A reversal of fortunes

June 23, 2009

On May 19th blueseventy got the stunning news that none of their 11 submitted swim skins to FINA were approved, but on June 21st they were informed that all is kosher now. We talked to blueseventy CEO Steve Nicholls.

Slowtwitch: Steve, when and how did you get the good news?

Steve: We got an email from FINA that basically said that all of our suits had a yes next to them. We got that on Sunday night at 7:30 UK time.

ST: A yes next to them?

Steve: Initially when we received news that our suits were not approved, we actually found out by reading the approved list. Then we got an email from FINA soon after which just had the suits listed and a column with approved yes/no. Under that it said "to be modified" for all of our suits. Actually 14 suits even though we only submitted 11 to FINA. They must have counted a couple of our suits twice. But now indeed all 11 suits had a yes next to them. We were confident in the scientific evidence that our suit could not trap air and are grateful for the support of Huub Touissant of the University of Amsterdam in presenting our case to FINA. We felt strongly that we would not need to make any alterations to it and we’re delighted that the right decision has been made without any form of bias.

ST: That must have been a big monkey of your back?

Steve: It has been nuts and I am still pretty shattered. Actually lost my voice the last few days. But the news is great, Herbert. We had a long 3 or 4 weeks with late nights and diverted resources, going through all the possible modifications we had on the table at one stage.

ST: I think you said you were about 50/50 sure that this decision would come about.

Steve: We would have liked to been more confident, but we were like 95% certain we would be approved in the first instance. We were not even close to FINA’s thresholds for buoyancy or thickness – we were way under. USAT testing for buoyancy is even harsher than FINA’s by 40% and we are under their threshold too. We were not really concerned about missing any of these tests. So that whole “air trapping” issue came completely out of left field.

ST: How have your customers dealt with that whole issue?

Steve: We had a very mixed consumer reaction. We had a couple of people who came in who kind of said that it was our fault that the suits were not approved and that we misled them and we should be refunding their money. We had a couple of dealers who sent stock back too and that was a bit more hurtful, but in the majority people have been fantastic. We have had customers say “We love our blueseventy suits and we are routing for you, let us know when you are back.”

ST: At the end of the year, the new rules for 2010 are supposed to come out. What is the word regarding those rules?

Steve: We had a few rumors floating around as to what the rules might be. The last time we met with FINA’s manufacturers the rulings were supposed to be around about 50% permeable versus non-permeable and that was split 50% top half of the suit and bottom half of the suit. The readings for permeability we talked about being 40 liters per second per meter squared or possibly being shifted up to 80 liters per second per meter squared. Right now there are rumors that there might be 100% textiles next year and maybe 100% permeable. We don’t know. What classifies as a textile fabric versus a non-textile? It is hard to know where they are going.

ST: What else is new at blueseventy? Have you had time to work on new stuff with this whole situation?

Steve: We have been working hard with product development across the board. We are obviously in a different position than some of the other brands. Where they might specialize in a textile brand of apparel, we are just a swimming brand. We make stuff for triathlon and swimming. We continue to develop our wetsuits and we think we have the best wetsuits for triathletes right now. We have seen a lot of different test, some biased and some unbiased, and we have come out of these relatively well. The relationship with Team TBB has been fantastic and we really like the relationship very much. Alistair Brownlee just won 2 World Cup races in a row and the success in 70.3 and Ironman racing has been tremendous.

ST: What impact does the FINA ruling have on triathlon?

Steve: Some of the governing bodies said they will follow their own rules and USAT always had. For example FINA rules say that you can only wear one suit and in a triathlon you have to wear 2 suits and so FINA is irrelevant anyway.