How long until we have to check-out our wetsuits from transition along with our bikes? At $1500, I’d be worried about somebody stealing it. Is there a microchipping option? Joking. Sort of.
How long until we have to check-out our wetsuits from transition along with our bikes? At $1500, I’d be worried about somebody stealing it. Is there a microchipping option? Joking. Sort of.
Not even a little joking. For that price I better get a “happy ending” at the end of each race from that suit. Wow!
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…
If anyone is in The Woodlands for Ironman Texas and want’s to demo a deboer wetsuit we have rented 3 lanes at VillaSports tomorrow from 11AM - 3PM. We wont have a full size range, but at the very least we will have mens medium and large, and womens medium. Also, if you don’t want to try the wetsuits but want to get in a pre-race swim you’re more than welcome to stop by with no obligation to demo a suit. It’s free for anybody who’d like to come and swim.
You can also check out the wetsuits at Playtri in the IMTX expo area.
Can you speak to how the ribbing aids in both “increasing buoyancy while decreasing drag?”
I can, maybe, make a case for the latter (vortex generation to reduce skin friction, blah blah) but the former seems a bit far-fetched based on the images I’ve seen of the suit. Simply carving out channels of material to increase surface area by 18.3% (per your website) will not give the results you claim. If anything, it would result in less lift since you’re removing neoprene volume while maintaining a max 5mm thickness by rule.
**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:
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There are already a number of key players involved.
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Swimming is the sport discipline that triathletes generally have the least amount of interest in.
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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)
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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!
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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!
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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!!
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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!
was about to hit buy-now but it looks like i’d be ST size which is not available in either model… oh well, i can afford to eat instead
i note that both suits are all black, i believe there are material reasons for black neoprene but a bit of colour on the back of the shoulders would be good for training safety, though i guess at that price it would be a race only suit
they do claim better durability so if it lasts twice as long as a cheaper suit as well as being faster then the price could be justified
wetsuits do seem to be an under-discussed piece of equipment. for a weak swimmer like me anything that can help is like gold - i know i need to swim more but just like with superbikes and nike shoes its not an either/or situation. i suspect there is real time to be gained with correct wetsuit choice but i really have no idea what that means in practice
With $1500 wetsuits and $5000 (or whatever) handlebars the Nike shoes look like a bargain.
One of these days Durex will make a one use disposible wetsuit that’s black in colour and slides on easily, is tight fitting, charge triathlete’s $2000 per suit because it weighs 5g and make a killing…
Well it is… “Ribbed, for her pleasure”
For $1500 I expect the suit to be made with actual whale’s skin, not some cheap rubber imitation.
Lot of shade in this thread. Why can’t we be happy this stuff exists for those who can afford it? It could be the P5x of wetsuits for the price of a cheap rear disc
a number of years ago Desert Dude aka Brian Stover, as well as Jordan Rapp did some pool testing of various wetsuit brands.
those guys aren’t the only ones. here’s the last $1,500 wetsuit to get tested. i swam them all down, against the clock, the 8 wetsuit brands that mattered most to me, using a consistent protocol. the freak was a $750 wetsuit with a $750 wrap of bullshit around it. which was quite fine. but the hurricane 5 was every inch as fast.
i have no problem with whatever any company wants to do; what it wants to make; what it wants to charge. TYR was an advertiser at the time, was a slowtwitch partner, but the test was the test and i couldn’t lie about it. you could buy 2 lesser-priced TYR wetsuits for the same price as 1 freak and you’d have been 1 wetsuit ahead.
the hurricane 5 was the fastest wetsuit of all, back in 2012, that i tested. by maybe a second per 100. and, that’s probably a case of the suit fitting me exceptionally well. but you needed an extra suit, because that wetsuit had a pretty delicate calf, and it was vulnerable to calf blowouts when putting it on, unless you took care (which is a good idea in any case).
there’s a difference between $1,500 wetsuits and $15,000 bikes. i can be in the wetsuit business tomorrow. with no development costs. knowing nothing about wetsuits. not so a shiv disc or a P3X.
still, it’s incumbent on every brand to justify its value, whether bike, wetsuit or whatever the product. the freak was, in my opinion, in retrospect, a cynical exercise in finding out just how stupid customers really were. you might say that about campy super record. or rapha. or assos. and that isn’t to throw shade on any brand, just, are these products worth the price? a consumer can be, simultaneously, value driven and performance driven. the trick is to figure out where performance no longer tracks with price - where the price continues to escalate but the performance remains level.
i don’t know anything about deboer wetsuits. they may well be worth the price charged. but, i have a little background in this, and i don’t see it. yet. i’m willing to be educated. monty has been around since the beginning of tri wetsuits, if he gets one of these and swims in it perhaps he can demystify it for us.
I’ve been surprised at the negativity in this thread, to be sure. Did deboer kick their puppy or something? As you say, this is the price of components on the bike - a new wheelset is easily more than this.
I’d like to see an evenhanded take on their products, because what they’re doing is interesting. What technology are they using? What’s their design philosophy? And where do they see themselves going? All remains unanswered.
I understand a lot of the negativity to be honest. From the outside perspective (not in the wetsuit industry, not an entrepreneur), it looks like some company came in with a lot of seed money and paid a few of the worlds best athletes a lot of money, knowing that if they would sell enough potentially (definitely in my opinion) overpriced wetsuits to suckers or people with way too much money. I have no doubt their wetsuits are great. I’m sure I would love swimming in one. But how could it possibly be worth twice what the next most expensive wetsuit goes for? I’m also not questioning the effectiveness of their business strategy, though I do think it feels a little bit slimy to me.
I think I should be clear that I come into this sport never having had any real money, I bought the wetsuit I swim in used and it has probably two dozen dime-quarter sized tears in it. I’ve always looked for the cheapest way into each discipline and the only truly high end piece of gear I ever bought new was my Dash saddle, which I was able to test first and still got at a slight discount through my fitter. Do I have a slight amount of bitterness that I can’t afford this wetsuit? Honestly I don’t think so, if I had the money for it I think I would buy a top of the line Roka and upgrade to oversized pulley wheels or something with the extra money.
Using influencers/spokespeople to sell product is hardly new. And it’s not “slimy” marketing tactics from the company since they aren’t forcing you to pay for their wares. The issue a lot of people take with any new product is a marketer making claims they don’t (or can’t) substantiate.
Some people complain about the price, but paying it is a choice they can make. If it means that other companies will raise prices in step, that opens up new opportunities for lower-cost entrants. All of this is a choice by the consumer. By corollary, hanes sells a t-shirt for $3, and Gucci for $300. Both serve the purpose of covering your torso. Some people will spring for the expensive item because of prestige, and some won’t.
I just want to know the mechanisms behind the “whale skin” being faster. It’s a weekend and they’re busy with races, so I can wait for an answer. But a cursory look at the suits and their claims doesn’t fall in line with physics.
So lets do a theoretical thought experiment and assume that their claims down actually align with physics as you say they may not. If this turns out to be true doesn’t that make them kind of slimy or scammy? Charge twice the price for the exact same product? Of course people don’t have to buy them, I stated in my last post that I don’t doubt that their tactics work. I guess I forgot to say that I do think that’s perfectly a perfectly fair tactic for them to use, but I can think that and still think its slimy. Or at least wreaks of slime. I would have no problem getting proved wrong though.
Your initial point was that hiring spokespeople to sell something at a 100% premium was slimy. I disagree with that. Making unsubstantiated or blanketly false claims about a products efficacy, and then pricing based on those claims, however, is slimy. I won’t say this is definitely the situation here until I hear more about the tech. It doesn’t pass muster with me yet, based on a visual of the suit and the website literature, but I’m open to be proven wrong.
I personally won’t drop 1500 on a wetsuit, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for them. I would just like to see that market properly informed of the product.
I don’t get why anyone is shocked by the negativity. It’s $1500, making it by far the most expensive wetsuit. I don’t know if it’s “worth itâ€but I DO know that it’s expensive…and I think it’s fair to bitch about it being that: expensive. Why can’t people just be negative for that reason only. Just like buyingnthensuit, being negative and having an opinion is a choice. And this IS a forum for opinions and discussion, and yet you and others are surprised by negativity?!? Really???
G’day Monty,
I was just wondering if you’ve had a swim in the deboer wetty yet, and if you’ll be doing a review for the site.
Thanks very much for your time mate.
Blue seventy
ROKA
DeSoto
All allow you to test and decide if you want to keep their wetsuit
This company doesn’t allow that
If they did I would buy one in a heart beat to test
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Am I the only one who thinks it looks incredibly boring as well? At least with the TYR Freak of Nature you get abs with your purchase.