Coffee, cycling an OORRsome team

Fulltime pilot Tim Christian‘s line of coffee-infused cycling gear has just smashed its Kickstarter target.

The OORR cycling apparel range. Source: Supplied.

Australia’s passionate coffee culture has already permeated our cafes and kitchens but one plucky entrepreneur is taking it to the road, crowd-funding a new line of coffee-infused cycling and athletic wear he says is far more effective at controlling odour than traditional gear.

OORR, an acronym for Out Of the Rat Race, is the brainchild of fulltime pilot Tim Christian who wanted to innovate cycling and athletic apparel, and change the world for the better at the same time.

And he’s well on his way, with the OORR Kickstarter campaign surpassing its $35,000 goal on Tuesday.

“Coffee and cycling are so closely intertwined,” Mr Christian told The Australian.

“Coffee has three main benefits with fabric. It dries much faster, and it refracts sunlight, so it protects you from the sun much better. And most importantly, odour control. If you walk past a cafe all you can smell is coffee, and I know sniffer dogs have been fooled by coffee before.

“That’s probably the biggest benefit to the wearer, you can go to the gym and sweat to your heart’s content and not smell.”

Mr Christian said the ‘OOOR Cafe’ fabric was used in his cycling jerseys, caps and activewear, which are made from polyesters yarn which is then infused with Starbucks coffee in a patented process and blended with recycled polyester made from PET bottles.

He said it was important to him that OORR’s product use a high percentage of recycled materials, with an end goal of educating consumers about the potential for fashion to reduce global carbon emissions. He said his product line was a type of ‘retail therapy for the planet.’

“Fashion is the world’s second worst polluter,” Mr Christian said.

“It’s a huge stain on the environment, in so many ways. What I’m trying to do is make products desirable to the mass market, and make them with recycled materials. We want to prove it can be done, and then offer people a choice at the checkout. Our product is the same price as it’s competitors, and hopefully more broadly we’ll see people starting to request that from their normal brands, asking why they don’t use recycled materials.”

Mr Christian is also hoping to have significant impact through donations to Velokhaya, a South African-based charity which uses cycling to involve children in marginalised communities through after-school activities.

He said once the Kickstarter funding reaches $85,000 he’ll create and donate cycling kit for the whole Volokhaya racing team.

The OORR designs are a mix of high-end and eye-catching, and Mr Christian says he came up with the design on a flight between Sydney and Johannesberg.

“I was looking at the switches in the flight deck, the irreservable action switches, and I’ve incorporated that style of design into the garments,” he said. “It turns out they’re that way for a reason. The design triggers a caution response from the person looking at it, so my clothing makes its wearers safer from drivers on the road. They’ll subconsciously react with caution.”

The pilot, who still flies fulltime across Australia and the globe, said he turned to Kickstarter rather than going through a more traditional supply chain, so he could know exactly how many units to produce before beginning the manufacturing process.

“I don’t want to overproduce, so Kickstarter was perfect for that,” he said. “The other reason is getting noticed in a saturated marketplace like activewear and cycling is pretty difficult. I didn't want to remortgage the house, this way I could get funds ahead of time and prove that the product demand is out there.

“I’m absolutely stoked to have reached my target, it’s been a long push, about two years, but I’m really happy to be where I’m at.”