PoleVaultPower.com

with junior olympics coming up I decided to make my son a custom pole bag...i own a digital print shop in san diego.... a lot of the schools locally have taken their bags and inserted a 6" drainage tube in the bag to protect the poles while traveling and I did the same with this bag....when we got to the regional meet this weekend people were impressed with the bag and the custom graphics on it, I make custom printed ez up canopy covers at the shop...it made me wonder about a couple of different items that are lacking out there....a pole of ours was ruled not allowed at a meet this year because it did not have a distingushing stripe at the top with the weight clearly labeled...so I made some to replace the stock ones as well as id stickers to easily identify our school poles at a meet or invitational as well as a pole wrap on my sons pole...one of my clients is rockstar energy drink and so we wrapped his pole with a rockstar strip and it looks pretty cool. I posted pics of the bag on my website and am looking for some feedback on what people think....I am thinking about offering a pole bag with custom graphics for school colors and mascots or even personal use such as my sons...i went ahead with an olympic theme on the bag with the bejiing 2008 logo as well as the usa olympic logo and name on the bag...go to the site and check it out ang give me some feedback on what people think www.allprostickers.com click on the pole vault link and a gallery should open

wow, thats pretty sweet, i bet any elite would glady carry their poles in one of those. you should personalize them and i bet if you were to give people a price, someone would make an offer, school names, vaulter's names and stuff like that would be sweet.

looks awesome man

The J. McGrath wouldn't happen to be Jeremy McGrath would it? I think I vaulted with him in a Frosh-Soph meet down here. Anyways, sweet bag, I am very jealous. Keep up the good work!

yes it is Jeremy

what school does jeremy go to?

Jeremy just finished his freshman year at St. Augustine high school

I like your idea for the stickers I think it is a good project.
I am concerned about you making labels for the weight ratings?
This could be a posible liablity problem for you. I recommend you not offer them to athletes or coaches!
Bruce ESSX

I am not intending to create weight label stickers for resale...over the course of time a couple of our older spirit poles had been taped and untaped many times over and the weight labels damaged...when we went to a meet earlier this year the pole was disallowed because of no label at the top ...I just made some to put on....I dont really see a market of any kind to sell weight labels.....id labels on the other hand would be handy to easily find and gather your poles during or after a meet if they end up scattered or the kids drop them in the course of a competition...once again not anything I will retire early on but I think its a good idea.

on top of what Bruce was saying, the weight label is the manufacturers label and only certified manufacturers can produce and label poles... the liability is huge!!

the bags look good. What kind of pricing? and also- i noticed the nike logo on the end of the bag. from a legal stand point- do you need Nike to approve the use of thier logo?

on the weight labels...I agree about the liabality and have said I am not reselling weight labels....rather than having poles that are perfectly good but not useable because of a lack of a contrasting band and easily read weight rating I produced some for my own use and it got the passing of the official at the next weeks meet

As for the bags...I have made a couple of generations of the bags already, trying to work out the bugs and see what works best..on the first gen I put a shoulder strap but always seemed to carry it on our shoulders anyway because of the weight. i left off the handles altogether on this one and it works well for us but probably needs small handles of some sortthey could be produced in the range of $150-175 depending on tweeking or adding of straps and such...that is with custom colors/ graphics name and school logos. In regard to the nike logo, I produced this bag for jeremy and anything that would be resold would indeed need approval from their respective manufacturer/owner

old vaulter wrote:on the weight labels...I agree about the liabality and have said I am not reselling weight labels....rather than having poles that are perfectly good but not useable because of a lack of a contrasting band and easily read weight rating I produced some for my own use and it got the passing of the official at the next weeks meet

The official should not have though.

If you have Spirit poles that are missing (or never had) a weight label, contact UCS and they have a system in place for remedying this.

these pole bags would have to be the best that I have seen.
IT would be a good thing if everyone had their own custom bags as there would be no problems with mix ups etc at comps both international and national.
Custom pole wraps would look pretty cool. A stars and stripes pole wrap would look real good for US vaulters...

Would you be able to send these pole bags overseas no worries?

thanks