Wetsuit Rental Company Goes Public at $4 Billion Valuation, Has Not Yet Laundered Any Wetsuits

WaveWear Mobility's S-1 uses "democratizing ocean access" forty-seven times while declining to specify how frequently community neoprene is cleaned

Wetsuit Rental Company Goes Public at $4 Billion Valuation, Has Not Yet Laundered Any Wetsuits

SANTA MONICA, CA -- WaveWear Mobility, a Southern California-based wetsuit rental startup that allows users to scan a QR code, unlock a community wetsuit from a beachside kiosk, and return it when finished, completed its IPO last week at a valuation of $4.2 billion, making its three founders billionaires on paper and raising a round of practical questions that analysts are describing as "significant" and surfers are describing using different words.

The company, founded in 2021 by three Stanford MBA graduates who met in a course called "Blue Economy Disruption," operates 340 kiosks across twelve California beach communities and rents approximately 2,200 wetsuits per day at $18 for the first hour and $6 per additional hour. Its app has 780,000 registered users, 41,000 of whom are active monthly, and its gross margins are described in its S-1 filing as "improving," which in startup terminology means they are currently negative.

The Central Question Nobody Wanted to Ask at the Roadshow

The S-1 filing, which runs to 340 pages and uses the phrase "democratizing ocean access" forty-seven times, addresses many aspects of the company's business model with considerable thoroughness. It does not substantially address a question that surfaced prominently in user reviews of the app, in several Reddit threads about the service, and eventually in a Wall Street Journal investigation published two weeks before the IPO: who is cleaning the wetsuits.

The answer, per the Journal investigation and subsequent company response, is that the wetsuits are "sanitized between uses by our proprietary WaveFresh process," which a follow-up inquiry revealed consists of a brief rinse with fresh water at the kiosk return point, followed by storage in the kiosk unit until the next user retrieves it. The wetsuits are laundered "periodically," which the company declined to define more precisely. Former employees cited in the Journal piece estimated "periodically" to mean somewhere between "every few weeks" and "when someone complains." For related commentary on the gap between marketing language and operational reality, see Chlorinated Chicken on UK Shelves.

Surfer Response

The surfing community's response to the investigation was, characteristically, a mix of disgust and pragmatism. A poll conducted on the r/surfing subreddit found that 61 percent of respondents said they would not rent a community wetsuit under any circumstances, 24 percent said they had already done so and "it was fine," 11 percent said they had already done so and "it was not fine," and 4 percent said they did not understand the question but would like to register a general complaint about the parking situation at Topanga.

Professional surfer and Southern California native Courtney Conlogue, reached via her management team who asked to clarify that she does not personally use community wetsuits and has multiple sponsors, declined to comment. A sign posted near a WaveWear kiosk at El Porto by a person or persons unknown read: "Would you share someone else's shoes? This is wetter."

The Investment Thesis

Investment analysts who covered the IPO note that WaveWear's valuation is based primarily on its market potential rather than current profitability, which is a sentence that has preceded many interesting financial developments over the past twenty-five years. The company projects that it can expand to 4,000 kiosks, achieve 2 million active monthly users, and eventually introduce a "WaveWear Premium" tier offering wetsuits that have been "professionally cleaned within the past seven days," which is being positioned as a luxury offering at $28 per hour. For context on premium pricing applied to things that should be standard, see {p[1][0][:55]}.

The company's CEO, Brice Holloway, 34, who surfs recreationally and owns four wetsuits, said in an interview with CNBC that the IPO represents "the maturation of the shared ocean economy" and that WaveWear is "to surfing what Airbnb is to hospitality." Several people in the hospitality industry noted that Airbnb also has cleaning standards, which are imperfect but documented. Several surfers noted that the ocean is, in fact, already shared.

WaveWear's stock opened 22 percent above its offering price and closed 14 percent below it on the first day of trading, which analysts called "a correction" and which Holloway called "healthy price discovery." The wetsuits are still at the kiosks. They are still slightly damp. They have been slightly damp for some time. For further reading on things that are not quite what they appear to be at scale, see Fatal Crash Followed by Flight Home, Because Geography .

More satire at The Daily Mash. This article is satire.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

The Hygiene Gap, Quantified

A survey conducted by the surf consumer research firm WaveData Inc. found that 88 percent of surfers who own wetsuits would not rent a wetsuit from a shared kiosk regardless of price, while 12 percent said they would, and 4 percent of that 12 percent had apparently not read the earlier portion of the survey question. The survey also found that the primary objection was not price but what respondents consistently described as "the basic facts of the situation," which is a delicate way of noting that wetsuits are worn by bodies in warm conditions for extended periods and are not improved by infrequent rinsing and communal storage.

WaveWear has responded to the hygiene coverage by announcing a new partnership with a "biofilm elimination technology" company based in San Jose, which will provide a treatment to be applied to wetsuits at kiosk return. The technology, which the company says uses "ionic silver nanoparticles to disrupt microbial biofilm formation," has not yet been independently tested on neoprene at surf kiosk conditions. The partnership was announced the same week the stock completed its first full month of trading at 31 percent below its IPO price. The treatment will be available at "select kiosks" by Q3. It is not clear which kiosks are selected or how.