New Things in 2013
Hi everyone! Just keeping you in the loop... You've probably seen our website change just recently! It offers more shipping options + we started working with a professional shipping center that bar-codes each and every suit and gets orders out same day. This also means less inventory issues! We're still using all of our money to make swimwear. Most people think we're big, but we're not. Up until the move, there's basically been 4 of us hand packing every order out of our garage. Now, we're about 5-6 people paying professionals to ship! haha! But we're still working out of our garages, but focusing on better customer service especially with group orders, new designs and prints, and bringing back some old design and color favorites customers have been asking about. What's coming for swimwear? - Everyone seems to want one pieces and fix strap suits! So while we're known for the ties, we're going to be making a lot more fix strap options in different silhouettes that accommodate different body types. We're doing a lot of color blocking and print blocking, and doing a lot more PRINTS, like bright painterly, tropical, resort style in some edgy silhouettes. We're also making swim rompers, swim leggings, swim shorts, and a lot more swimwear for people who want to swim in something new and different. We're bringing back our clothing!!!!!!! You can get it dirty during workout or just wear it out, it's up to you. They are our own silhouettes and detailing, and dying processes, and it definitely does NOT look robotic like all the other athletic wear you see these days. We're also inventing certain types of clothing for people who get wet... it's hard to describe, so just keep an eye out! While our old 1pc lining got the job done, we want better lining! We thought you may want to hear how and why lining falls apart sooner than the outside fabric whenever you buy a suit from anyone, so here's a little lining -101 education to help explain (if you're interested!!)... scroll to below the prototype photos! Lining for 1pcs has to be light weight + stretch + have good recoil. anything too heavy feels like you're swimming in a potato sack with a wedgie. 1pcs cover a lot of body and have a lot of fabric in them. -Polyester yarns don't stretch - they need a catalyst. A "100 poly" suit uses a PBT Polyester as a stretch catalyst. There's a natural mechanical stretch to PBT poly, so they do this in lieu of using lycra. I thought that a 100 poly suit could stretch without PBT at one point in time, but got my ass handed to me by the professionals. It's still 100% polyester, it's just that it's 2 types of polyesters. -PBT has a minimum weight to it and it's kind of heavy, so you can't combine it with polyester (another heavy weighted fabric) and have it be light weight. It's straight up impossible because of physics. 2 pieces aren't an issue because of the little coverage required. -Xtra life lycra has the same problem - the reason why it lasts longer is because it's thicker and heavier than normal lycra. Same physics apply when knitting it with polyester. -Nylon and Polyester actually have about the same durability when both don't have lycra in them (polyester's better, but not by all that much. It's just that swimmers are so used to demanding polyester that Nylon has become a bad word). Problem is when they're in 100% state, they don't stretch. -The lining we have now is a microknit which is supposed to have 400% the durability as normal knit, but we've found that this isn't always the case, and some pools are harder on it than others, and we want something better. -Moving forward we're looking at 2 options: 1. there's a 100g /m 80% poly 20% Lycra which we've found that we'll need to swim test to see how it holds up. We cannot tell you how it's going to go, other than we've seen 80 poly/20 lycra fabrics hold up pretty well in the past, so we'll give this a shot. 2. there's another special lining material in development that's a nylon + xtra life composition. It's still be designed though, not on the market, and may take even a year to develop. So there you go!