As 2017 begins to wane, athletes and winter sports enthusiasts are gearing up to take their skis and snowboards out of storage and getting ready to hit the slopes. Starting today, winter sports buffs can get a head start on the season with Polar Seal, available on Kickstarter.
Polar Seal was created by Francois and Sebastien Vandenheste because both brothers enjoy skiing, and saw a market in the unpredictability of winter weather. It is a product of Fillony Ltd., a French company based in Hong Kong.
Polar Seal is a zip-top shirt that works as a thermal layer. The technology behind it lies in two shockproof and waterproof buttons on the left wrist, one that controls temperature and another that activates two heating zones on the upper and lower back. The shirt is powered by a rechargeable power bank that slips easily into the left pocket, where it connects to Polar Seal via USB.
The buttons light up in yellow, purple and red to indicate the heating zone and temperature level. The shirt is heated by two layers of plastics that can warm the shirt in 10 seconds to a range of 40-50 degrees Celsius (104-122 degrees Fahrenheit), the maximum temperature for European products. Depending on the strength of the power supply, the shirt can remain heated for four to eight hours, keeping the body warm for a day on the slopes.
“We thought it would be nice to have something which (you) can control a bit more the heat on your body,” Francois Vandenheste told SportTechie in an interview.
According to Sebastien Vandenheste, Polar Seal is designed to endure alpine conditions, making it suitable both for extreme winter sports and light jogs on a brisk morning. The shirt can be worn under a jacket or over a tee shirt. The material is durable, breathable, and less than a millimeter thick, Francois said.
The placement of the buttons on the wrist—a design unique to Polar Seal, Sebastien claimed — is because the Vandenheste brothers thought it was “the most accessible, intuitive, and just the most practical place to have it.”
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While the brothers said Polar Seal does work in the water, Sebastien cautioned that the power bank could short out. They said the current product focuses primarily on heat, but a second-generation product could see smart features, a connected app, and full waterproofing.
“We want to make it simple for users,” Francois said. “When we made the product, one of the very early versions, we went to see a few distributors, and all of our distributors told us that consumers have an apprehension — many of them are afraid of a product that’s too complicated, especially for new product,” Sebastien added. “So that’s why we focused really on making it a perfectly designed that works, that the user can understand, so that’s really what our focus is on right now.”
The Kickstarter campaign extends through mid-September, and the first Polar Seal shirts are likely to ship around the world in November. Polar Seal is available on Kickstarter for $99, but the brothers said it would retail for $169. Free shipping is offered in the U.S. and Canada.