Swimfin

General information

Our SwimFin story began in the late 1980s. Kevin Moseley was a self-employed swimming instructor. Just for fun, he took a couple of old foam swimming floats and made a fin that could be tied on to his back. At the end of lessons with a group of kids he would put on the fin for a few minutes of play time to reward the children for their efforts during the session. The kids always enjoyed it when Kevin would chase the kids around the pool, giving some practical use for the swimming skills the kids had been working on namely, not getting caught by the ‘shark’ in the water.

That first prototype SwimFin was the only one of its kind for many years. By chance in 2006, Kevin heard that the BBC television show ‘Dragon’s Den’ was looking for participants and so, just out of curiosity, he applied. Kevin, and his idea sailed through the application process, before he knew it, he was invited to the London studios and found himself pitching to potential investors. In the few short weeks before the recording he had to prepare a business plan, secure patents, trademarks and a ‘defence’ strong enough to withstand any attack. It wasn’t until Kevin had done his research that he realised what a good thing he had. After the typical exchange of words, confrontations, ridicule for him and his product that you come to expect from the show, certain Dragons agreed and offered to invest in SwimFin. This was briefly shown on television. However, as Kevin chose to reject a possible 50% equity request, Kevin looked on the positive side and considered it a compliment. The Dragons liked SwimFin so much that they wanted a big piece of the pie. After several meetings with other potential investors who all wanted a 50% stake, Kevin decided to fund the project himself.

Kevin risked everything, re-mortgaged his house, cashed in his savings, got heavily into debt with the bank and even sold his swim school business. It was a difficult decision to risk everything on a gamble. He was now totally committed to making this work and there was no backing out. The product was redesigned and improved. Kevin had to find a manufacturer, learn about logistics, import, export and everything else that goes with inventing and bringing a global product to market. Before it could be produced, SwimFin had to be rigorously tested to ensure it conformed to world-wide safety standards. Looking back on those times he thought that was an impossible task but on reflection that was the easy part. Taking a revolutionary innovative product to market and trying to convince the world that SwimFin would really make a difference was a far more challenging task.

Since the launch in 2008, SwimFin has progressed rapidly. SwimFin was very quickly endorsed by the UK’s governing body for swimming, the ASA. Steadily as word got out, more and more local authorities got involved, swim schools started buying in bulk, parents were starting to demand SwimFin. 2008 also saw interest from overseas and SwimFin began exporting.

In 2009, interest in SwimFin skyrocketed as the public became more aware of SwimFin. Currently, SwimFin exports to over 80 countries. The progress of SwimFin in a worldwide market is pretty impressive. SwimFin has defied the odds that out of all the worlds inventions that apply for patents, less than 3% of them ever make it to market. Out of those that do make it, only 25% survive in business for the first 12 months.

SwimFin is proud to be one of the elite few that has and will continue to thrive. As SwimFin continues to grow we are fast becoming the market leading swimming aid with global brand status and are very excited about the future growth and potential.