Considering you are here it must mean you are interested in wrapping your bike, and thats exciting! All grammar mistakes aside, I am going to go over a few things you should ask yourself/think about before deciding if wrapping your bike is the avenue you should even go down.
First off, whats your bike looking like? Is it something that has gone to hell and back with you and you're looking to bring it back to life? Or has it been to hell by someone else's hand and something in you wants to make lemonade out of lemons? Or are you cursed by todays boring bike frame designs and want your brand new bike to at least LOOK like it took all of your money?
Well, lets go over option one and two cause they are essentially the same scenario. So your bike is beat to shit and theres nothing saving the way it looks. More stickers can hide the damage but now it looks like your cool uncle's YETI cooler. You can always go the rattle can route or Spray.Bike and go through the grueling process of stripping paint down on a frame (although it will look good if you put in the work). Or you can just do the paint route and not even scuff the bikes original finish which will be much quicker of a process but will look awful. Mind you, both of the paint options bring in the trials and tribulations of permanently altering your bikes appearance. Unless you do something spectacular resell value has left the chat along with the innocence of that poor frame.
In comes the wrap kit idea. The time it will take is right between 'not giving a shit and painting over everything', and 'taking out an entire weekend to strip and paint it'. My first time took me roughly four hours to complete from start to finish, so its not a walk in the park but it will reward you in the future-let me explain. What putting a wrap kit on that beat up bike will do is pause its abuse underneath the wrap until it gets peeled off. Yes, some huge dings you have along the way will cut through the wrap as it is not thick, but the majority of scratches and dings will get eaten up by the thin layer of wrap vinyl.
Now lets go back to that point on permanently altering your bikes frame finish. Oh, you want a different design for next season and you're already bored of what you painted onto it? good luck stripping and sanding it down again! With a wrap kit you just have to heat it up and peel each piece carefully the way it came on (from the seams and back on itself to avoid further damaging that already minced clear coat). Then guess what? that second time around will now cost you two and a half hours of time instead of four, and you will be sporting another elaborate design to wow your friends on the trail.
Lastly, this is for the person that got a new bike but its just plain old boring. You spent an arm and a leg on this thing and it doesn't even look much different than everyone else's bike at the trailhead. Surely you're not thinking of sanding it down and repainting it right? Well, you could have a paint shop do their magic and create you something elaborate, but I can promise you it wont cost anything NEAR $60 (our wrap kits). Guess what? a wrap kit sounds like a perfect option for you too, yeah... YOU. Not only does it protect from minor scratches and dings which will help resell value, but it will look cool while doing it! "Well i'm not going to sell it" Good! it will look the way you want it to for years to come.
Depending on how well you treat your wrap kit it can last for a handful of years. The film we use is top of the line 6 year film paired with UV ink, in nerd terms that means its the best stuff. If you look around on the streets its usually the same stuff you see wrapped on work vans and company fleet vehicles! Along with it having all those great properties it wont grab too hard or mess anything up on your new frame when you decide to take it off. As a professional wrapper I cannot stand using bad material, so why would I let you use bad stuff too?
At the end of the day it comes down to how crafty you are. If you were thinking of stripping down and painting a frame than you are well capable of wrapping a bike and I highly recommend you give wrapping a try first. if you never do arts and crafts or DIY projects then you might not have a good time with this stuff, but I can assure you its easier material to install than competitor's material (we just want you to do the whole bike, and that can be daunting). But who says you have to do the whole bike to have fun with it? I can ramble about this for hours...
Thanks for reading, if you made it this far you are a legend and think about tuning back into the blog posts as I ramp them up! I can and will babble about anything.
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