What Makes a Dashel?

The name Dashel comes from the Cornish word for ‘thistle’ (a colourful, protective flower). Fitting, as the first factory we worked with is in Cornwall, and they still make our Carbon Fibre helmets today.

A big part of the Dashel ethos is maintaining a sustainable and transparent supply chain, even (or especially!) as we grow. With this in mind, we thought we’d take you through the nuts and bolts of what goes into a Dashel helmet. It’s something we’re pretty proud to promote, and we hope you’ll find it interesting...

As you can see, we try to keep things as local as possible, down to even the smallest of components. This ensures our supply chains incur minimal environmental impact from shipping, whilst allowing us to check that the workers at each stage are looked after and paid fairly. It also gives us better control over lead times, which is a luxury that many cycling brands don't have. We have great relationships with our Plymouth and Cornwall factories, and visit them regularly. There, they manufacture the helmet shells and carry out the final assembly. They are also powered by green and renewable energy which we think is pretty cool!

Inevitably, some parts do come from further afield. The inner pads, for example, come from China as hot pressed fabrics are seemingly unavailable elsewhere. However, this is something we keep tabs on should the situation change allowing us to nearshore this element of our helmets. Elsewhere, we’ve been fanatical in sourcing even the tiniest parts that often go overlooked. Our swing tags are made in the UK, and the attached kibbles (which are also biodegradable) are from Slovenia. So many companies sell things made from recycled plastic, but we believe that products should be designed to be recyclable or biodegradable too. Especially if they are as small as this, as they can’t be sorted at recycling centres.

As a safety product, we can’t use recycled plastic to make our helmet shells because we need to know they are made of 100% the same materials that passed the initial tests. That said, we’ve been busy figuring out a recycling program for our helmets at the end of their lives. At the end of the day, our beautiful and practical helmets ultimately encourage people to make more journeys by bike, which has a positive impact in itself and inspires us to keep doing what we’re doing.

If you have any questions about our manufacturing or our brand, feel free to get in touch. Equally, if you have one of our helmets, do join our Instagram community and tag us in your adventures.