OPINION
Right: Swijn Freeli Bra Below: Swijn Schnuggi Bra
always been thickly layered, but it becomes uncomfortable because it dries so poorly. Many women cyclists change into a dry bra at the top of a climb because they do not want their breasts to freeze on the downhill. Swijin’s bras dry so quickly, cyclists no longer have to change. At Empa, we had to have testing equipment built for the
project because they only had male dummies. We built our own team: Nici: A dummy that runs at different speeds. We had her torso built to replace the male dummy because the scientists were unable to pull the bra over the wide male torso.
Mizzi: A porous cylinder that behaves like athletes who continue to pump sweat into their bra, so we could study how moisture moves from warm skin through the fabric.
Heidi: An infrared system that shows at which speed and in what areas the bra dries most quickly.
Engineering the “Swiss Cross” The first work was foundational—invent this product as if it had never existed before. We worked with Empa’s sports physiologists and conducted body mapping. Women, for example, perceive a wet clothing article as much colder than it actually is; this perception differs from how men perceive the same wet textile. We looked at raw materials, knitting structures, and wicking behaviour. Finally, we discovered the single most important element: Upper Breast Support. This means any sports bra on the market that shows any cleavage fails to offer 90% of
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the support a female athlete needs. We screen-printed an interconnected pattern of Swiss crosses between the fabric layers with a 3D paste (later heat set) that activates and grips the breast, holding it down like KT tape. The fabric of our Schnuggi sports bra is knit in Austria with the finest needles in the world. We replaced silk with bio-based performance yarns made from the oil of the castor bean. It outperforms its fossil-fuel alternative—it’s wonderfully lightweight and absorbs no water. The underbust band is a Swijin invention; we engineered a perforated, breathable band with elastic pastes that expand to the unique circumference of the athlete to the millimetre. Rather than traditional bands, which are constantly squeezing with full force, our ultra-thin bands allow the athlete to breathe freely for VO2 max.
The Boardroom Battle The sports bra is the single most difficult piece of clothing to engineer for the human body. It was easier to invent than to raise 1.6 million CHF for Swijin. Women only receive 2% of all investment funding. In Switzerland, it’s even lower. As a solo female-founder, it’s nearly impossible if you read the odds. The crazy things investors said to me during pitches still stick with me. A 24-year-old business student at our accelerator said: “Well, you’re certainly good at marketing and pitching. Now let’s see if you’re any good at finances.” A VC told me: “You should immediately find a co-founder. Make sure he’s male. And make sure he’s younger than you.” Another told me, “You should consider a much bigger market! You should instead make compression shirts for male rugby players!”
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