4Cyclists want to ride with no trace on the planet and be caring for our employees and clients.

What Is Sustainability?

Sustainability focuses on meeting the present’s needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The concept of sustainability comprises three pillars: economic, environmental, and social – also known informally as profits, planet, and people.

Manufacturing sustainability

We are located in Latvia. European Union country that lies in Northern Europe, on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. 4Cyclists offers cycling apparel made in Europe. Most of the products we make in our factory using local labour. We like the idea that we can give a job to local people. Yes, that’s much more expensive than alternatives in Asia, but we care about our people’s well-being. Those products that we can`t make in our factory – gloves, base part for the socks – we order from trustable producers in Italy. You place an order, only then we make the apparel. It’s a slower process, but it’s more sustainable than keeping huge stock with products. Big stock means more transportation (fabric/components to the production facility, product to bands warehouse, product to the client) and unsold products that need to be utilized. In our case fabric comes to the production facility. There we stock it and make the kits when you place the order. No unsold items, less transportation.

Components for apparel making

To make cycling clothing, we need to use many fabrics and other components. We buy materials only from Europe based companies, like Schoeller from Switzerland, Carvico, Sitip and Pidigi from Italy, Sportswear Argentona from Spain. Above all, we care about sustainability, that’s why we don’t import fabrics from China. However, they are much cheaper, but we know that there can be problems with unfair employment, ecological issues etc. When it’s possible, we choose ECO-friendly fabrics. They are made from PET bottles, old fishing nets and other recycled plastic materials. Not always recycled fabrics meet our requirements. We would like to use them more but it`s not possible for now. Positive thing – each year they become better and better. For now, Evo Race shorts are 90% made of recycled materials! Zippers, threads and pads, for now, are not made of recycled materials. We hope that soon there will be good enough products in the market to switch to them.

Packaging

We use recycled cardboard boxes, and from the year 2021, we switch to 100% compostable packaging for all web-orders: boxes, bags (actually it’s not plastic at all) and paper tape. Unfortunately, we can’t get rid of plastic stickers for shipping info because it’s a requirement of shipping companies.

Ride without a trace!