Kiwi swim suit company eyes Beijing Gold

Congrats to the Kiwis for making a big splash in the ironman arena:

"Kiwi Wetsuit company blueseventy has beaten global swimwear leaders Speedo and TYR to official approval for its new swimskin at the Beijing Olympics, offering competitors a 3-5% speed advantage.

The swimsuits, using a new ultra-smooth fabric which is also neutrally buoyant, will be worn by Australian swimmers next month trialling for the World Swimming Championships in Manchester in April.

But the big prize for the Kiwi company will be Beijing and beyond.

Chairman Lee Nicolson said far bigger global competitors would no doubt be working hard to emulate the Kiwi company's success in getting approval for its suit at all Fina-aligned events.

Fina is the International Swimming Federation and is recognised by the International Olympic Committee.

"But right now we have approval and no one else does, and that presents us with a huge window of opportunity," Nicolson said.

"We have all systems go, and a lot of resources are being put into development of the new swimsuit."

Steve Nicholls, who leads the production development team at blueseventy, said rivals wouldn't find it easy to match the company's breakthrough: "Just stitching together a suit made from the same material we use may not mean another brand's suit is Fina-compliant."

The way the blueseventy suit had been designed contributed hugely to its acceptance by Fina, he said.

The material is produced by Yamamoto Corp in Japan, and has a surface friction co-efficient which is more than 50 times lower than normal skin and four times lower than other fabrics on the market.

Blueseventy first made triathlon wetsuits from the new material in 2006 and launched them with huge success at the Ironman World Championships.

By the time this year's championships came around, three times as many participants were wearing the blueseventy suits compared with all other brands combined.

But it is the prospects for growth in the open and pool swimming market estimated to be anything from four to 10 times the size of the triathlon market which is exciting blueseventy.

Nicolson began the business in 1989 as a marketing company which imported products and sold them by direct marketing in New Zealand.

"I soon realised there were some great Kiwi ideas and products that were not being effectively marketed offshore, so we changed tack," she said.

In 1990 she signed a marketing agreement with an Auckland company which was making wetsuits for triathlon competitors and began selling them overseas.

Soon the business began to incorporate improvements into the product, which it then bought out as its own.

The company was renamed Ironman Wetsuits and grew exponentially when it shifted manufacture to China, opened an office in Seattle and started selling through distributors around the globe.

Ironman Wetsuits changed its name to blueseventy two years ago (70% of the earth's surface is covered by water) and is now challenging the technical dominance of companies such as Speedo." [Source]