Quality and/or Price?

When I first started making wetsuits triathlon was a relatively new sport. Orca's customers were athletes dedicated to the sport, who were looking for performance, innovation and quality. Over the last 20 years triathlon has become more mainstream, with more and more people literally dipping their toes into the water.

Nowadays we see triathlon and open water swimming events in New Zealand regularly attracting 500-1000 competitors, and many events specifically cater for those just starting out.

But triathlon can be an expensive sport - a bike alone can cost up to $15,000 - and many people don't want to commit to purchasing high value items, until they know they're committed to the sport.

I read an article recently that talked about the democratization of design - that is, well designed products, that are accessible to wider group of consumers. It's definitely a trend that has impacted triathlon, and created challenges for Orca.

A few years ago Orca was the official wetsuit sponsor of the London Triathlon - an event that attracts around 12,000 participants. As part of our contract we developed a wetsuit called the S1, specifically targeted at first timers, who only wanted to hire a wetsuit, rather than buy one.

At first I was pretty nervous about associating Orca, which I'd worked hard to position as an innovative, performance brand, with an entry level product.

I'd seen other companies introducing diffusion brands to allow them to target price-pointed parts of a market, with varying degrees of success, and worst still, consumers change their perception of brands that brought out cheaper products to appeal to a wider market.

What we chose to do was find a level where we didn't feel like we were compromising on performance attributes and quality, but could achieve a price point that was accessible to that part of the market.

The S1 proved very popular and we saw that there was the opportunity to sell an Orca wetsuit at a price below previous levels, that didn't damage the brand, and in fact gave us a touch point to a new market.

The proliferation of price pointed products is by no means a new phenomenon, but for many New Zealand businesses the decision to enter that part of the market can be a difficult one.

In Orca's case there was value in leveraging the brand's reputation to give customers confidence that even in our entry level products, they get quality at a great price without comprising on brand.


Scott Unsworth