We been displaying at quite a few race expos lately and we've had the privilege of getting to meet many of you in person. The face to face interactions give us opportunities to go a bit deeper on our products and we're always excited when customers ask about the details of our garment development and construction process.
After touching our dimpled fabric and see how complex the construction is on our Zele and Men's Novastrike tri-suits, we frequently get asked how the design decisions make the kits fast.
Due to the inherent business of a race expo, all we have time to share are some details on our chafe-free chamois and the speed advantages that come from our use of dimpled fabric.
For many people that's enough, but for those of you who like to get into the details, we decided to write this blog where we dive a bit deeper on the research, testing and work that goes into the development of our gear.
We understand that this is all a bit esoteric but we also know that triathletes are a different breed of athlete and we hope that you'll enjoy this deep dive!
The first thing that we must share is that Kebby our designer absolutely obsesses over the details you can feel even if they are hard to see.
In our high-performance Zele and Novastrike race apparel, fabric placement, surface texture, seam construction, and chamois design work together to deliver exceptional comfort and speed.
During the design process, we knew that purely anecdotal input wouldn't be enough, so we purchased published research that helped refine our construction techniques.
If you're ever in need of some exciting bed time reading, we'll be glad to share our copy of Aerodynamics of Cycling Skinsuits Focused on the Surface Shape of the Arms, by researchers Sungchan Hong and Takeshi Asai.
While we do kid around a bit, the research did confirm our decision to change the orientation of the sleeve fabric. If you look closely at the tri-suits you'll see that the sleeves have grooves that run down the arm and the fabric is different than what we use for the torso.
The other aerodynamic feature that stands out is our use of dimpled fabric. We received this advice from our fabric rep and our factory. In addition, Kebby's husband who is a pilot weighed in on this as well and he confirmed that the dimpled texture can keep the fast moving air "attached" to the rider longer and this ultimately reduces drag. Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding and when we tested with ERO sports, they confirmed that the tri-suit with the dimpled fabric had 1.59% less drag than one with regular fabric.
The punchline is that a carefully chosen texture can outperform a smooth surface. This seems a bit counter intuitive, but the data do not lie!