Does anyone know anything about Deboer wetsuits? Just found out about them myself.
I've been through through the wetsuit wars myself on the business side. Tough/interesting market for a number of different reasons:
1. There are already a number of key players involved.
2. Swimming is the sport discipline that triathletes generally have the least amount of interest in.
3. It's also the discipline (swimming) that triathletes don't seem to really understand - you need to put A LOT of time in the pool to get really good/fast. A wetsuit will only help so much - BUT the cool thing is that it actually helps the slower swimmers more than the naturally faster swimmers (assuming great fit - read on)
4. Brands go on and on about wetsuit tech - some of it does make sense and actually does work - but the #1 key thing about how a wetsuit will work well (making you swim faster) is FIT!
5. And that fit dynamic is tricky - every person's body and swim stroke is different - to the point that different brands, work better and are faster/better on different swimmers!
6. But the one constant is that the wet suit needs to fit tight - probably uncomfortably tight. It's hard to come up with a compelling protocol to test suits, but a number of years ago Desert Dude aka Brian Stover, as well as Jordan Rapp did some pool testing of various wetsuit brands. I seem to recall that of the 5 - 6 suits they each tested, each suit that tested fastest for them of the 5 - 6 was the one that felt the most uncomfortable swimming in! Now - going back to #5 whatever the order of the suits were for Brian and Jordan from 1 - 5, someone else could test the same suits, using the same protocol and the order would be completely different!!
7. Most triathletes don't even have their wetsuits on right. When I was in the business, we would go to races, set up a pop-up tent and then help and show people how to put a wetsuit on properly before the swim start (There is a specific technique). When doing this, we discovered that a majority of triathletes are swimming in a wetsuit one size larger than they should be swimming in (Read #6 over again). Why? They are buying for, "comfort"!
Tough/Interesting business for sure!
Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog