This decision is usually made by whoever is quoting rather than by the club, and it determines how the kit looks after a season.

What sublimation does

Heat turns the dye into a gas that bonds into the polyester fibre itself. The fabric feels identical printed and unprinted.

Nothing sits on the surface, so there is nothing to trap moisture, nothing to stiffen across a seam and nothing to crack. Colour goes edge to edge, including through the panels and around the zip.

What a heat transfer does

A pre-printed film is pressed onto the finished garment. It is cheap, fast, and fine on a cotton tee.

On a cycling jersey it is a sealed plastic panel, usually across the back or the chest — exactly the areas that have to breathe. It also stiffens, and it cracks first where the fabric stretches most.

How to tell what you were sent

Feel the design. If you can feel a distinct edge where the colour starts, it is a transfer. If the printed area feels exactly like the unprinted area, it is sublimated.

Hold it to the light too: a sublimated jersey shows the same weave through the design.

The one real limitation

Sublimation needs polyester and it cannot print white onto a coloured base — the white in your design has to be the fabric itself.

That occasionally changes how a design has to be built, and it is worth knowing at the artwork stage rather than at the proof.