Go for gold: Sydney sailing brand Zhik named as official 2024 Olympics apparel supplier

A Sydney sailing apparel brand will supply its second Olympic Games in a row, with Aussie sailors, kite and windsurfers ready to don the industry’s first high-performance, neoprene-free wetsuits created by Zhik for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Zhik was launched in a Sydney garage in 2003 by Brian Connolly, the founder of the technology company Lake Technology, which was later sold to Dolby in 2004.

In 2020, Zhik was first named an Olympic supplier for the Australian sailing team for the Tokyo Games, and on Wednesday morning, the Australian Olympic Committee announced it will join ASICS and Speedo as the three official kit suppliers to the Australian Olympic team this year. 

When Australia’s 12 Olympic sailors head to the city of Marseille this year, their sailing kits will feature environmentally-friendly Zhik wetsuits, which have been created from sustainable, plant-based Yulex® rubber.

The fabric is infused with graphene – an advanced nanoscale 2D material that can return up to 20% more body heat and keeps the suits as light as possible – which keeps the wearers of the wetsuits warmer for longer, regulating temperatures during low-intensity activities and aiding the drying process.

Zhik CEO Mat Belcher OAM, a sailing champion and multiple Olympic gold medallist, spoke with SmartCompany about how the Sydney-based startup came to be named as an official supplier for the Olympics.  

“The brand has always heavily supported the athletes. As we’ve started to grow and expand more and more and started to really become such a niche high-performance water sports apparel brand that it was just an obvious choice,” he says.

“Particularly with sailing, you’ve got so much different gear and a lot of brands don’t really want to take it on. It’s really detailed. It’s very R&D, a lot of innovation and the equipment, very expensive as well to be able to develop and have the team that knows really and deeply what the athletes need.

“It does create a really good niche for Zhik and has opened up a good opportunity for us to partner with the Australian Olympic team.”

Belcher says the sailing industry is looking for more environmental alternatives.

“The challenge for us is to actually provide a suit that is sustainability-driven, but also high-performance and really making sure that it meets the needs of the athletes who are wanting to win Olympic medals and deliver their best performance and those two don’t always go hand in hand,” he explains.

“What we’re excited by for this new wetsuit launch, for the team coming into Paris, is that we’re very, very comfortable and very excited that we’ve actually got that balance right.

“So these wetsuits that we’re supplying to the team are made of Yulex®. So it’s a natural rubber, 100% completely neoprene- free all the way through to the entire construction of the wetsuits.

“It is an industry first for us and we’re super excited to be able to deliver that at this level.”

Growing a high-performance brand

Last year in July, SmartCompany reported Zhik had raised $2 million via equity crowdfunding platform Equitise to fast-track its plans to take its high-tech sailing apparel to a global audience.

The raise valued the startup at almost $30 million.

Zhik has a team of 38 employees across its offices in Australia, the US, Europe and New Zealand, with the company servicing 48 countries out of four warehouses.

The brand turns over between 220,000 to 230,000 products a year.

Zhik supplies six of the 10 Sail GP teams, winners of the Volvo Ocean and Sydney to Hobart races, and the Olympic sailing teams of Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark.

Belcher says Zhik has had a fantastic run over the last three to four years.

“We had a successful capital raise at the beginning of last year to help fund and fuel a new round of growth. As a brand we’re very much into that high-performance space,” he says. 

And that means constantly working on new products and new segments of the market, he adds. 

“We’ve got some really exciting things coming up, particularly our position with female athletes and female sailors really being able to get some more customised fitting products,” he reveals.

“It’s really been a hard position for brands because traditionally the sport has been very male-dominated. But as we’ve seen with gender equality, we’re talking about the higher level, and even at Olympic discipline events, that it’s now 50-50 [gender split].

“It has created this whole new wave of female sailors that are aspiring to just get out there to race and really just wanting to get to the top level of racing, but they haven’t had the opportunity or equipment to really maximise their performances.”