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Giordana: An Italian brand with a Canadian connection

40 years of family-run custom cycling apparel, from Vicenza to Canada, Mexico and Charlotte, NC

With Europe’s best pro’s dropping in to Quebec for the Laurentian Classics, and Canada’s best gearing up to head to Yorkshire for UCI road world championships, we’re taking a closer look at Giordana.

The clothing manufacturer is a family owned and operated business that, like Canada’s cycling community, has feet firmly planted on both sides of the ocean. The brand not only has a decades-long history at the highest levels of sport, but a story that starts with a Canadian connection back in the late 1970’s. 

From Italy to Canada, Mexico: An anniversary and a founding a company 

Earlier this year, Giordana hosted Canadian Cycling Magazine at the Giro d’Italia. The Grand Tour marked a 46-year connection between the company and Canada.

The company itself is celebrating its 40th year in 2019. Giorgio Andretta’s connection to cycling in Canada, though, goes back years before the brand’s official founding.

In 1973, three years after relocating from Italy, a young Giorgio was racing for the Canadian national road team in Mexico City. When the team arrived without jerseys to race in the next day, a local company worked through the night to make them Canada jerseys just for the race.

Giorgio Andretta raced then, as well as at 1974 world championships in Montreal for the Canadian national team before relocating to North Carolina. There, he started Giordana Sport.

From those small beginnings, the brand grew until it was formalized as Giordana in 1979, following the birth of Andretta’s daughter after whom the company was named.  Eventually, Giorgio returned to Vicenza, Italy, seeking out the experience and passion for cycling that he felt could only be found in Italian clothing manufacturers.

At this year’s Giro, Giorgio was presented with a special Team Canada wool cycling jersey – commemoration the race in Mexico that led to the companies founding.

Giordana – A family company connected across two continents.

Giordana is not the typical family owned business where, after 40 years, you might expect that the business is largely independent of its founder and namesake. Instead, Giorgio Andretta is still working, hands on every day, at the brands small factory in Vicenza, Italy.

When Simon Yates arrived in Italy for the Giro this year, and his Grand Tour race weight was different enough from his pre-season measurements to leave his jersey feeling loose, it was Giorgio himself who went to re-fit the Michelton-Scott pre-race favourite. On our tour of the factory, it is Giorgio giving the tour, stopping and talking to seamstresses, describing every step of the process in detail to us. He even drove our group to the airport after the tour.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Giorgio’s daughter and the brand’s namesake, Giordana, runs the North American side of the business.

It’s this level of attention and involvement that makes Giordana the brand that it is. It is small enough that it is still very much a family business. At the same time, the quality and decades of experience that go into every garment make it a company that dresses some of the biggest teams on the World Tour, as well as riders around the world.

Hand made meets high tech at Giordana, mixing traditional methods and new techniques

What exactly does “Hand Made in Italy” mean?

If you’ve ever wondered what exactly “Hand Made in Italy” really means, why that should be important, or what in a high-end garment justifies the extra cost, A tour of Giordana’s factory would absolve you of any doubt. Over the course of our tour, I count no less than 15 different people, as well as several purpose designed and high-tech machines, that touch every jersey, bib short or jacket as it is made.

It’s an incredibly detailed process, and one focused on the end quality of each garment over opportunities to cut corners or slash costs.

Andretta isn’t keen on speeding up our tour, despite the looming boarding times of several of our flights. He insists on slowing down enough to see each of the steps involved in making a winter riding jacket’s seam water tight, and how each step in that process improves on the standard methods of making waterproof gear.

We also see the library of fabrics kept on site, as reference so that each run of a custom clothing order will match perfectly. This isn’t just for the WorldTour teams, but for every custom order client. Which means somewhere in the closet of fabric swatches are Canadian Cycling Magazine’s jersey colours.

Canadian Cycling Magazine’s custom Giordana FRC-Pro kit back at home in Toronto

Andretta is emphatic that every step of their production process is the same for custom order customers as it is for WorldTour teams. You can ride the same jerseys, rain jackets and bibs as the pro’s on Astana or Michelton-Scott. Giorgio might not show up at your house to take your measurements, though, unless you have a shot at next year’s Giro.

The benefit of sponsoring pro riders, for Giordana, is that the design process goes both ways. The company is small enough, and the manufacturing process is flexible enough, that Giorgio is very willing to listen to their feedback. The brands new cycling specific sports bra was developed with input from the Michelton-Scott women’s team, which went on to win Giro Rosa with Annimeek van Vleuten after our visit.

Building on tradition to develop clothing for the sports future

Giordana is a brand built on the long tradition of Italian cycling and Italian clothing manufacturing. The focus, though, is on how those traditional methods can inform and improve the future of cycling apparel.

For decades now, Giordana has pushed technical fabrics, including new chamois construction practices, and the forward-looking FormaRed Carbon line.

Much of this is available in Giordana’s steadily expanding custom program. For this year, more fit options were added to the custom line, including different short and sleeve lengths on bib’s and jerseys.