@1238576073jb - Thanks for the insight! A few thoughts in reply:
- It was odd to me that Colorado was (is?) still on the Flywire collar - that's a very old template at this point.
- I am confused how this new "rollout" of uniforms would not be cost savings. It has to be right? Pumping out the same 4 "new" templates for dozens of teams across college football has to be saving something in the manufacturing process.
- Compare that to our last set - the arm/shoulder banding (heat-transfer?) clearly was "custom" - we're the only jerseys in CFB that had that. Our numbers too were completely custom. The collar too was a 2-tone design, also not common across other CFB jerseys with a similar template.
- Not putting stripes on pants and helmets - this too has to be a "savings" right? Much easier/quicker to pump out plain/solid color pants (and replacements). For the equipment staff, they literally save a significant amount of time by not having to put stripe stickers on the helmets each week.
- Which part of our uniforms - the last iteration and this new current iteration - are "screen-print" or "heat-transfer" (outside of the shoulder designs)? I did not think our jersey numbers or names were either. I know the pant logo and JT patch are added locally.
All great questions
I'm no expert - I have a general knowledge of manufacturing processes - I can only hypothesize, but here are some thoughts
1. Yeah, Colorado's jerseys are OLD; at this point I can't even remember the name of that template - if you look closely, all the old elements (black, white with black numbers & gray) were all Flywire, but the white jersey with GOLD numbers was the current template - anyway, they'll be all brand new this year & that chrome gold helmet that was leaked is ghastly (Deion should not be involved in the design process, but most assuredly is)
2. The jersey chassis (meaning the fabric & assembling it) is all the same process - you're just changing out fabric colors - not much savings to be had there except maybe going with home & road & not a bunch of alternates, but we're still seeing a lot of BFBS, GFGS, etc. - if teams want to save money, they should be cutting the number of alternate uniforms
3. 99% of the stuff you see on jerseys is screen-print or heat-transfer - again, all you're doing is swapping out colors & probably some tooling & reprograming the machine to do the printing (like our "stripes" on last year's jerseys) - all that stuff that has to be done, regardless of design - again, if teams want to save money here, they could go with no stripes, etc. - the real cost is in man hours swapping out colors, dies, reprogramming machines, etc. - names/numbers are the same, they're just heat-transfer & most of those are done locally - for ISU, the tooling (die) already exists for our numbers & those wear out & have to be replaced anyway, so not a lot of savings to be had there - I'm really not sure about the two-tone collar on the (now old) white jerseys, I've never seen them up close, but again, I think it's just a fabric swap (or maybe a two-tone dye which would probably cost more, but a drop in the total cost of a jersey)
4. I truly believe no stripes on pants is just the current fashion, I don't think it has anything to do with cost savings - honestly, I believe solid pants, no stripes, makes it easier to mix & match with other elements (see Uniwatch today about matching stripes) - helmets get refurbished every week, applying stripes down the center of the helmet would be the easiest thing the equipment staff does that week & stickers are cheap (you hear that JP! get us a Cy sticker for our helmets!!!) (also, the hoks equipment staff really need to start cutting the stripe on the Speedflex flex panel, so gross leaving it attached)
5. UCLA-stripes are probably the only stripes that are done with fabric rather than screen-print, although I'm sure some teams have them printed to save, but none that I've seen (at least with Nike) - pretty much everything on a college football jersey is screen-printed or heat-transfer - the numbers are made to look like they are stitched on, but they are not
Bonus if you've read this far - if I had to guess, our jerseys may be more expensive this year (not including inflation) - I believe the "IOWA STATE" wordmark IS stitched on (b/c of it's size, if you did heat-transfer, they would constantly be getting peeled off) - that stitching would be done during jersey manufacturing by Nike & that would be an added process that we didn't have last year
One cost-saving measure from last year was our JT uniforms - although those were produced using the new Nike template, almost assuredly, we opted for a less technical "cheaper" fabric & other materials
There are certainly ways to save money on uniforms, but I'm guessing the most effective way of doing that is to cut the number of alternative uniforms &/or negotiate a better contract with your uniform supplier - I am 99.9% sure the new design trends we've seen this year have nothing to do with cost-savings
