Scott Dickens - Behind the brand: FORM Smart Swim Goggles

[Music] Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Pillar podcast. For those new, a pillar we are on a mission to get athletes to their start line in the best condition and we have a vision to move micronutrition from preventative health and into performance permanently. We enable that by developing clinical micronutrition products that cover everything from sleep and recovery, information, immunity and energy. But today's episode is an amazing opportunity. I get an opportunity to sit down and chat with Scott Dickens. A form of pro swimmer turned SportsTech Innovator and now the head of business development for the swimtech company form. Scott and I deep dive on his background and career into swimming from collegiate days into professional and then talk about a turn that he took into the professional world firstly through finance but then how he ended up in as one of the founding members of the form team. And we talk about how form is obviously revolutionising the idea of swim data and real time data for athletes. We talk about there recently announced approval into world triathlon racing through their new smart direction technology as well which is a huge, huge step forward for any open water swimmers or triathletes racing longer form triathlons such as Ironmans as well. It's a fantastic chat. Scott is very open and very candid about his insights and challenges along the way of his career. And I hope you enjoy this one. Scott thank you for joining us. How are we? Thanks for having me so much Damien. We're doing well. Got nice. Well what used to be a funny Dam Vancouver so it's not raining which is a great thing. Fantastic. So I think we'll just dive straight into it. Scott can you give us a little bit of a background on what to your child who was like what you were doing as a kid growing up? What obviously took you into the world of professional swimming which then led on to obviously joining form? Yeah I mean I feel like I should have been growing up in Australia with how much swimming I started to do on a young age. My parents kind of tossed me in the pool to do the swim lessons like every other parent probably does to make sure you have water safety and you go through that so there's no concerns as you get up and you start playing with friends. But it was one of those things that came natural to me and it kind of progressed through those swimming lessons at a rapid rate and eventually by the time I was six years old there was no more levels to do and there was either you know two other sports which I did baseball you know basketball volleyball all the traditional sports that you kind of do at a young age but there was a pool in my local hometown a couple walks away from her house so my parents decided to put all three of us. I have two older brothers that are both surprising enough taller than I am. I'm six foot five and I'm the shortest in my family and yeah we're just one thing led to another and we all start to sport at the same time and eventually after a couple of years we had a really great coach growing up that I would say I had an eye for talent as well as an eye for technique and she just told our parents straight up that I think your sons have an opportunity to do well in the sports swimming and unfortunately I can only take them so far because we are essentially a novice team and novice group and there's another team in the local city that would help develop them in a more rapid rate so that's kind of how it progressed and by the time I was you know 10 years old I was running our state provincial championships in Ontario, Canada and I've been doing it ever since all the until the age I was 29 but it was one of those things growing up that I just love being in the water and I still do. So like like a lot of swimmers is it fair to say you know you fell into it naturally you know like as you were saying a lot of Australian parents put in their children in to swim you know for for safety reasons and then obviously some take to it you know as a pun you like a duck in water and others and I think and others don't others obviously do that the safety and then decide that swimming is not their passion. Yeah talk to me through so like as you you know you said six years old there was no more lessons but when do you think that age hit where you realise firstly obviously talent obviously drives passion as a child I think when you're when you're when you're when you can tell that you have a talent you know immediately children are drawn to wanting to continue to do that where my question would be where did that change for you like where did it go from talent into into kind of passion into wanting to succeed at that professional level of swimming which we know is one of the tougher sports out there to make it win gold medals in. Yeah I think the passion never left so that was the starting point like you said and I would tip talent maybe my talent was you know I think it's something comes down to not a you know got a given ability to swim but for me swimming is one of those technical sports that requires high attention to detail and you know you can see inherent traits probably in athletics and certain sports that require that attention to detail that even separate from someone from a finalist to you know gold medalist I can see a nice picture behind you on the wall that speaks to that and it's being present and understanding what you're doing and why you're doing it but loving that process you know you hear a lot of people it's like man I was in the pool staring at the black line I had the song stuck in my head I can probably count on one hand the amount of times that's happened in my life because I'm present in the water and I think about the stroke from mechanics to one another to every kick to every breath and it's just something it's always come natural to me and I never really thought about talent or the drive because my parents lessons growing up was always you know sports should be fun that's the first and foremost you should love doing it and at any point when that stops you got to ask yourself do you want to keep doing this is it time to you know do something else and for me that never went away and my brother is you know my little brother went into basketball because he you know he got that safety thing and he was great at swimming but he just loved basketball more he was 68 and my older brother was amazing summer as well and it was just one of those things that I I couldn't live without and my parents said you know you can you can continue to swim but your grades in school have to be at the level that we want them to be or else swimming goes away so it's a privilege and school's not secondary or something so to me it was like okay I'll just do well in school because I love swimming that much but I would say by the age of like 13 14 I when is when I kind of start to see like I got a new set of coaches in a new club I switched again to a team that was more focused around technical aspects so quality versus quantity and that really spoke to me and it wasn't about how many meters you did it was really how you did those meters and by the time I started to progress and I made my first national cut at around 15 years old that that's when I kind of saw the potential of like could this be an avenue where I do set my sights on the highest level which is the Olympics and beyond so nutshell that's where I kind of saw going from talent to passion or reverse wise to setting my sights on elite level and when you and your parents are very similar to to the ultimate my parents said to me with rugby you know they sent me to a school which was funnily enough it was it was it was very prominent in producing professional players but it was it was a private school and incredibly expensive school fees and and and the deal that was made was you know you can keep playing rugby if you you know if you get a good report card and good grade so yeah that was didn't didn't have a choice whether I want it would I wouldn't when I wanted to you know continue the passion and and obviously keep enhancing that talent you know had to go to school so it was interesting that was going to be my next question going through there and I'm keen to now dive in and and start to look at you know what you guys are doing with form and how you've ended up obviously being able to land in in in a company that is producing a product that is able to still scratch the edge of of passion in in in in in obviously industry that that you know so authentically well through that though did you in terms of your education you know you obviously have a very big roll now form did you go through the college system did you after high school you you know was it 24/7 swimming or you continued to do tertiary education yeah what's that journey kind of post high school so yeah I was in when I was going through high school I was like in a cohort where in Ontario there was five years of high school and I was the last cohort to have have to do that now it's only four years up to grade 12 which is pretty standard across the country was just a weird system that was back in the day anyways I only needed to go to grade 12 to be able to get a scholarship in the US so after talking to my coach and my club team and looking at opportunities and being going ending the summer in 2002 and looking at you know about 22 months out of the Olympic trials and the Olympic Games and Athens in 2004 am I going to be able to get am I going to be able to stay at the same pace or get to the accelerated rate of improvement staying here with my club team where I'm like there's a big gap in who's pushing me and I got no one really to take me so I took a scholarship but like a develop a sorry division one team in Michigan Cole Oakland University it was a kind of development team but I went there for a specific coach and we really kind of kicked it off and worked well together and I qualified for NCAAs and did very well my first year and at the end of that year he kind of just uh said I came out of retirement to do this and help develop the team, but you know, I'm going to go back into retirement again. I'm like, oh, I didn't expect that. And I came here for you. So I put up times to qualify for the Canadian national team. So during that summer, I moved out to Vancouver to train with the National Swim Center here, where I would say upwards of 16 people on team or already on the national team. And there was about 10 rating a lot of people on the team that had been to Olympics already. So I was surrounding myself with people that were far better than I was to be able to get, you know, trying to get to their level. And after one summer, I realized that that was the team for me, and that was going to help progress me at the rate I needed to get to in order to qualify for 2004 Olympics, given I was still about a second or more off the 100 meter brushstroke qualifying and still only rank through in the country. And so then from there, so you join the college system, did you have an opportunity to work during that later stage of your career, or is it fair to say once the Grim Reaper tapped as they all do, tap us on the shoulder and say it's time to retire, was after your career, was form the first opportunity that kind of arose for you, or were you working long away professionally as well? No, when I first started my resume, I looked like this, like a big blank piece of paper. So it was like, not uncommon, uncommon, and professional sport. Exactly. So I haven't been fortunate enough to work with a, kind of a working sponsor that you got, I would say, great support from the company, but as a requirement, you had to fulfill a number of hours to actually do some work experience. So I did some work with our World Bank of Canada largest financial institution and learned the ropes of all our different layers of financial system, really was enjoying it. But at the end of the day, I wanted to, you know, kind of dip my feet into sales, which was my wife was doing, pleased also a national role swimmer, and funny enough, I ended up working for ABMB, which is a, you know, Budweiser America. And it was an amazing experience based on the sales training and the exposure you get to managing a group of like 150 accounts and really going and learning the sales process from ground up and learning that it's not about what you sell, it's about the relationships you develop and, you know, working, connecting with that other person on the other side. But also I mean, I was very drawn to health and wellness space. I ended up going back to work at the financial institution for about four years as a regional manager for our online investing platform. And then, I did it the day woke up just I'm probably similar to you. I wake up and think about one of my get my workout in, you know, one of my happens breakfasts on a dinner and like, everything around the health side of my life. And none of that revolves around what one of the stocks, what's Apple saying today, you know, what's the TFX, what's the Nasdaq doing. So I decided to go back to school and take my MBA with the hopes of kind of pivoting my career into a tech company and hopefully a sports tech company. And, you know, during my MBA, I was doing some job fairs and, you know, networking. It was after one of the fairs. I went to that, I got an message from someone on LinkedIn saying like, hey, I know you met this recruiter last night. And she's not a roommate, but besides the fact, I work at this company. I think you should really come in and talk to the CEO. They're not launched yet, but I think there might be something here. And no idea when it was getting into and walked in the door and I saw this, you know, our CODAN, Eisenhower, fantastic individual and been so fortunate to work with him for the last five years. And I saw this product sitting on the table and I was like, what is that? And they started tell me what it was. And I started to envision the opportunities and work in use in different markets and to our teams. And the use cases and the gaps in the system currently. And month later, I started and I've been there ever since. Ah, a very cool story. And I knew very common. I knew what I wanted to try and unpack there. I knew there was probably an MBA or, you know, I suppose, a turning point where you knew that, you know, there was going to be a career shift. Very common. I was very similar when I knew when I knew that I wanted to go probably down the more entrepreneurial side than the corporate side after my career. I knew that, you know, having that MBA experience and trying to link up, you know, as we know, there's two forms of MBA students. There's, you know, the ladder climb on the corporate side and then there's just the pure entrepreneurial side. And that was what I was always drawn to. So we kind of touched on now that unique story about how, you know, how you came about meeting the form team. Let's start the conversation with form now. Can you give us the elevator pitch on obviously what the company is for any listeners now that don't know what's going on? And I'd be surprised if anyone hasn't heard of it. But yeah, give us, give us a an elevator essentially what what what is for what are you guys doing and how did the company, you know, come to be? That's a, you know, thank you for that opportunity. So at form, we specialize in making a heads up I wear with a heads up display built in specifically goggles with a built in heads up display in the eye to provide real-time data that ranges from different different swim metrics from your real-time heart rate to your time splits, pace, distance, specific swim metrics like distance for stroke, stroke count, stroke rate. And then we even have first of its kind in goggle digital coaching. We have workouts and training plans you can load to the goggle. So you think about the sport, let's say example trough on data is so relevant, so readily available and used to train accurately, efficiently, efficiently and effectively. A lot of people are training great in the pool in great, no water, but a lot of people don't come from that background myself. And the pool and you don't have that same field that takes years to develop. So there's a lot of guesswork and unfortunately data is not available until you're stopped. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I can't see this when I swim. It's just I can't. It's a great product. I love it to death, wear it for everything, but I can't see it. Not the problem when swimming because that instantaneous feedback can teach you a lot. Just like when I first got my power meter when I first got my kicker hooked it off the sweat. I learned so quickly about my inefficiency of my pedal stroke, especially in different zones. So form gives you that biometric feedback to allow you to understand how you swim versus how you did swim. And that's a big difference. Absolutely. And you categorize yourself there perfectly. And I think I wanted to kind of nail that down. You guys are a form is is is at its fundamentals of sports tech company. Fair to assume then, then the founding team are from the tech background engineering background. Can you tell us a little bit about how the founding team formed? What was their complimentary skill set as you know, very early days as I was I'm sure was a dusty, you know, very, very old office when it was when it was starting. How did the team kind of form? Well, you you and our CEO share a lot in common Dan, our CEO Dan Eisenhart had his NBA project and his entrepreneurial class at University of British Columbia 2009. And he came up the idea. He's a summary background himself from Denmark. And he's a distance summer. So he thought about like, you know, I hated not knowing, you know, what my split was from length of length. How do you look at the clock of every turn not knowing my heart rate, not knowing my cadence, not knowing my stroke count. What if we had to pair swimming goggles that had that display like a, you know, sports watch. But it was right there in your eye and you could see it when you want to see it. At the time, we as we know, you know, that was 15 years ago. Technology was not as advanced as it is today. So that was not possible. So him and his NBA team pivoted and actually started a company called Recon and developed skiing snowboard goggles with the heads up display. Then they started Recon jet and did running and cycling the osses. And that company was eventually required by Intel in 2015. And from there, he was, you know, he did is required OZ time that was part of the buyout with Intel. And after that six months, he took his package and his team that was core to developing what's really challenging in the space of heads up, you know, I wear and endurance sports is making that display absorbable, seamless and easy to understand. So we have a long history of making augmented reality AR be successful in such a small space. We took that team and then started form in 2016 and three years later, we went to market in August 2019 with our first rendition of the smart goggles. Very cool journey. And one that I didn't know. So I think a lot of people find that really interesting. So in essence, the product was proven outside of swimming vertical. So you said, well, you said winter, winter sports, then run out. How does Intel fit in there? What did they, what particularly out of the tech did Intel want or were they planning and where have they taken that technology? So we're going through, it's their second phase of augmented reality and BR awareness back about 10 years ago. You saw a first phase in a first boom technology still has come so far. So you can see the advancements over the last, I would say nine to 10 years with the launch of BAPL version pro. So I saw, I think from my understanding of my conversations of Dan is that Intel saw the application of the technology and what it could be in different aspects of whether it was endurance sports or within putting it to everyday use cases such maybe as normal eyewear. Unfortunately, what you see a lot of big companies like Google Group X that they buy up companies and their technologies and hopes that applying them or continuing on, but some of them they just buy out and that company does not continue on. So that was potentially one of the cases and the uses of that technology. What's great for us is that the core group and the experience of that team was able to live on and take their learnings and look at with the advancements of technology in AR, how do we put something so advanced into such a small space but also make it not obstructive so it does not take over your line of sight and one of the things that is used with AR is think called waveguide. So it's how the right light is reflected from the sensors into the eye. So what we did was we patented how waveguide is used in water because when you put waveguide in AR in water, the light gets distorted and the picture is not clear anymore. So they found a way to make that clear in water. So when you use our glasses and our goggles, it seems like the display is right here when you put them on and if you're not in the water, but when you get into the water, it projects about five feet in front of you and that's really our secret sauce is that it's there when you want it, but you can kind of zoom in and zoom in. Kind of like if you've been in a car and you've seen that spedometer in the windshield, it's there when you want it, but you can totally tune it out. Absolutely. It's an amazing piece of technology and I haven't used this mouse from Tuesday yet, but in the original in the original goggles and as you've said, I think one of the huge credits to how the team has built the product is the simplicity on how easy it is to use. I think I was up and running download the app up and running in the water within 10 minutes and pretty much learn most of the functionalities around the key metrics that I've you know. And for me, I was using it. I think like a lot of people when you're when you're training or you're swimming on your own, I was using it as a accountability measure, you know, like it's if you go and you're okay or a couple of cases, it was I was just purely using it to keep myself honest because as you said, you go through 500 or you know, and maybe you'll have time to look at your arm and after 500 meters, but you then realize you're already a minute behind where you're meant to be and you've and you wonder why you're not tired because your mind was drifting. So I loved it from that accountability perspective and I'm sure you guys have have you know the way the product team was obviously looking at that. All of those needs states that that the different consumers we're going to be looking at, simplicity obviously being being the main one and I was actually blown away by how simple it was as you said in such a small piece of tech and and I'm keen to dive in there because as we know about swimmers, we know about triathletes. On one hand, simplicity is one thing and and and solving like what is such a clear consumer gap even as you said 15 years ago. There is such a there was such a gap like how you know the idea of putting metrics in real time in situations where you can't look at your wrist or even during a time where you couldn't look at your wrist anyway because the metrics weren't there as well. Yeah so simple so amazing that it's I think there's a I still think there's a learning curve when it comes to our product. Okay. I think we have a little time gap there so I'm sorry. No, that's wrong. Freeze. Yeah with our technology, it's I think there's still so much we can do and if you look at where we started and where we evolved to, I use the word evolved because in 2019 we started with a product that provided real time biometric feedback for swimming and it could be used in a number of different aspects whether you're counting your labs using competitive swimming using a triathlon using an open water. Over time we've evolved by adding new features and applications to be able to expand how you can use form and ultimately look at form as the place you go to execute your swim training. Given that you can load workouts to a goggle eliminate that piece of paper you can integrate with training peaks and you know take your workouts from training peaks and load them to the app and goggles. You can use a custom workout builder in the app and load and type in your own workouts. There's the digital coaching aspect of it with the in goggle analysis in app analysis. Now we even have an ability to provide you a real time directional headings in open water with our first of a kind digital compass called swim straight. So we've become the place similar to like let's say a trainer road or a swift where you go to execute their biking you come to form to execute optimal swim performance training because not only getting the real time biometric feedback that keeps you honest and motivated like you said you get that in depth analysis in the app to keep you on track and spot areas and opportunities and that's a great thing we're always evolving to add more features and improvements to help you improve and accelerate the rate. And I love you you've made me into a question now because as you said you mentioned training peaks you mentioned you know after after the swim you can you can start to you know you can you can get in in app coaching essentially. So I'm going to go into it a little bit later but I want to I want to talk about that that side too I suppose the strategy because as we know like it then starts opening you up to okay how do we not only how do we not only educate consumers but how do you now start to educate the you know the coaches to actually realize that this is an important piece of technology that they could actually implement across their training group as we know there's a different there's a different strategy on that as well but could you give me some insights and I'm I'm I'm sure you guys have dissected your consumer category so so many ways but for the form you know for this form swim smart product how do you guys see your customer base what verticals how are you guys attacking it what does it look look like from a landscape perspective I think people would be really interested to know how you guys are seeing this I mean there's kind of like almost three I would say core segments we have we have your elite level swimmers baby at the top that's probably the top of the pyramid and you know one of the things with elite level swimming and we're out where I come from you got your different categories you got your like a development phase and you got your like age group phase from like 12 to 17 18 you got your kind of like post high school phase which is of the college phase you're really starting to get transition from you know junior to junior elite and then you got your you know national Olympic level where you're aspiring to be you know what you see behind you is the Olympic games and the very top of the pyramid there's hot there's some great use cases for a product but there also is like does is it necessary because at that level you have a small group of athletes and a lot of coaches so you get a lot of biometric feedback really available because it's an elite squad the more that further you move down in that group phase let's say to the junior category which is like 12 to 18 well you got two coaches but some predominantly 40 swimmers of peace so you got two stopwatches to like you know 40 swimmers how many different metrics are they getting in a workout other than the splits they see when they finish intervals some counting of strokes themselves and some stroke rates here and there so the ability to enhance awareness of yourself using that our product in that environment given that we have integrated heart rate in our new goggles real-time stroke rate ability to count your strokes get your splits every single turn and enhances your ability to be aware of what you're doing to progress you at a rapid rate to get ready for that university level this is just the competitive swim market then we have the traffic market where you see a lot of people get into the sport at a later age category like 25 35 and do it all the way up until you know there is no there is no limit so but they're they're accelerated learning curve and swimming is like this because they have to learn how to do the technique they have to learn the mechanics and there's no real-time feedback like you get if you're dropped running and cycling at a later age where it's you you know adopt quickly because you just make rapid improvements because that instantaneous feedback so you see this gradual learning curve what it should be like this the marginal gains in someone that doesn't come from a swimming background that's in traffic on should be super high on swimming because it has the most areas for opportunity and that's where a product really excels for the price point of like a pair of runners you get the most marginal gains to be had because of all the things you can do with it and then the last category would be like you're someone that maybe used to swim loves swimming but it's part of their journey of life it's part of their fitness routine I hike I swim my surf I run I bike I do it all but I swim enough that justifies me to own this because it makes that part of my swim my fitness routine really fun and really enjoyable versus just kind of staring at a black line counting up to 40 so that kind of breaks down our kind of three different segments but I would say our target market right now in our I would say low hanging fruit is that traffic on market because of the understanding of using technology data so heavily in the other two disciplines and seeing how much data is available and if you look at like triangle we're kind of finishing that triangle by bringing that data to let you train the way you train in the other two disciplines and so try a phone that's a great summary Scott and I I think a lot of people would would completely understand that consumer journey the size of each of those markets you know from the elite level to your everyday mid swimmer to obviously what a triathlete you know would do and I think I product like this and I want to talk a little a little bit um do about you know you're not metrics and some of those challenges you've had you've but you guys have clearly addressed you know I suppose whenever there's a new technology whenever there is a price point that is different it is trying to get the consumer to understand that you know because I mean let's be honest traditionally the big the major big players you know arena why you know and speedo for example you're looking at maybe 40 maybe $50 for a pair of standard goggles your race goggles are higher than that obviously but then you know consumers immediately go out to pair of goggles so that's that's the product I'm buying this is the price point I'm comparing it to and you guys have immediately addressed that by then going okay if you're a triath that you're already spending $300 on a pair of shoes which is going to provide you with X amount of marginal gain this is going to provide you with X times X marginal gain for less of let's be honest less than $300 talking a little bit about what you guys have experienced with with that can those consumer groups with switching costs price points understanding that it's not a you know it's a sports tech company it's not a goggle company I imagine there's some challenges in there internally as well I you know we still face them every single day you know it's hard to not look at our so let's give the example if you walk into you know a sports store multi sports store that specializes in cycling triathlon and let's say our product was listed on the in this section with goggles you know if it's our box is sitting there and it's like hanging tag and you see it on the wall with goggles like you said your brands that you mentioned and you look at the price points of all these different you're like whoa 40 40 42 to 49 that doesn't make sense to me what's so crazy about these ones that all of a sudden they're like you know five times the amount but if you put our tech our product where the wahu's are where the garments are then you put in a category where it belongs in a should be placed because it's like who what's that and I'm looking at the wearable technology space and you got a different type of consumer looking at that because they're looking at something that is related to sports you know biometric feedback and giving them something different then a pair of goggles that provides nothing so we reverse the way you look at it versus you see goggles technology second let's look at it from technology first goggles second and then it starts to you know tell a story without being said there's things that we've done with our goggles to I would say make sure that they stand uh test of time because we do have technology in the lens and on the side and that's why we have a two-year warranty the parts we have chosen to use are not going to mold on you they're not going to degrade and they've they're meant to last versus meant to break down not saying other goggles meant to break down I just when we looked at it we we had to take all those things in my it's like we are putting this technology into something that technically is disposable so how are we going to minimize that run rate as much as possible so that people see the value in using this product and get two plus years out and I love what you guys have said and I think it's what we talk about so like almost every day and in what we're doing here with micro nutrition bringing it into a nutritional category which has been so ingrained regarding hydration and fueling and macros and and trying to move the consumer but not only the consumer the retail of the the entire category perception as to why what had been a preventive health category belongs as that fourth tier of sport supplement of sports nutrition I love you know and let's let's touch on it now like it so formed your obviously the strategy is an omnichannel strategy um I think it's you you guys are very clearly understanding where how important navigation is in retail talk to talk to us a little bit about how yeah I mean did it start as an omnichannel as an omnichannel business was that the strategy from Taiwan or was it directed to consume a first and then retail lighter how did the team think about that uh you know uh given where it heads up uh device gaming if I ask you like tell me about uh the latest pair of classes you got in the heads up display what brand they are and what it's like when you use them it's like I don't own any classes with the heads up display so the world of i-wear whether it's sports i wear goggles and whatnot that has a display that you wear is very still unknown we're very excited about the launch of apple vision pro because it's bringing more awareness to that category of ARBR a consumer product so we are a low cost high use case of that technology where apple is a great you know uh use case but at a high cost so uh we're really excited about that but that's why we need the omnichannel because there's a lot of people that look at our product like i don't believe it does what it does like i don't know what a heads up displays if i want to buy runners online i know my size i can try it with a brand i'm willing to date that risk but i don't know what heads up display is so having that omnichannel and pairs available in stores where you can say like hey form like i just reached out to your customer service team where you kind of locate any stores in you know uh florida can i go check that out yeah sure we were working with this store in this store and they got pairs in the store we can go and check out put it up to your eyes and get an understanding you can buy them on site so i think that channel approach is very critical to our growth path because it gives the people the reassurance they don't need to buy up front before testing when we first launched we looked at that we had our first success path at kona world championships in 2019 and from there it's like okay we really know that the omnichannel is going to be a slower play because they probably don't feel comfortable taking us on because they don't know enough about us and the industry hasn't adopted us yet so we probably have to go to events first and really get in the path of the consumer so i built out a whole plan of like really going gangbusters on like probably 30 plus events in your 2020 as we can imagine what happened in 2020 that went to to it so we have to find different ways to educate and approach it and we're really starting to just pick that back up now and we're really fortunate with the people that we brought on to the team my manager he's a former head of global sales for Wahoo fitness and so we really got the right people in the right places to accelerate that growth and awareness phase and you were mentioning offline before that that omnichannel strategy and i you know we're very long in that space as well we believe that you know the retailer with the retail place such a vital role in in i suppose authentically placing credibility behind a new category i'm not even just a product but a category and and we're finding that you know even before we we educate to people why pillar is different what we're doing is different there needs to be an adjustment shift on the entire category and you guys are finding that exactly the same as what we would do how are you guys finding the understanding at a retail level both through small mum and pop stores but also maybe a larger chain do you find that there is there's more understanding in general from from the retailers or you you're finding that you're still there is still a journey you have to take them on from start to finish to help them you know to execute what you guys need to do at a sales level you know that's a great question i think what we try to do is break it down so the simplest way we can is that when we are talking to a potential mum and pop shop or omnichannel retailer it's before you've been getting into discussion it's like here just take a look at this before we start talking and it's like whoa i didn't know it was going to be that i knew you were coming into talk to me about like a smart goggle but i can see through this thing and there's data there so all right away we've got the attention next thing is compare it to something that makes sense this is the introduction of what people are already doing in cycling and running you got your data from that you know well that kicker over there from that power meter it's being displayed in real time making a right micro adjustments all those great devices are watches right there they're providing that data in the in the pool the challenge is you can't see that watch while you're swimming what form is doing is solving that problem gives you that ability to see it in real time and we're really targeting these types of customers so if you've got someone coming in looking at this bike and they want to look at you know a bike computer to go with it in a power meter you're already in that category of asking them what else do you do do you swim do you run do you bite then it's like a almost like package approach but it's making them think about it in itself around that type of consumer that they're probably going to see and giving them some of the industry knowledge that the majority of people in the industry the triathlon industry the biggest thing they have a challenge with is swimming what do they want to learn more about swimming where they want to prove on the most swimming so our product provides those marginal gains and incremental improvements and their exceptional price point versus that wheel that is $10,000 that's going to give you a little bit more hydrodynamics absolutely and so as marginal gains that I'll kind of lead into my next question let's talk triathletes let's I mean immediately for me like I'm doing a first 70.3 I mean a couple of months my first thinking now talking to you guys like can I wear these when I race like because of the gains you can have I mean yeah and I mean because essentially you're allowed a power meter you're allowed Garmin there should be absolutely like did you it was there an approval process of the team had to go through or was it just like pretty it would have been pretty easy saying guys there's no difference between actually in real it took us quite a while and we really only got it across the hurl as an November so we finally got the smart swim one approved by WorldTrack on super league PTO and USA triathlon and really everything kind of falls under WorldTrack on that was like the main thing it's like if you can get approval by world trust on everyone else like we're good. But world trust on was pushing back that they're not approved by world quad X of Fina. So we can't prove them, but well, how can a runner wear a garment and get instantaneous feedback? How can they use a bike computer that tells them the grade at their thing point that they can see their power and how that's being affected by the wind? How is all that? And it has GPS? How is that legal? But this is not it has no GPS. It has no outside communication. And we had to look at it in a different use case. And we really got down to the right people and finally got across the line. And what's even more exciting, but before launch, we got the second generation race approved. But we also got our industry leading like game changing feature, the swim straight open water compass that help you swim in a straight line in open water. That is also race approved. And we already have success stories of people using it in races, like last weekend in Texas and California, and people telling us, I swam the same pace in the course. Here's my GPS map. I wore I used new swim straight feature this year. I went a minute faster. And I swim the exact same pace. It was because I swam less total distance. So I went the best time. It's like, that's what we want. We want you to not have to try and train harder, train longer. You can swim at the same pace and go faster by just swimming the right distance. Absolutely. And it creates an incredible feature that's a game changer for the sport of triathlon. Game changer for potentially other open water swimming. I know in Australia, there is a huge huge sport open water swimming. There's a in the warmer months, which is pretty much 90% of the year. There's a swing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Where I live, there's not a cold month, but it's, but yeah, there's a swim every other every other day, somewhere in the open water. That feature there is is a is a game changer. And I'm not congratulations to the team. I it sounds pretty, it sounds like an easy case for some lawyers to piece together. But as you said, the the powers of the author make things harder than they have to be, but that's a huge, that's a huge win for participants of age groupers, you know, across the world in triathlon. So congratulations, I imagine it would have been a nice, nice champagne moment in the office. Which would have been good to celebrate as a team, I'm sure. You was it's funny. We had a launch party days after the launch and everyone was super excited, but we all have been working very hard towards the state. And there's been a lot of things that go along with the launch of Imagine, you can, you know, think about the launches you had. And sometimes by the launch date and a couple days after you're kind of just like, can I go get I think it go, I'm going to go close the curtains for a bit. And there was a little bit of like, I would say, I would say lagging haze over everyone and it was like, this isn't the launch party we are expecting. I think everyone's tired and well, well deserved. But you know, it's been great to watch some of the great, you know, stories that have come in out with the breath coverage we've gotten from DC Ray Maggaret forbs to wired. We've, you know, it's just really positive. And we worked really hard to get here, but I think we're just starting out onto what we can do. And we have some more amazing things coming the rest of the year to add more value to our user base. Nice, you've given me an idea. I think I think the best launch party for a startup team might just be a few days off, literally just park park all the alcohol. Yeah, I mean, I think people appreciate time more than anything in life. And if you can reward them with that for the hard work they put in, that's always going to go a long way. Nice Scott, last last question for us, I, you know, knowing knowing where the team has begun, knowing that this technology is not, you know, it's not it's not seven years or five years in the making this is, this has been 15 years since the original, the original team obviously launched, you know, launched their first, their first company and the tech into this space. Where are you guys, where are you guys taking this? What can people expect from form moving on? They can expect great things. We're focused on elevating the performance of endurance sports through real-time biometrics and that's where our goal is. And, you know, I'll just leave it at that, you know, we're really passionate at what we do. And we have a great team that is very dedicated. And right now with the launch of the Smart Swim 2, we're focused on bringing high awareness to new things that you can do in the water, like training in your heart rate zone with integrated heart rates of goggles. So I think we're always looking at how can we take what we have, learn from all the data we get, and apply that in different ways. Awesome. And for everyone listening, Scott, as you said, Smart Swim 2 is now on the market. Can you dissect us globally? How can, how can listeners get the product, try the product, stores, retail? Best way of grabbing it, getting their hands on some? Yeah, so we do have a global store, www.FormSum.com where you can check out in five different currencies from US, Canadian, Euro, British pound to Australian dollars. We also are on local Amazon websites and we have a number of different distributors around the world that we're working with to help us get into localized dealers. So and also we're always looking for new opportunities to work with other distributors and retailers around the world. So if you know you have a great audience and a great market and you'd love to talk about carrying our product, we're always yours. Awesome, Scott. Thanks so much for your time. Looking forward to seeing what the team comes out in the future and potentially the next iterations of Smart Swim 3 or potentially won't be smart, maybe maybe put an X on that swim, it'll be smart something. But I may thank you so much for your time. Super enjoyable chat. New year, thank you so much for having me. It's been a blast.