For Pas Normal Studios, cycling is about more than performance. It is also about design, culture and the passion that makes people get on their bikes even when the conditions are far from perfect. It is this combination that has helped define the Copenhagen-based brand and its approach to product development.
“I think what sets Pas Normal a little bit apart from other brands in the space is this combination of fashion with sportswear,” says Fabian Pirrwitz, Impact and Responsibility Analyst at Pas Normal Studios. “We speak to a very young audience that really likes to look cool and look great on their bikes when they do the sport.”
But creating highly technical products while continuously bringing newness and a fashion perspective into the collection requires more than good ideas. Behind every product sits a significant amount of information, communication and documentation that needs to move with it throughout development.
For Pas Normal Studios, having that information in one place has become an important part of keeping the process moving.
With around 50–60 employees and suppliers located around the world, Pas Normal Studios has to be conscious of how its teams spend their time and resources.
Product development happens on short calendars, making quick access to the right information particularly important. “Being able to have the same data for everyone within the company in one place obviously helps us a lot,” Robin Doriguzzi, Senior Product Developer at Pas Normal Studios explains. “Not opening a lot of different email threads, different Excel files. So it’s definitely key.”
Pas Normal Studios uses Delogue as a shared workspace for product information and communication throughout development. Instead of separating conversations from the products they concern, teams and suppliers can communicate directly on individual styles.
For Fabian, that context makes a difference. “You’re not going through email threads where you’re thinking, okay, is it this style? What are we talking about?” he says. “Having that within one solution - this is the style, these are the comments that our supplier made - keeps it very organised and allows us to be efficient, be quick.”
That becomes especially valuable when collaboration extends beyond the Copenhagen office.
The same product information also plays another role at Pas Normal Studios.
Fabian Pirrwitz oversees sustainability and compliance-related topics across the company and for him, preparing for regulation is closely connected to how product information is collected and structured in the first place.
“We use Delogue to prepare for legislation and to already be compliant with some of the legislation that is out there,” Fabian explains. “Everything that is related to the product, we keep information or details in Delogue to help us to be compliant or to have the documentation to be compliant.”
One example is product safety. Pas Normal Studios has created custom fields in Delogue that allow the team to go through individual styles and document relevant product safety information as part of their existing product data. Rather than treating compliance documentation as something separate from product development, the information remains connected to the product itself.
For a company of Pas Normal Studios’ size, preparing for new requirements is also a question of using resources where they have the greatest impact. Rather than placing every sustainability and compliance decision with one person or team, the ambition is to make relevant information available to the people already making decisions about the product.
“What we’ve been trying to do is to give, in particular, developers and designers, when they choose materials and develop products, the tools on hand they need and the knowledge to make the right decisions,” Fabian says.
It is a simple idea with wider implications: when product, material and compliance information live alongside the development process, teams do not have to search for the context elsewhere.
The information becomes part of the decision-making process itself.
Pas Normal Studios operates in a space where technical performance and contemporary fashion continuously meet. Its products need to perform for dedicated cyclists throughout the year, while still bringing the design perspective that has become characteristic of the brand.
That combination leaves plenty of room for creativity. But behind it, there needs to be structure.
For Pas Normal Studios, bringing product data, supplier communication and documentation together in Delogue helps create that structure, giving teams one shared place to work from while they continue developing products for people who, as the team puts it, simply love their sport.
Or, in Fabian’s words, products that combine “contemporary design with athleticism and the passion for the sport.”