Interview with Brian Conolly, CEO of Zhik
by Mark Jardine 20 Nov 2015 12:40 GMT
20 November 2015
The Zhik Team at METS (l-r) Charlotte Stollmann, Simon Payne, Ake van der Vinne, Brian Conolly, Tristan Hutt, Liz Rushall © Mark Jardine
We talked to Brian Conolly, CEO of the innovative technical clothing brand Zhik at the METS 2015 Trade Show in Amsterdam.
Mark Jardine: What have been the highlights for the last two to three years for Zhik and how have things progressed within the company and your clothing?
Brian Conolly: I would say that fundamentally we have consolidated really nicely in the dinghy world and we are really starting to make progress with the yachties. The yachting community is different, so we are learning really fast what it takes to market to the new community.
MJ: In the dinghy market you have always relied a lot on the sailor feedback to develop your product. Have you found that the same in the yachting market or have there been differences with that?
BC: The feedback is important no matter where you go. It doesn't matter what industry you are in. If you don't listen to the problems and listen to what people are saying you can't develop anything that differentiates with the other peers in the industry.
It has always been important to ZHIK that we listen to problems. We love problems and if we can fix problems then we have made something different, so that product is unique.
The way you market to the yachting world requires some fundamentally more traditional methods. Whereas in the dinghy world we do very well with our fantastic squad of team riders who proliferated the brand throughout the international network, yachting is a lot more segmented. You have got different types of people; you have got different age groups so we have to adjust the way we do our marketing.
MJ: This is the second iteration of your ISOTAK gear. What major changes have you made to the range now?
BC: The ISOTAK Ocean was a pinnacle release for us. We used a lot of techniques in material science, research techniques.
For ISOTAK Ocean we assembled all the different kinds of fabrics we could think of that could be useful, given our background in material science, which is quite extensive by the way.
We combined those with all the different kinds of membranes we thought might work. A lot of the membranes out there are quite different so we needed to test that, and we didn't have a standard to test that with because what we are after was durability. So we created our own laboratory test standard.
In sailing it is not like you are skiing down a mountain. The membrane needs to be really tough and it needs to work and sustain waterproof resistance when it is in a very moist environment.
It's not like snow, and after all of that testing we discovered a lot of things and the membrane technology in ISOTAK is fundamentally one of our best innovative designs.
It is a multi-layer membrane that we have proven with our own testing regime that is four times more waterproof durable than other ocean membranes out there, so the fabric is fantastic. And this is currently being verified independently.
In the last year, we have taken that one step further. Because the membrane is so durable we can step back on the weight of the outer fabrics and that's brought us to this trade show where we are releasing ISOTAK 2, the second generation of our ISOTAK 1. So we now have ISOTAK 2 and ISOTAK Ocean with the same fantastic membrane.
MJ: On that, has the fabric technology moved on or your understanding of the technology moved on so that you can actually use lighter weight fabrics to provide the same performance?
BC: It's both. Obviously, we are keeping abreast with modern science at the same time. Some of the things that we do and with other products that we make, we have actually done the fabric science ourselves. We have had to build the composites from scratch ourselves and had to try and make them work so we do have genuine fabric engineering going on.
MJ: Sailing has recently moved on a quantum leap with the boats getting faster and the technology seeming to make a very big change. Do you think your clothing has been at the forefront of this and helped to keep the clothing going on at the speed of the increase of sailing as well?
BC: One of the great things about the business now is that we are nearly a dozen years old and we have grown up with some kids that have, they were 19 or 18 when we supported them and now they are steering America's Cups boats. That's kind of neat.
It is nice to grow up with them and these guys need some pretty amazing kit and we have been working with nearly all of the America's Cup teams on and off from the last Cup and now into the next one, and in so doing we have had to develop a lot of this impact technology.
You will see that. Watch this space. It is not here on public display but believe me we have got our mind firmly fixed on what the market is calling for but we are not going to just come out with some hacks in that department.
We are going to take advantage of what we have learnt in the America's Cup and what we have learnt in some of the other high speed classes like the foiling moth, for example, and we are going to apply that properly and genuinely and authentically. So any impact technology that we put in to our future products is genuinely useful and the right type of technology.
MJ: So where next for Zhik as a brand?
BC: Well actually besides the challenges for AC sailors and other high speed boats, we are doing a lot more that that, obviously. It is not all about sailing.
In so doing, all of this wonderful material science and trying to make great kit for sailors, we find ourselves butting up against just about every weather related problem you can imagine, whether it be extreme cold or extreme heat and everything in between. Plus, there's all the durability issues and the sea salt, UV etc., etc.
There is so much demand in materials for sailing. It would be a shame not to be good at that and then not to apply that in other water sports, so we know that the broader water sport community at large is out there hanging for us and we are exploring that.
You can see that at METS today.
You can see that we have got gear for paddlers and we have got some relationships with some fantastic Olympic team riders in the paddling community now and we are very serious about positioning ZHIK as a made for water brand not just a not just a sailing brand. We genuinely make gear for water, so let's make more water sports to like what we do.
MJ: Brian, many thanks for your time.
Find out more at www.zhik.com