FROM THE KITCHEN TABLE TO THE WORLD TOUR: THE STORY OF SPATZ

Joe Laverick meets the man who's pulling up the socks of winter riding apparel

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From the kitchen table sewing machine to Tour of Flanders success in half a decade. From the outside, it seems like it has been a runaway success for the Yorkshire-based Spatzwear. But, behind the scenes with the global economic climate, Covid-19 and ever growing shipping costs, it hasn’t always been a smooth ride for founder and ex-pro Tom Barras.

Over the past five years, there has been a new addition to club rides up and down the country. You may have spotted the knee-high neoprene boots that many are choosing to use throughout the winter. Those neoprene boots are overshoes called Spatz, the star product of SpatzWear.

The Spatz idea was born in 2006, but was shelved for 10 years as Barras raced professionally across Europe. Ten years later, on a typically wet Yorkshire winter day, he was out for a ride with Olympic triathlon champion, Alistair Brownlee. Barras’s feet were dry, and Brownlee’s were sodden. The difference? One was wearing prototype knee-high boots. It was on that day that a partnership was made. SpatzWear was born.

Spatz derives from ‘spats’, or ‘spatterdashes’, an 18th-century protective accessory that was used to protect boots against mud. “The catalyst to SpatzWear was the collapse of the NFTO Continental team,” says Barras, who was first a rider, and then team manager. “It was the necessity, or desperation, of my wife being pregnant and having to pay my mortgage. I didn’t have any income apart from a couple of coaching clients so I went down to Leeds market and bought some neoprene sheets and Velcro.