Does anyone know anything about Deboer wetsuits?
They’ve got Frodo selling their wares, so they must be reasonable. And if competition makes Roka wetsuits a little cheaper…
Does this look like competition that will drive down other companies prices?
While its good to see more players in the market for sure, it doesn’t seem like this is going to be a brand that appeals to the normal consumer. Frodo is flashy and lives a life of luxury (at least on social media). For sure people will be buying these because of him but lets be real; those are absurdly priced. I’m sure they’ll release lower priced but models in the future though.
Maybe STConcierge will chime in. She’s the queen of neoprene.
i was hoping we’d get another wetsuit brand. we just don’t have enough of them.
Decent pro lineup with Jan, Ben Kanute, and Matt Russell. The price point is absurd though, $1500 for a wetsuit is insane. Unless the wetsuit is actually swimming for me, I’m not dropping that kind of coin. I guess it’s kind of like TYR’s Freak of Nature, it’s an awesome suit but it’s not that much better to justify the price. It also seems like they’ll need to expand the line to be more consumer friendly, because chances are if it’s perfect for swimming monsters like Jan and Kanute, it’s probably not great for a large segment of age groupers.
x1000000
Wetsuits are not like regular clothing that you replace after a couple of season.
My Desoto T1 is still perfectly fine after more than a decade of racing.
i was hoping we’d get another wetsuit brand. we just don’t have enough of them.
Maybe STConcierge will chime in. She’s the queen of neoprene.
Ding ding… chiming in here.
It looks like a well-thought out and nicely crafted suit with premium materials throughout. If it’s 94% limestone, no doubt it’s Yamamoto.
I’m in favor of supporting pros, but this seems over the top. If I wanted to drop 1500 bones (US), not on a bike, I’d buy a $425-500 suit and spend the rest entering a really cool non-branded race and traveling there w friends/family. PM if you’d like to know which races and which suit(s.)
Maybe STConcierge will chime in. She’s the queen of neoprene.
Ding ding… chiming in here.
It looks like a well-thought out and nicely crafted suit with premium materials throughout. If it’s 94% limestone, no doubt it’s Yamamoto.
I’m in favor of supporting pros, but this seems over the top. If I wanted to drop 1500 bones (US), not on a bike, I’d buy a $425-500 suit and spend the rest entering a really cool non-branded race and traveling there w friends/family. PM if you’d like to know which races and which suit(s.)
Thanks Karen! I FULLY agree! I need to compile my list…
Does this look like competition that will drive down other companies prices?
While its good to see more players in the market for sure, it doesn’t seem like this is going to be a brand that appeals to the normal consumer. Frodo is flashy and lives a life of luxury (at least on social media). For sure people will be buying these because of him but lets be real; those are absurdly priced. I’m sure they’ll release lower priced but models in the future though.
I LOL’d!! Yes Jan F and George Hincap. are 2 athletes that post very pretentiously LOL…
If there are enough eeejits parted with their $1500 for one of these, it will drive prices UP when the othrr manufacturers realise they are underpricing.
Does anyone know anything about Deboer wetsuits?
They’ve got Frodo selling their wares, so they must be reasonable. And if competition makes Roka wetsuits a little cheaper…
I can chime in on behalf of deboer wetsuits. I work for de**boer **as the athlete manager and handle social media responsibilities. I’ll give a little background first, then I can get to the athletes and the price.
deboer wetsuits is a new premium wetsuit brand. One of the co-founders, Alex de Boer, has been involved in the industry since 1995. He started by distributing Ironman wetsuits, and of late he has run Dare2Tri (which he continues to operate as a separate business).
deboer has introduced two wetsuits, the Fjord 1.0 and the Floh 1.0. The most striking feature of both wetsuits is the ribbed material you can see through the front of the body and legs. We call this material WhaleSkin, it’s a Limestone neoprene, and the ribbed material helps increase buoyancy while decreasing drag. The Fjord 1.0 uses a material called DuraFlex in the arms, which is only 0.3mm thick and provides incredible flexibility, and is almost impossible to rip with your nails. The Floh 1.0 uses UltraFlex in the arms, which is a 1.5mm material, and is still extremely flexible, while providing additional warmth.
We have currently announced Jan Frodeno, Ben Kanute, Matt Russell, Celine Schaerer, Brooke Brown, and Marcos Knight on the team. It was a big deal for us when Jan chose to swim in a de**boer **wetsuit. Ben Kanute wore a Fjord 1.0 wetsuit when he won Oceanside earlier this month, we’re looking forward to Matt racing in Texas this weekend, and we’re very excited about all the athletes we have on the team.
Finally, the price. I’ve been on Slowtwitch long enough to know this would be a sticking point for many. Both the Fjord 1.0 and the Floh 1.0 are $1499. This is currently the most expensive wetsuit on the market, and it wont be for everyone. With that said, this is a no-compromise product. We didn’t cut any corners and considered no detail too small in the development and manufacturing of this wetsuit. Athletes who purchase a de**boer **wetsuit will see the attention and care that has gone into the wetsuits. Additionally, at this point we have no intentions to release another wetsuit at a lower price.
If anyone has any questions about de**boer **feel free to send questions my way. If you want to email me my email is daniel.clarke(at)deboerwetsuits.com. We are going to have a couple of demo wetsuits in the Woodlands this week, and Playtri Dallas is hosting an event at their store with some demo suits tomorrow (Tuesday) night.
Decent pro lineup with Jan, Ben Kanute, and Matt Russell. The price point is absurd though, $1500 for a wetsuit is insane. Unless the wetsuit is actually swimming for me, I’m not dropping that kind of coin…
Folks here on ST have no issue whatsoever forking over 950 US for a Roka Maverick. I’m sure it won’t be long until $1500 wetsuits are the normal high end. Just like 10k is now the starting point for high end super bikes…
Don’t they sell diamonds too? No wonder they’re so expensive.
Yeah, I was thinking about that an hour after I posted that about the price point. I’ve seen lots of 12k bikes purchased to go 15 mph, so there’s definitely some disposable income in the sport. I guess I’m just not in their target market. I do wonder though if it’s one of those things where the wetsuit is so high-end that people with less than stellar form are actually going to swim worse in it vs some of the more beginner wetsuits.
Can you point to any testing that has been done to compare Jan, Ben, and other’s performance with other wetsuits on the market?
Sounds great Daniel congrats! And agree with you the price is perfectly reasonable. Hilarious to me that people shout about a “insanely priced” wetsuit when a having strong swim is such a critical part to having a strong race (easy way to improve your bike dramatically especially in pro ranks is if you can get out of water with that front pack) and yet people don’t think twice about putting a 7-800$ oversized pulley wheel that saves maybe 1W on the bike. Anyways congrats again on the launch!
Can you point to any testing that has been done to compare Jan, Ben, and other’s performance with other wetsuits on the market?[/quote
Did Ben do Oceanside 2018 ? To compare vs 2019.
And agree with you the price is perfectly reasonable. Hilarious to me that people shout about a “insanely priced” wetsuit when a having strong swim is such a critical part to having a strong race (easy way to improve your bike dramatically especially in pro ranks is if you can get out of water with that front pack) and yet people don’t think twice about putting a 7-800$ oversized pulley wheel that saves maybe 1W on the bike.
You’re just using whataboutism here though…
Just because people spend $800 on oversized pulley wheels doesn’t mean spending $1500 on a wetsuit isn’t also insane. And as of yet there is zero evidence this wetsuit is even faster than other companies’ top of the line.
true but my main point is that the swim is really just as important in triathlon as other two disciplines and yet it seems to me on the swim front people tend to be much more hesitant to invest money in the pursuit of performance as they are on bike/run.
true but my main point is that the swim is really just as important in triathlon as other two disciplines and yet it seems to me on the swim front people tend to be much more hesitant to invest money in the pursuit of performance as they are on bike/run.
i would put it a different way. people are much more interested in investing money than in investing time. i don’t know how many people have swum in as many wetsuits as i have against the clock, in controlled tests, and i have a pretty good idea what makes a wetsuit fast, what makes it slow, how much variance there is, and who does best in what kind of wetsuit. getting people to take my wetsuit advice is easy.
getting people to act on advice on how just to exit the water faster, well, that’s another thing.