process. We then cut out the pieces and stitch them together – 3 sewing machines are used to make a vest (hems, seams and binding all use different machines), and 4 are used to make a t-shirt.
CAN I ADD WFTDA, MRDA AND JRDA LOGOS ONTO MY UNIFORM?
Currently, WFTDA don't allow their logo to be dyed into our uniforms, so you'll need to sew your patches on. We have produced JRDA and MRDA logos on team uniforms before – we would need you to confirm that your team is a member of the organisation, and from time to time we check in with the organisations themselves to make sure that they're still happy to for us to do it.
CAN I VISIT YOU AND WATCH THE UNIFORMS BEING MADE?
Yes you can - we're based in Plymouth, a small city in Devon, in the south west of England. We are a busy production unit so we do ask that you get in touch with us first to let us know when you're coming so we can make sure there's someone available to meet you.
I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS!
If there's anything else you want to ask then just get in touch – you can message us via our contact form here or call us 01752 267 405– we love talking uniforms. We're open Monday to Friday, 8am til 5pm. Or come and talk to us at an event – once Covid restrictions allow, we're looking forward to getting back out on to the road!