Interview: Cat Sutherland, Suunto - Tzero: Triathlon intelligence

stay in touch

Join TZero

Interview: Suunto says triathlon is an exciting place to be at present

Suunto is currently the official timing and data partner of the Dextro Energy ITU World Championship Series. Its smart looking watches and heart rate monitors can be seen adorning the wrists of several top triathletes. However, the company’s background is in adventure sports, mountaineering and diving, so what’s it doing sponsoring triathlon? We decided to ask Suunto’s UK Marketing Assistant, Cat Sutherland, to find out.

Q. Over the past few years you’ve become a big sponsor of triathlon although your company’s roots are elsewhere. What attracts you to triathlon?

The last couple of years have really witnessed a tremendous growth in triathlon – both from an active participant perspective as well as a general public awareness in the UK and all over the world. It’s a young and growing sport that is all inclusive so it’s accessible to all and can be a challenge at any level. As one of the leading sports instrument brands in the world, Suunto identified this as a great opportunity to apply our product design, style and functionality. Triathlon is an exciting place to be at present!

As you know, Suunto is partnering with the ITU World Championship Series for a second year running as its official timing and data partner. In 2009 alone, the global series saw 1.7 million people attend the events and 90 million watch the competitions on TV. This demonstrates just how mainstream the sport is becoming. In addition to this, more and more triathlon events – whether global or local, amateur or professional – are seeing a large increase in numbers of participants, inspiring ever more people to take part.

We predict the market will continue to grow for some time before it consolidates. The great thing about triathlon is that it appeals to runners, cyclists and swimmers so there’s a lot of potential to attract huge numbers of new people. It also appeals to a wide range of ages and is very much a sport for both sexes. So there are limitless possibilities for growth.

I think multi-sports in general are becoming more and more popular with triathlon inspiring a lot of this way of thinking.

Q. Can you talk a little about the products you’re targeting at the triathlon market and what features will be of most interest to triathletes?

Our best selling training styles at present include the Suunto T3d, T4d and T6d. Our speed and distance foot and bike pods are equally proving popular at the moment. As far as triathlon goes, these heart rate monitors are a perfect fit. They are reliable, accurate, stylish and affordable. We get a lot of positive feedback from triathletes on how our heart rate monitors are genuinely helping them push their fitness boundaries, analyse and understand their training further and achieve the results they set out to achieve.

Of course, it always helps when world champions such as Helen Jenkins, Javier Gomez and Jan Frodeno are wearing Suunto heart rate monitors – this always creates a lot of interest in the brand.

We’ve recently announced our Winning Triathlon Moves collection – it’s a new range of heart rate monitors that were launched to celebrate our partnership with the ITU World Series. New monitors include the Suunto t6d Black Flame and the Suunto t3d Black Move.

We’re confident that these new additions to our training range will appeal to athletes and triathletes alike and will certainly stand out from the competition due to their style, functionality and accuracy. For example, the Suunto t6d Black Flame is like a real sports laboratory on the wrist. It measures the time interval between heartbeats and its variations to produce seven different body parameters, for example.

Our popular pods also ensure needs are met for various multi-sports and triathlon training. Equally, our new dual belt is now compatible with most gym equipment and SRM which is used by many top triathletes.

Q. Some competitor products (e.g. Garmin) produce wrist units that also house a GPS sensor. Your approach seems to be to make a slimmer wrist unit and offer GPS and other functionality as PODs to be worn separately elsewhere on the body. Why do you think this approach is better?

We believe that design and style is an important factor for athletes and fitness enthusiasts alike. We’ve had a lot of feedback over the years from a wide range of people and it consistently points to sports people wanting a wrist-top computer that is light, aesthetically appealing, easy to use and doesn’t have too many confusing buttons and functions.

We believe we’ve achieved this with our current t-series range. If athletes wish to have GPS, the pods are small, light and extremely accurate – to a degree that wouldn’t be achieved if it was built into the unit. We don’t want to compromise either our style or accuracy and reliability so we believe we’ve reached a good balance with our separate pods. Judging from our fans’ feedback and the continually growing demand for the ranges, our fans agree.

Q. What new features might we see in the future?

We’re always looking to improve our ranges and therefore take our fans’ comments and feedback seriously in order to design what we believe is the ultimate training experience for triathletes and athletes.

Our latest project is an exciting online sports community called www.movescount.com. We want to take our fans’ fitness experiences to the next level by providing them with engaging tools both on and offline. You don’t have to be a Suunto owner to join but, if you are, it’s a great platform to use as your online training diary – perfect for seeing how your training is progressing each week or month. With social media here to stay, we’re confident that triathletes will see the benefit of these kinds of communities and soon join in all the action.