TeamO Wins Dame Design Awards 2024
For many years the DAME Design awards have been considered the pinnacle of marine innovation and design. Its history is steeped with auspicious winners hailing the start of change in their market sectors: Torqeedo were winners in 2012 starting the electric outboard revolution, Spinlock changed the world of safety lights with Lume-On but never (in as far back as I can see) has a lifejacket ever claimed the top spot at DAME.
Let’s be honest, all lifejackets look pretty much the same, function the same, and usually when someone hails a breakthrough in lifejacket design, they mean it’s in a new colour or they changed a buckle. When your industry is governed by such stringent regulation it’s no surprise that true innovation is crushed by the weight of bureaucracy and the need for results fast. So, it was a shock even to us when on a freezing cold morning in Amsterdam at the breakfast briefing for the METS Trade show, TeamO took the top spot at the DAME design awards 2024.
So, with the stage now set, we are proud to introduce for the first time, the new Hi-Lift Lifejacket. Hi-Lift is built around a simple idea, ‘make your lifejacket more efficient’. What does this mean in practice? Simply take volume that would usually be wasted above the waterline and place it lower down on the person so that they float higher out of the water, simple!
In practice it took months, a plethora of test subjects and more samples than I ever thought would be needed. Starting off with version 1, then V2, then we had versions within versions, by the time we got to V16.5.3 we were really getting somewhere! It’s not often a brand gets to start with a totally blank page, especially in an industry that is as stringently controlled as ours. Hi-Lift is a total re-think of bladder shape. Its radically different shape can’t be arrived at by developing along the path of convention, the only way is to start from scratch and forget what you think you know. The re-distribution of buoyancy means that a Hi-Lift bladder will float you 60% higher out of the water than a conventional bladder shape. That means fewer waves to the face, less chance of spray inhalation and a dramatic improvement in survivability of an untethered MOB. Of course, if you are tethered to a moving vessel you have the added security of a BackTow harness system as featured on all TeamO harnesses.
We are so proud of the Hi-Lift and excited to see it protecting people as they set out on their adventures. TeamO is a brand built on adventure, its staff have crossed oceans, raced in world championships and cruised far flung parts of the globe, amazing equipment made by sailors, for sailors!
Check out the new Hi-Lift here:
And more about the concept here: