Why Start a Swimsuit Company?

When my sister and I were thinking of ideas for a company to start, we went through ideas of various industries ripe for disruption due to a lack of innovation and creativity. However, once we adjusted our thinking to focus on a persistent problem with the products offered to consumers, men's swimsuits became our clear front-runner. The two major problems we see in the mainstream men's swimsuit industry:

1. Most swimsuits are made with fabric that causes chaffing and discomfort

2. A lot of swimsuit designs are boring and are too long (board short type design)

With SilkBoat we created a swimsuit line that is designed with stretchy, quick-dry fabric that does not chafe, even when worn for long stretches of time (week long all inclusive vacations, cottage weekends in the Kawarthas, Great Wolf Lodge weekend, etc.). This was the most important piece of the design process for us - any guy that has gone through an uncomfortable experience with swimsuit chaffing knows it can be a downer on what was supposed to be a stress-free weekend. With the SilkBoat line of suits, this problem is no longer something I, or any of our customers, have to deal with.

On design - the designs were something Madeline and I worked through over various brainstorming sessions after reviewing what was offered from alternative swimsuit companies. We found that there are very limited SwimSuits shorter than 5" that weren't a weird Speedo type look that gives people the creeps. We wanted to strike a balance between weird Speedo guy and dude wearing board shorts to his knees, which is how we settled on a 4.5" length. I will dedicate another blog post to how we selected each individual pattern, but the overall approach when deciding on them was:

1. Make the suits fun

2. Provide options based on personality

3. Don't choose designs that are so niche it would only cater to a very few people (e.g. a Boston Bruins logo suit)

The process of starting a business has been excellent so far and we look forward to continuing to hear customer feedback on the materials and design!