Tech Feature: Vinyl Only

As the frenzy of team training camps and media presentations morphs into race debuts and the official launch of the 2010 domestic racing season, riders and team directors aren’t the only ones putting in long hours on the job.

“This time of year, with all the pro teams and all that, the most sleep I got all last week and all this week is four hours a night,” said AJ Eschwig, owner and manager of Victory Circle Graphix in Golden, Colorado. “Last week was like a 4-hour night, then a 3-hour night, and by the end of the week was down to a 2-hour night. I pretty much went home, showered and ate, and came back.”

Eschwig’s nocturnal activity wouldn’t be anyone’s concern if he didn’t play a critical role in the success of some of the biggest racing teams in the country. Teams like Garmin-Transitions, UnitedHealthcare, Subaru-Gary Fisher, and others depend on him for bike and vehicle decals, ensuring that they arrive in the spotlight looking spotless.

You know all those flashy team cars and trucks that debut at training camp and populate race caravans all season long? The splashy graphics and sponsor logos are not painted on — they are actually 100-percent custom vinyl decals, which are painstakingly designed, printed, and then applied by hand. In some cases, entire sheets of self-adhesive vinyl are installed on every inch of a vehicle, just like wallpaper, so the car is fully wrapped and none of its original color shows. In other cases, a racing stripe and a few sponsor logos go on top of the base paint, simply complementing the vehicle’s native color scheme.

In any case, Victory Circle Graphix has a hand in every stage of the process, and Eschwig doesn’t sleep until the last sticker is stuck down.

Eschwig is famous for delivering on the biggest projects the professional peloton can dream up, and it’s why pro teams turn to him every season. “If you’re like, ‘These things gotta roll to training camp on Monday,’ we would make it happen,” he said. “If we had to, we’ll make it happen.”

From basement beginnings to “Sleepless in Sticker-land”

To hear Eschwig talk about it now, Victory Circle’s humble beginnings belie the crucial role his business now plays.

“Victory Circle was technically started in 2002,” said Eschwig. Pointing to a small decal printer against the wall, he added, “That’s the machine we started it with, in my basement. We still have it, and it’s still going!”

Eschwig started his career as a computer-aided design (CAD) drafter, but points directly at a turning point that lead him into the decal business. He and his wife were driving across Interstate 80 in Wyoming, returning from a NORBA National mountain bike race in Park City, Utah, and he was dreading the looming 9 to 5 Monday morning grind. He hated his job, so she asked him, what do you really love to do?

“And it’s like you know, I just love stickers, I always have,” is how he describes his answer to her. “And we were like, well, let’s look into that when we get back. And within a few weeks we’d researched a few machines, bought our first machine, and there it was,” he concluded.

Eschwig and his wife worked out of their basement for a year and a half. “Then we bought a new house with a bigger basement and I was there until we moved out of my basement about four years ago,” he said.

These days, Eschwig has one full time employee, Holly Barker, and two part time helpers, Lauren Volentir and Holly’s son Andrew Barker. Victory Circle also depends on a pair of contracted installers who do the majority of actual decal applications on vehicles. “They’re the best at what they do,” he said of his installation team. “At the end of the day they’re the guys that make stuff look good. I can fly them anywhere in the world to stick cars.”

And he has. For example, a few years ago in order to install graphics on the new European fleet of Slipstream Sports vehicles, Victory Circle shipped rolls of printed vehicle graphics to the team service course in Gerona, Spain. His installers flew over to complete the work.

From a dealer’s lot to the race caravan

The process of converting a brand new (but generic) Saab or Subaru into caravan material isn’t easy, but it varies little whether the end result is a customized bike decal or a full wrap for a team bus. “From us it all starts with artwork. And that just depends on the client,” said Eschwig. In some cases, Victory Circle generates the graphic scheme, and in other cases, a team or company graphic artist does the work.

Once artwork is approved by team sponsors and management (which often takes an agonizingly long time), Victory Circle converts the graphic files into usable decals using computer programs and templates. A program breaks the graphics into printable and installable pieces, and Victory Circle’s program builds the decals in actual size.

“At the end of the day, for most cars, it’s almost one big giant sticker,” said Eschwig, “Whereas trailers you have to have some sort of seams and panels because we just can’t make a sticker that big.”

Once the decals are printed and the sheets are cut or trimmed as needed, all that’s left is the installation. An average car takes less than a day, a van might require a whole day, and a trailer, bus or RV could take even longer.

So what’s it cost to sticker up a team vehicle? Pricing is based on cost per square foot, which is roughly $12. As an example, a full wrap for a 15-passenger van costs roughly $4000.

“Budget is always a concern, but with the bigger teams and stuff, presence is more important,” said Eschwig. “Presence and doing it right and nice at the end of the day is what matters most.”

He noted that for smaller teams with tight budgets, Victory Circle works backwards from the amount the team can afford, and accordingly generates a graphics package based team kit and colors. “But sometimes after seeing a mockup of a design and realizing the value, teams can free up more money,” he said.

A vehicle decal kit can last up to five years. But most teams need a do-over every season because of sponsor changes.  “Which is great for us because it’s job security,” Eschwig said.

Teams with multi-year title sponsorships might prefer to keep the primary graphics package for a longer term, so Victory Circle can arrange for the smaller sponsors and equipment supplier logos to be modular. “It saves them a ton of money from year to year,” to be able to swap out the smaller logos without re-wrapping the entire car, he said.

Keeping busy but having fun

With about 50 steady clients, Eschwig has more than enough work to keep his whole crew busy (and keep his nights at home short). “The weird thing about our world is that everyone has the same deadline,” he said. “The first part of the year gets really stacked up but we do stay steady all year long.”

“We try to pre-plan it all but it just doesn’t happen,” said Eschwig. Whether the holdup is art approval, vehicle arrival, or last minute projects, there’s always some reason for sleepless nights. “But that said, we will totally work crazy hours and deadlines within our world and industry.”

And just what is Victory Circle’s world? “Our world is best described as two-wheeled sports. So bicycles and motorcycles,” Eschwig said. “That’s what we love, that’s what everyone in this building does, and we like to just keep it to what we love.”

He’s not kidding about everyone in the building riding two-wheeled machines. His employees are committed athletes: Lauren Volentir races professional motocross, taking classes in graphics on the side, and Andrew Barker splits his time at Victory Circle with a first-year spot on the Felt-Holowesko-Garmin U-23 road team. Victory Circle shares the building with Podium Sports, a marketing firm dedicated principally to motocross.

“If we start doing other things, race cars or this or that, we just don’t personally have any interest in that,” said Eschwig. “We’re busy enough doing what we love. And we’ve become probably more rigid in that, because the reason this thing was started was to do something we love and enjoy.” He added, “If it all becomes just about the money its not fun anymore. Why bother?”

Victory Circle’s reward comes in the form of doing cool projects, like printing special bike decals for Lance Armstrong’s Stages series of Tour bikes, or helping the original Garmin-Transitions team (then Slipstream Sports) get off the ground with vehicle graphics.

“It was pretty crazy times getting that team going — we helped them, they helped us, and it’s been a great relationship,” Eschwig said.

All along, when the cycling world simply sees flashy cars and bikes zipping by, there’s a sticker guy toiling away behind the curtain. Despite late nights and little credit, Victory Circle still gets the job done right to keep these teams looking sharp every season.

“The thing that’s the coolest to me is when a vehicle rolls in and someone says, ‘That’s a nice paint job,” said Eschwig. “If they can’t tell the difference, then we did our job right.”

FILED UNDER: Bikes and Tech TAGS: victory circle

Zack Vestal

Zack joined VeloNews in 2009, bringing 15 years of industry experience to the Tech Editor position. Most recently manager and mechanic for the Trek-VW mountain bike team (2004-08), he has an unused geology degree from Whitman College (and a well-worn Ph.D. from the school of hard knocks). Vestal covers the latest in cycling gear online, and brings in-depth perspective to the magazine.

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