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With the online wardrobe you can list your ASSOS favorite products and then share them with friends, print them out or email to yourself. This will help you the next time you visit an ASSOS point of sale. How it works? Click the 'Add to Wardrobe' button on the products page, just below the product name. That's it! Have a good ride!


The idea for the first-ever Lycra cycling shorts was born almost by accident. 

In the mid-1970's, Swiss engineerToni Maier-Moussa (founder and chairman of ASSOS S.A.) was developing the first carbon fiber bicycle frame. He wanted to design and create the ultimate bike and was the first to see the possibilities of using carbon fiber in a bike frame. However, it wasn't simple to achieve his goal.

In those days, high-modulus carbon fiber was used almost exclusively in aerospace applications. Toni had to obtain special clearance from the US Department of Defense to obtain and use this new space age material.
When the Pentagon heard that an eccentric Swiss engineer was going to use the same carbon fiber being used in top-secret projects, they couldn’t believe it. But Toni convinced them of his mission, and his unique carbon fiber bike frame project went forward.

Toni Maier-Moussa took his carbon fiber frame, with innovative teardrop-shaped main tubes, into the wind tunnel with engineers
from the Zurich Technical University for the first-ever aerodynamic tests of a bicycle. Upon evaluation of the first round of tests, Toni and his fellow engineers noted that the aerodynamic advantages of the teardrop-shaped tubes were negated when the rider was in an upright position.
So another innovative solution was found when Toni invented the first cow-horn-shaped handlebars that forced the rider into the tuck position and further increased the aerodynamic advantage.

Toni  and the Zurich University engineers also noted that there was extensive drag created by the rider’s wool knit clothing. So they put the rider on the bike naked, figuring that this would be more aerodynamic. Oddly enough, the tests concluded that the skin and its surface structure are not an ideal aerodynamic medium and create drag. Toni and his wife Eliane (who is an apparel and textile technician), together with their friend Hans Hess (a Swiss producer of downhill ski racing suits ), created a Lycra skinsuit that fitted like a second skin and further reduced drag.

Then Toni took this first application of Lycra to cycling technology one step further by creating the first Lycra cycling shorts. The initial reaction of the racing cyclists was not positive; most complained, "That's crazy!" because they were used to wearing traditional heavy wool shorts. But Toni Maier-Moussa had the vision and perseverance to stick with his idea.
He brought the new Lycra shorts to Peter Post of the World #1 Ti-Raleigh pro cycling team.
Post was interested in the carbon fiber frame, but Toni brought some of his new Lycra cycling shorts along and made his skeptical riders test the funny new shorts.

The rest is cycling history. Since the Ti-Raleigh pros loved the comfort and aerodynamic benefits of the Lycra cycling shorts as opposed to their old, heavy, scratchy, wool shorts. Toni Maier-Moussa's original idea was widely copied within record time. The first apparel
revolution was on its way. By the late 1970's every rider in the pro peloton was wearing Spandex cycling shorts and shortly after it became the industry’s standard, making wool/acrylic blended shorts obsolete.

Today, over a quarter century later, Toni Maier-Moussa is still a visionary.
He is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations at ASSOS, but he tests every new product developed and brings the original spirit of innovation to every product that carries the ASSOS logo.

ASSOS: beyond technology!