Where We Embroider, Where We Print, and Where We're Heading

If you look closely at a Sweat Bib, you'll notice the logo is stitched into the fabric — actual thread, actual texture, no print. Look at the back of our Muay Thai shorts and you'll see the same. Look at our singlets, crop tees, or the front of the shorts, and the logo is heat-pressed on with eco-friendly, water-based rubber paste.

Two methods, both chosen on purpose, with a clear direction we're moving in. Here's the honest version.

Why Most Activewear Logos Are Plastic

Walk through any activewear store and run your finger over the logos. Most of them are some form of plastic — plastisol screen prints, PVC heat transfers, vinyl, or synthetic ink with synthetic binders. Even on garments marketed as "sustainable," the logo is often the one part of the piece that quietly isn't.

You can build a beautiful organic cotton t-shirt and stamp a polyester-based print across the chest, and technically nobody is lying. They just aren't telling the whole story.

We didn't want our story to have a hole in it. So we made two careful choices instead of one easy one.

Where We Embroider Today

The Sweat Bib and the back of our Muay Thai shorts are embroidered. These are the pieces that take the hardest wear — the Sweat Bib gets sweated into and washed every session, and the shorts back rubs against the bag, the mat, and the inside of a clinch.

Embroidery is just thread on fabric. No ink, no transfer film, no chemical binder. The thread we use is a cotton/rayon blend — cotton for the natural-fibre base, rayon to strengthen it so it can survive the embroidery machine. (Rayon is a semi-synthetic, made from regenerated cellulose — wood pulp or bamboo — so it sits between fully natural and fully synthetic. Honest about that.)

Embroidery doesn't crack. It doesn't peel. It softens a little with washes but stays exactly where it's stitched. For gear that gets washed three times a week, that matters.

Where We Print, and Why It's Not Just "Print"

On our singlets, crop tees, and the front of the shorts, the logo is applied with a heat press using a water-based rubber paste. This is genuinely the eco-friendly end of the printing spectrum — water as the carrier instead of solvents, no plastisol, no PVC, no harsh chemical binders.

Why not embroider these too? A few honest reasons. Embroidery on lighter knits like jersey can pucker the fabric or weigh it down where you don't want weight. Setting up embroidery for every product across every size also takes time, money, and a manufacturing rhythm we're still building. The water-based heat press is a careful, considered intermediate choice — not plastic-free, but a long way from the plastisol prints most activewear uses.

We'd rather tell you what's on your garment than dress it up.

Where We're Heading

The direction is clear: more embroidery across the range, over time. Every season, the goal is to find the next product that can move from print to stitch. The Sweat Bib was first because it was the obvious place to start. The shorts back was next because it earns the wear. The rest will follow as we get there.

We're a small brand. We can't change everything at once. We can be honest about where we are, and we can keep moving in one direction.

What This Means For You

If you're buying a Sweat Bib, you're buying something fully plastic-free in the decoration — cotton/rayon thread on cotton towelling. If you're buying a singlet or a crop T, you're buying a garment with a water-based, eco-friendly print on natural fibre. Both choices are good ones. One is just further along a journey we're still walking.

That's the whole story. No hole in it.