In the last month or so our Dojo Rashguard has gained a lot of attention, due mostly to a viral reel we made stitching the great Paul Saladino (@paulsaladinomd) talking about potential negative health impacts of sweating in polyester. As of today the reel has over 40k views and 600 Shares.
On this video alone we have received over 20 different comments asking for a long sleeve version. I made a few overly optimistic estimates about the long sleeve version's arrival time, but I can now confidently say it is releasing next week!
One gentleman by the name of Eric R on instagram has held our feet to the fire on this issue both for getting distracted with our Grappler's Polos:
and for continually being late on our long sleeve estimates:
Both grievances are more than justified and we appreciate him keeping us accountable.
So what took us longer than we hoped?
The Fit.
As you could imagine it is not as simple as just adding longer sleeves to the Dojo Rashguard. Last year we spent several weeks dialing in our short and long sleeve fits for our original polyester rashguards, but when you plug in a new fabric you're almost starting from scratch with a new pattern. What was a perfect sleeve length for our polyester blend, suddenly is slightly too short with the cotton/aloe blend, what was a perfect shoulder cap width for the short sleeve cotton/aloe rashguard, has started to snag now that you have added long sleeves. Furthermore, each batch of revisions calls for another sample to be made, adding weeks to the project.
Long story short, new projects take twice as long and cost 3 times as much as you plan, even when you plan on this rule being in affect! Special thanks to my long-time friend and mentor in the clothing world The Legendary Kyle Awtry of Sauri Running Co. https://shopsauri.com/
We take Fit serious, it is in our name after all! So we hope this new version of The Dojo Rashguard is worth the wait.
I will put Kyle's technical adjustments to the fit below for anyone who is curious. It is amazing to see how he can fix an entire garment just by seeing three different angles.
After sending Kyle these 3 images the adjustments were all centered around shoulder cap width and sleeve length:
