Enterprise: eo
USP: The sport-tech start-up is working with Swimming Australia, Super League, Triathlon and elite athletes such as Kyle Chalmers and Vincent Luis.
Dean Hawkins has been leading international businesses across sports, fintech, television and venture capital for the past 25 years. But sport is the industry he loves, having previously worked at Adidas and SKINS. Jaimie Fuller founded the SKINS brand in Australia, and subsequently built a global footprint for that business. The pair came together to form sport-tech company eo.
“Jaimie and I have been talking about the concept behind eo for 15 years, waiting for the right time for me to move back to Sydney from London to run the business, and allow Jaimie to focus on the key areas of brand, product and our external partnerships,” Dean says.
In June this year, the concept became a reality. Sport-tech innovator eo focuses solely on applying new and existing technologies to sport to help athletes defy their limits. Its products improve performance, accelerate recovery and adaptation, prevent injury and aid rehabilitation.
“We work with world-leading partners on the technology and product development.”
CEO Dean and chairman Jaimie are two of a triumvirate leading the business. The third pillar is the company’s principal scientist, Kenneth Graham. “Kenneth was the principal scientist at the NSW Institute of Sport for 25 years, a position that put him at the intersection of sport, elite performance and technology,” Dean explains. “Kenneth is uniquely qualified to lead our scientific activities and hold us accountable to the highest performance standards for our products. As a team, we have such little overlap in our core skills, that we can really leverage each other’s abilities.”
The business’s core team is based in Sydney but works with partners in the US, Taiwan, China, the Philippines and Melbourne – “wherever the best skills and talent are located”, Dean says.
The team owns and develops the IP for all its products, apart from brain assessment tool NuroCHEK, for which eo licenses the technology for use in the sport and military sectors. “We work with world-leading partners on the technology and product development, utilising the wide range of skills in our team as the product works its way through the scientific, technology, specification, development, manufacturing and commercialisation phases,” Dean explains.
The team has enjoyed what it calls a “fabulous response” to its initial product launch – eo SwimBETTER. “We’re working with Swimming Australia, Super League Triathlon and elite athletes such as Kyle Chalmers [Olympic Gold Medallist and short course world record holder in the 100m freestyle] and Vincent Luis [two-time triathlon world champion],” Dean enthuses. “Swimming is a sport that can be won or lost in a hundredth of a second, and we know we can make a real difference by unlocking information that hasn’t previously been available to swimmers or their coaches. You only have to look at why there’s been so much focus on racing suits over the last decade to understand the level of interest there is, and will be, in this product.” Eo has also established innovation partnerships with Melbourne City FC and the NRL’s South Sydney Rabbitohs, with whom it works on the development of products and share ideas and progress.
Unconstrained by the frameworks of existing sports brands, eo is sport, product and technology agnostic. For eo, it’s all about the athlete. “We’re not interested in working in silos. Our only restriction is ensuring that whatever we create enhances an athlete’s performance,” Dean avers. “We just need conviction that we’re going to change sports for the better – not with small increments like marginally improved fabrics, but with fundamental change driven by technology. There is no final destination. Progress never stops.”
This article first appeared in issue 39 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine
