Family is the core of Hincapie Sportswear, and that concept extends beyond blood relatives to the people that make our company what it is today. Every week we will give you a look at one of our valuable team members to help you get to know Hincapie a little better.  This week, we will profile Graphic Artist, Emily Pitts.

Emily joined Hincapie Sportswear almost 5 years ago and, as she says, she’s “been making spandex pretty ever since.” She was designing t-shirts at a regional shirt company and longing for a better way to use her creative genius.  We swiped her resume from the pile of candidates at a local design firm and dialed her up.  We’d like to think it was love at first…interview, so we’ll leave it at that.

One of our strengths at Hincapie Sportswear is providing our clients with professional design services.  Emily is a big part of our success with helping our teams and clubs create the most attractive kits in the peloton.  It’s really amazing the way she can take the random inputs from a customer and crank out something that looks great and turns heads on the road.  This Greenville native is good at what she does, but it’s not the only thing keeping her going.

“I’d like to say I love spandex, but really, it’s my coworkers that make this an awesome place to work,” she said. “Well, that and the candy in the jar at the office coffee bar and the wine Wednesday socials at 5 o’clock. I mean, what’s not to love around here?”

Emily enjoys getting out on her bike now and then to relieve the incredible stresses of custom clothing design.

It’s an extremely exciting year for Emily and her husband Jonathan, as they are expecting a baby boy in September.  It’s actually been quite a distraction at the office with all the naming ideas being thrown around.  Some current suggestions include Muscles, Artimus, Day’quandray, Tiny, and our favorite…Little Don Ricky Georgie.  Obviously they need some help with the names, so feel free to make your suggestions.  Emily will bounce them all off Edward the guinea pig and get back to us with her final choice sometime around September.  Regardless of his name, we’re all excited to be welcoming a new mini-member to our extended Hincapie Sportswear family.

We want to send a big thanks to Emily for all that she does to help make this the best cycling apparel company in the world.  If she designed your latest kits, send us a picture of your team. If you’re looking for a new design, give us a call.  Emily is bursting at the seams with creativity (it’s not just the new baby).

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Baby Pitts.

When I tell my cycling friends that I work at Hincapie Sportswear, they usually kid me about riding my bike all the time as if going to the office is like one big group ride every day.  Sure, we try to get in the occasional lunch ride and I do get to talk cycling for a living, but we all work pretty hard around here to make all this happen.  Some of our more challenging (but often times fun) tasks are photo shoots.  These take lots of preparation and planning to execute, and we all pitch in to help when needed.  One interesting shoot we did recently was for our new Emergence Collection.

Some people would never believe the crazy things we had to do to get this cool shot!

Emergence is a collection of brand new products that blend state of the art technologies with innovative aerodynamic designs and style to make garments that perform well and fit you like a glove.  We wanted the photos for these products to capture that spirit, so we had this genius idea to do a photo shoot under a bridge…on a public road…at night!  Yeah, I know you’re thinking the same thing I was when the creative team concepted the idea.  Crazy!  I’m happy to report that no one was killed during the madness, and it was actually kind of fun (when we got past the obvious terrors).

Kirk and Taylor found this awesome overpass on a side road in a fairly shady area of town that would give us this awesome backdrop for a great shot.  In an effort to save lives, we helped make the crew (that’s Taylor, Kirk, Emily and me) more visible to traffic with a combination of reflective vests and several red and green blinking Firefly Supernova lights from our friends at Road ID.  We also had radios to communicate within the team to make sure the road was clear before we shot our rider through the tunnel at full speed in the dark.  Traffic “control” (that’s Emily and me) would use flashlights to help communicate with the cars and the photography team would try to stay out of traffic in their orange vests and blinky lights.  The rider (brave Yuans)…well the rider would rely on the reflective treatments on the Emergence Jersey and Bibshort as he sprinted under the overpass.  Since nobody died, I’d say it was a huge success, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have our fair share of excitement.

That's Taylor in position before the darkness made things more...exciting.

This picture cracks me up! Doesn't Emily look super excited in her traffic control outfit?

Brave Yuans said the BMC SLR01 TeamMachine he road was inspiring enough to outrun the cars under the bridge.

I learned a few things at this photo shoot:

1. The road we used is twice as busy at night as it is in the daytime, so always check your location during the actual time you will be filming. Our night was further complicated by the added noise of our (not-so-portable) portable generator and the occassional freight train roaring over our heads.

2. Some people are “radio challenged” and yell into the radio, with their lips ON the microphone, rendering their broadcast useless and adding to the anxiety and confusion while you repeat, “what, what did you say…what?”

3. According to Kirk, wearing your bicycle helmet during a photo shoot will increase your chances of surviving being run over by a car. Luckily we never actually tested this one, but he wore his Bell helmet all night. (Still wish I had a picture of him that night!)

4. Most cars don’t really want anything to do with a man wearing a blinking light, waving a flashlight, on a side road, in a shady area of town, within 500 meters of a liquor store.

5. The reflective treatments on the Emergence clothing work great!

It’s never a dull moment around here!