The History of SAYSKY: Year Three
This is the third blog post in a series of five about the history of SAYSKY. We're celebrating our 5-year anniversary on July 1 and we'll be looking back upon each of the five years with pictures and stories. Read below for the history of SAYSKY: Year Three.
A Year on the Road
Normally, we prefer to log our miles either running or on the bike, however, we spent quite a lot of time on the road during our third year. It was a very busy year with expos in Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Berlin and Hamburg. Especially, Berlin Marathon expo was a milestone, as this was the first time we'd ever exhibit with SAYSKY outside of Denmark.
We really enjoy the expos, as this is always a great opportunity to meet a lot of cool athletes and race participants. We love to listen to your stories and hear about your ambitions for the upcoming race.
Expos in Copenhagen, Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt and an award show in Munich. Year three involved a lot of driving and exploring outside of Denmark.
Bringing Home the Gold
Apart from all the race related expos, we were also invited to exhibit at ISPO in Munich - one of the largest sportsfair in the world. We were invited because SAYSKY had won the ISPO Brandnew Award in the athleisure category. To date, this is probably one of our proudest moments. The winners are carefully evaluated and selected by a panel of industry experts and then given the opportunity to present itself to an international array of customers, athletes and sports interested personalities.
Since 2000, ISPO has searched and designated the most promising newcomers of the sports industry. Former award winners GoPro, Naish Kites, Maloja, Nixon and On are shaping the market today. Now SAYSKY is among them.
Aloha and Mahalo from the IRONMAN World Championship
SAYSKY was not the only one to claim honours during our third year. The SAYSKY founder, Lars C. Pedersen, managed to qualify for the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. Although, he wasn't the only SAYSKY athlete to represent the magic star over there. There were several other athletes racing in the iconic yellow triathlon set.
We were also fortunate to team up with Ceramic Speed and set up a Danish base camp and expo area for athletes and interested customers. This was another great opportunity to showcase SAYSKY to the world and a large group of highly dedicated and passionate triathletes.
Lars qualified for the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona. He did so, while testing a prototype of the SAYSKY Aero Suit on home turf in Copenhagen.
Riding with the Pro's in New York City
With the new SAYSKY Aero Suit properly tested and ready to be launched, it was time to shoot the lookbook pictures. We enlisted the sharp shooting Bjarke Johansen once more and headed to New York for our SS16 campaign shoot. Besides bringing along the regular crew, we also worked together with a Brooklyn-based triathlon pro, so we could really put the new Aero Suit to the test.
With such an A-team setup and iconic location, we weren't surprised that this actually turned out to be one of our all-time favourite lookbooks.
Riding around Brooklyn in the first SAYSKY Aero Suit. This was part of the SAYSKY SS16 campaign shoot.
Collaborations with New and Old Friends
Despite spending a lot of time outside of Denmark, we still got to set up another cool round of collaborations during our third year. We had a follow up collection with our friends from Le Fix, while also helping industry giant Garmin with the promotion of their new multisports watch, Garmin Forerunner 920XT. We designed a custom t-shirt for Garmin, which identified and celebrated the unique features of the watch.
This is from the second instalment of the SAYSKY x Le Fix collab. It was part of the SS16 collection.
SAYSKY teamed up with Garmin in order to celebrate the launch of their new multisports watch - the Garmin Forerunner 920XT.
However, our most popular collaboration to date was our AW15 project together with local fashion brand Mads Nørgaard. The collection merged the technical performance from SAYSKY with the iconic stripes and design features of Mads Nørgaard. Check it out here together with the rest of our collabs.
Stripes, polka dots and shades of blue, grey and white. These were the identifying features of the very popular SAYSKY x Mads Nørgaard collab.
SAYSKY COP RUN: Urban Relay Intervals
When not busy with creating awesome running apparel, we try to spend as much time as possible outdoors and being active. SAYSKY is all about the love for the sport, with running being our favourite. A passion that we really like to share with our community.
This led to the creation of our very own race series - SAYSKY COP RUN. We wanted to come up with a race concept that was different and not so much about the individual effort, but more about the social element and having fun with friends.
As such, SAYSKY COP RUN was born: an interval-based relay race. Launched in the summer of 2015 and a total of 8 races completed during the course of its first year. COP RUN was here to stay.
Opening scenes from the first ever SAYSKY COP RUN in 2015, with a little more than 300 runners. In teams of three, the runners must complete 5x1000m intervals each.
The Urban Running Crew Mentality
SAYSKY COP RUN represents some of the core values of SAYSKY, as we try to encourage and promote feelings of shared greatness and running comradery. These particular values are something you'll also find in a lot of the urban running crews that are starting to pop up in all major cities around the world.
Young and urban people, just getting together for the love of running and having a good time together. With values so aligned, it just so happened that we started to connect and build a mutual relationship with some of these running crews.
The Tide Runners of Hamburg was the first social running crew to engage with SAYSKY. Now we work together with many different crews from all over the world. Check out our community right here.
Previous: SAYSKY Year Two
Next: SAYSKY Year Four