Coeur's mission to create the Best Women's Cycling Jerseys, Shorts and Bibs period.
Ok, we'll just come out and say that we're concerned that a blog post containing a series of company updates might be about as interesting as a report out on what we've had for lunch the past week. We’d much rather talk about our customers, our ambassador team, or industry related topics.
That being said, we do have a few things happening that we’re compelled to share and we hope they are somewhat interesting. If not, then feel free to skip the next couple of paragraphs and check out some of the things going on with our customers and ambassadors.
Hey...you're still reading! How cool. Ok, then, to start with, we continue to work on (and perfect) a very, very high end new line of gear. It will be called Zele (which is French for Zeal) by Coeur. We started out by asking ourselves what we would do if we wanted to maximize aerodynamic performance of a piece of clothing and we didn’t want to make any sacrifices related to speed.
While very time consuming, the development process has been fascinating! Our first step was to consult with individuals who understand air flow and how it impacts speed. The information we picked up was eye opening and quite interesting. We’re now disciples of “laminar flow” and know that as speed increases, drag increases to the “square of speed”. In other words, the faster you are, the more you’ll appreciate the design of the new line. We've selected some seriously fast fabric and we're tweaking the construction so it works for a woman's body.
A few pictures from our recent Photo Shoot
The next step in the development process will be a trip to a Velodrome with an engineering team to actually quantify the benefits of the new design and the fabric we have selected. We don’t want to “let the cat out of the bag” yet, but everything suggests that the new gear is going to be crazy fast and we’ll have the numbers to prove it. We haven't purposely been keeping Zele a secret, but we can't say with certainty when it will be released. That's because we'll keep tweaking based on the feedback of the aerodynamic testing. If we hit our numbers during the test, then we could see a release in August of this year.
In addition to work on Zele, we’ve been trying to keep the pipeline full of new products. Over the past month, we’ve released our 2016 cycling line that features the best women's specific chamois pad (from Cytech) in the business.
A great pad is key to great cycling shorts
We've also developed and released some cool accessory items such as this cycling wallet with the Heart and Courage logo embossed on the side. It's big enough for an I-phone 6 (a 6S is a bit too big) and treated to be water/sweat resistant.
The Coeur Cycling Wallet
In addition, we came out with this multi-purpose wrap that can go over your head or around your neck.
The Neck Gaiter
On the customer front, we do get some great feedback and absolutely love it when we hear about your activities. To that end, we received this great picture of Tamara who had just completed the Galveston 70.3.
Congratulations Tamara!
We also spend quite a bit of time following and cheering for our ambassadors and our pros. We have about 100 women on the team and get absolutely giddy when we see that they are promoting lifestyles of health and fitness. We’ve said it before, but, more than anything, we want our ambassadors to represent endurance sports above all else.
Our hypothesis is that if everyone wearing Coeur does a good job of promoting health and they are courteous and kind on and off the course, then we’ll do just fine as a company thanks to the association with amazing people.
Speaking of ambassadors, we received this picture from Melissa before the Boston Marathon.
We also love this picture from the Tri Wahines in Hawaii wearing Coeur gear.
As you can tell, hearing from (and cheering for) everyone just makes our day, so if you've got a great picture, please share it on social media and tag us.
Thanks again for all the wonderful support. We hope you have a great season!
Happy Training and Racing
Your Friends at Coeur