It’s not your mother’s aqua aerobics, but both of you are welcome to join in.
Cypress-based Speedo USA last week introduced Speedo Fit—a water-based training regimen that sets the stage for a new lineup of products it hopes will broaden its customer base beyond the competitive swimming realm where it’s been the longtime leader of the pack.
“It’s a much larger population to actually address,” said President Jim Gerson. “There are only 2.6 million competitive swimmers in the world, and there’s over 40 million in the fitness pool, and we looked at that and said, ‘How can we be more relevant?’”
The swimwear and accessories manufacturer is part of New York-based PVH Corp.’s Heritage Brands, which includes the Van Heusen, IZOD, ARROW, Warner’s and Olga labels. The group’s revenue in fiscal 2015 was $1.72 billion, to which Speedo contributed more than 10%, according to the Business Journal’s estimate.
“Our Speedo division continued to post healthy performance during 2015, and we see a significant opportunity for the Speedo brand in 2016 with the summer Olympics” in Rio de Janeiro, said Emanuel Chirico, PVH’s chief executive, during the company’s March earnings call.
Olympic Dreams
The company is promoting Speedo Fit with a namesake digital and broadcast marketing campaign that will run throughout the Rio games—a first for the brand, which sponsors several athletes who are scheduled to compete come August.
The International Olympic Committee has loosened rules to allow competitors to appear in ads for brands that are not official Olympics sponsors. Promos can’t contain any references to the games, a restriction that Speedo Vice President of Marketing Pierre Martin—a recent transplant from Foothill Ranch-based Oakley Inc.—will happily accommodate.
“A lot of effort goes into sponsoring athletes—we support them and their efforts to get them to the games, but as a brand that [isn’t an] official sponsor or the sponsor of the [U.S. Olympic Committee], you’d get a blackout period of about six weeks,” Martin said.
“[The rule change] has given us some flexibility to actually continue our advertising campaigns and continue celebrating the athletes that are competing in the Olympics throughout the games. We have to be very careful how we put copy in ads and social platforms. We are following the rules, and we are preapproved with our campaign to go through the Olympics.”
PVH Marketing Group, an in-house agency of Speedo’s parent company, created the campaign and also is in charge of media buying. Digital ads featuring Olympians Natalie Coughlin, Nathan Adrian and Ryan Lochte started running last month, mainly on fitness-related websites, Martin said.
The TV spots are set to kick off this summer, just in time for the Rio games. He declined to provide details on media spending but said the campaign is a “substantial investment,” and represents about 20% of Speedo’s marketing budget.
The brand spent about $627,000 on media placements in 2014 and $23,000 last year, according to Kantar Media in New York. The figures do not take into account paid search, social, mobile or online video, or athlete or event sponsorships.
Training
Speedo Fit ads showcase the brand’s approach to water as “an all-in-one fitness center that offers more benefits than the land,” Gerson said, adding that water training now “goes beyond swimming laps, shifting the workout from purely horizontal to vertical,” to include cardio, resistance, weight-lifting and stretching.
Speedo partnered with EXOS in Phoenix, Ariz., to develop the fitness program, which is explained via numerous exercise videos posted on the swimwear manufacturer’s website.
“When Speedo USA identified the opportunity to expand into water fitness, we needed an expert to help us define the scientific benefits of water and create training techniques to reach all levels,” Martin said. “EXOS has been incorporating water fitness into its overall training of elite athletes for many years, and together we have the opportunity to bring water to the forefront of fitness for athletes at all levels.”
The idea for Speedo Fit came from watching athletes who do both water- and land-based training, Gerson said.
“The combination gets them to a higher level,” he said. “Teams like University of Kentucky’s basketball team, they run in water, and we said—why? And the reason is that they are seeing they can get a better workout. They can work hard but still keep their legs fresh. So we looked at this and said, ‘Well, this could be good for all people’—all people training but also all athletes … whether you’re a cyclist or runner, basketball player or football player.”
Product Man
Recommended product offerings include LZR FIT suits, Elastomeric goggles and caps, Upswell water shoes, and Clutch paddles. A new lineup will come to the market in 2017, to be developed in collaboration with big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton, who pioneered the tow-in surfing technique featured in ads for Irvine-based Mazda North American Operations.
“I’ve been doing pool training for about 15 years,” Hamilton said during a Speedo Fit kickoff held last month at the Equinox fitness club in West Los Angles. “A lot of normal fitness training is undermining our health—we think if we go to gym and if we feel like someone beat us up, that means we worked out really hard, and over time you pay for that … This is the tip of a giant iceberg, I’m excited to be on it, and I’ve been on a couple of icebergs … It’s going to be interesting to see where the people are going to take it.”
New to OC
PVH, which has a market value of about $7.9 billion, got a license to sell Speedo products in North America as part of a deal to acquire Warnaco Group Inc. in 2013 for approximately $3 billion.
Speedo does not have its own stores but sells merchandise wholesale and through team dealers, swim clubs, off-price stores, catalog retailers and its website, www.SpeedoUSA.com. The company moved its headquarters and some 120 employees from downtown Los Angeles to Cypress in October.
“We were looking for a building that would embody the DNA of our brand, and we found it,” Gerson said. “It’s a very collaborative, open space. We got a fitness pool in our showroom, which showcases what we can do in training and also what we can do in testing on products. Also, we wanted to surround ourselves with a more outdoor, active lifestyle, and in OC there are a lot of surf and action sports brands that embody that—from Vans, O’Neil and Hurley.”
Speedo also joined a vibrant cluster of swimwear designers and manufacturers, a roster that ranges from Manhattan Beachwear Inc., also in Cypress, to Raj Swim in Tustin, and Irvine-based Beach Bunny Swimwear and L*Space by Monica Wise in Newport Beach.
