Exclusive HfP competition: Win luxury swim shorts, worth up to £220

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• the_real_a says:

  14 Dec14 December 12:49

  Sorry, £220 for a pair of swim-shorts? Are you serious!?

• Henry Young says:

  14 Dec14 December 14:03

  Check date – no it’s not 1st April ?

• Navara says:

  14 Dec14 December 14:36

  Anika
  Were you swayed by the photo when you posted this ;-))
  Naeco have received good coverage though .

  • Zak Johnson (NAECO) says:

    15 Dec15 December 12:05

    Hahah, the amount of people that ask to help on our next shoot is unreal!!! Hahahaha

• Evan says:

  14 Dec14 December 14:46

  We are constantly told by Rob that the readership of H4P is made up mainly of city professionals and the like. £220 for swimwear isn’t so much for them. As others have mentioned, Orlebar Brown and Villebriquin have had no problem finding their market. H4P commenters sometimes seem an odd mix of the perennially tight, the sartorially uninterested and the odd boaster. This is a great competition obviously linked to travel. Thanks for the chance to win a pair!

  • Six Pack says:

    14 Dec14 December 15:40

    +1

    A fool and their money are easily parted.

    PS I knew I spotted a damn telephoto camera lens peeking over the hedge of my holiday home recently.

    • Zak Johnson (NAECO) says:

      15 Dec15 December 12:06

      Sorry Six pack – you looked too good in them for us not to take a snap.

  • Callum says:

    14 Dec14 December 15:56

    I wouldn’t call it being “tight” to not spend £220 on swim shorts.

    Though I’m not tight as such, I’m poor – they probably look the same on here though!

    • Erico1875 says:

      14 Dec14 December 18:01

      The price makes it difficult for anyone on even a good wage to justify spending, as most people normally take at least a couple of pairs on holiday.
      At say £100 they would sell so much more, thus removing so much more plastic.
      I like the concept though.

      • Shoestring says:

        14 Dec14 December 18:16

        Let’s face it – wading into the big £220 Speedos debate! – the amount of recycled plastic that goes into 1000 pairs sold per month is so minimal in the grand scheme of things, it’s laughable (15,000 bottles).

        Will it make a difference to our planet? No – it’s not just a drop in the ocean lol, it’s a near-infinitesimal nothingness in terms of recycling plastic waste.

        The fact they say these Speedos will be recycled from ocean waste plastic is a nice bit of heartstring marketing but really? I don’t actually believe that & even if it were true, so what? A plastic bottle recycled is the same as any other plastic bottle recycled, whether it comes from ocean waste or the supermarket collection point.

        I’m sure the product quality will be fine. But ultimately, you can’t really get better quality in swimming shorts once you reach a certain pricepoint. Say, £50 to stretch a point. So the premium is going to be on design quality. Where’s the designer name here? There isn’t one. It’s just a bog standard pair of (no doubt) perfectly well-designed swim shorts, worth £50.

        You’re paying for the heartstring marketing.

      • Callum says:

        14 Dec14 December 22:54

        In fairness to them, I despise that argument. It’s the same used by idiots who say we can pollute as much as we want because China does more. Doing something is always better than sitting back and doing nothing.

        That being said, as I mentioned above, I feel like this could be environmentally damaging. Turning large pieces of plastic into microplastic – some of which will break off the shorts and then enter the ocean anyway. I’d rather we moved away from plastic clothing full stop.

      • Zak Johnson (NAECO) says:

        15 Dec15 December 12:25

        Hi Erico,

        Thanks for the comments and I agree it is not always priced for everyone – we too think we can make even bigger impacts at £100 mark. At the moment the fabric and process is expensive but as we grow we are sure we can find ways to reduce this cost and believe we may be able to get a lower premium price point for another range at some point. Still working on it but we dont want to compromise on manufacturing or go against our standards. Fingers crossed for the future though!

        Shoe string,

        Thank you also for the comments and joining the debate too. I will try to answer for you. I did the competition to raise awareness of our brand and what we are doing. Every time I can get in front of an audience it helps. And not because I want to always sell shorts… I want to talk about the issue.

        I created Naeco as I wanted to do something more than the average guy on the street and I know that to many 15,000 bottles is a (figuratively and literally a drop in the ocean) but it is a start. If we all found ways to remove and recycle this plastic we will remove microfibres from our ocean that will eventually kill our ocean wildlife. I am not saying Naeco will be the one solution to change the world but I created it to raise awareness and bring the conversation to others about the plastic problem.

        It would be like me telling the person who picks up rubbish from the beach to stop and laughing at them in their impossible task. We all need to do more and do something to stop this as we are dumping 8 million tons of plastic into the ocean this is causing huge issues around the world. It actually doesn’t matter which country contaminates as it affects us all sadly and yes it does seem a stupid impossible task and why do I even bother…

        I mentioned in a previous comment about one of my favourite quotes at the moment which is…“It always seems impossible till it is done’ – Nelson Mandella.

        Also on the quality aspect – I agree I could probably produce my shorts in China and get the same quality for a third of the price so I could then sell shorts cheaply to the masses. But this would go against every grain in my body – I would be making a profit from sweatshops or paying low labour fees in unsustainable markets. I have visited these places first hand and can assure you we will never do this.

        We genuinely remove plastic from the ocean and ensure we watch every step so we can track and trace our footprint and global impact. I by no means wish to offend but I do like to help educate. I am also happy for you to come to London to see them being made and chat further if you like. I know they might not be for you but happy to give you a day out.

        Sorry for the long reply but your comment deserved my time and I hope I helped a little.

        Zak

    • Anna says:

      14 Dec14 December 18:07

      “Tight” or sensible? If someone gave me £220 and said that the only thing I could spend it on was swim shorts, I’d get 4 pairs of swim shorts at £25 each (tops) and give the rest to charity.

      • Evan says:

        14 Dec14 December 20:43

        I wasn’t actually linking being “tight” specifically to not buying these shorts. I wouldn’t buy them at the price. I have, like Rob bought a few Orlebar Brown shorts in my time. There are plenty of folk here who I do see as sweating the small stuff, shop small/selling ink cartridges etc. I have often found myself agreeing with Jon below – I do think life is too short to run around buying gift cards, but that’s subjective isn’t it. I was musing more on the make up of H4P readership given who Rob says they are….

        • Rob says:

          14 Dec14 December 20:52

          You confuse the 50 people who provide most of the comments with the other 24,950 daily visitors …….

          Quantcast has all the data. Eg the website with the nearest crossover to our audience is CityAM, our readers are 4x more likely to earn over £70k than Mr Average etc.

        • Alan says:

          15 Dec15 December 06:52

          Lol yep it’s amusing how different we all are 🙂 I must confess I’ve never heard of Orlebar Brown and would never dream of spending that amount on shorts, yet was delighted to spend £1,600 on a new Sony A7 III mirrorless camera (after buying 18 Amazon cards at Morrisons for 10% off of course!) – I appreciate many folks would never dream of doing that though!

      • Peter K says:

        14 Dec14 December 22:18

        Ooooh. Am I one of the top 50? Do I win a prize if I am?

• Jon says:

  14 Dec14 December 18:12

  “We are constantly told by Rob that the readership of H4P is made up mainly of city professionals and the like. ”

  Although I earn more than the average and am comfortable and can afford some nice things, I am not “wealthy”. I’d bet I’m the more typical readership. I have to say that if I was earning bonuses in the millions each year and could buy a business class ticket to anywhere (or £220 swimshorts) and not even notice the cost, I wouldn’t be pissing my life away spending a second worrying about collecting some Avios and Hilton points. I think the readership may be South-East biased but is not in the highest end income bracket. Perhaps the claim of the city professionals is for the benefit of attracting advertising?

  • Shoestring says:

    14 Dec14 December 18:22

    That would be to ignore the culture, ie getting one over on the rest of us/ life – winning, in other words. Read the book (ignore the film) – The Wolf of Wall Street.

    • Anna says:

      14 Dec14 December 18:59

      I was explaining this to my OH, he couldn’t understand why (just for example) someone who could afford 10 nights at the Rangali Maldives would be bothered about getting one of those nights free. It’s a game, it’s about getting the best bang for your buck (as they say) and getting big companies to hand over something for (virtually) nothing.

      I will read the book!

      • Anna says:

        14 Dec14 December 19:05

        Just downloaded the book – 99p on Kindle! I think the comments on this article make quite a fascinating study 😂

      • Shoestring says:

        14 Dec14 December 19:29

        A really good read & also incredibly funny in parts.

    • Ereico1875 says:

      14 Dec14 December 19:12

      Why else would I spend 2 hours putting 10 black bags worth of cans into a Tesco recycle machine for 300 Club Card Points. Or running from Tesco to Tesco to buy 3V visas, to then spend all night scratching and inputting them. Buying Game preorders when I dont even have an xbox or playstation.
      This hobby is nuts.

      • Anna says:

        14 Dec14 December 22:47

        They give you points for recycling stuff? That would make a nice change from bullying letters from the council because some residents haven’t washed their yoghurt pots to the required standards!

  • Rob says:

    14 Dec14 December 20:59

    And yet, when BA sells 2 x F tickets to Cape Town for £4K, we sell literally hundreds. Strange. I see all the transactional data from HFP, remember.

    • Mr(s) Entitled says:

      15 Dec15 December 07:39

      If you have the ability to sell £800,000+ (£4,000 x 200 “hundreds”) of poduct from a single article then you are selling yourself short with compititions for beach shorts or allowing Virgin to sponsor an event for the price of a drink. Assuming that is all they paid. I hope it was not.

      In other news, I am delighted so many visit the site every day to read my comments ;o)

• Colin MacKinnon says:

  14 Dec14 December 21:55

  As business editor for a regional newspaper, we ran a competition for an expensive accountancy book.

  Three days after we handed over the prize, an advert appeared in the classified for sale section!

  If I win, though, I’ll be wearing them with pride – and the knowledge that I’ll probably need 16 bottles for my size!

  • Zak Johnson (NAECO) says:

    15 Dec15 December 12:28

    Hi Colin,

    Sadly this can happen in competitions especially if the person winning doesn’t care about the product. Sad but true!

    If you win I am glad to hear you would wear them with pride. Fingers crossed for you!

    Have a great Christmas

    Zak

• JimA says:

  14 Dec14 December 23:06

  First HFP competition that I have chosen not to enter

• Mr Dee says:

  14 Dec14 December 23:32

  No offence to these shorts but if you want to save the environment. By Buying some £20 shorts and then using the other £200 to buy reusable bottles and enviro friendly products would be better.

  • Zak Johnson (NAECO) says:

    15 Dec15 December 12:32

    Hi Mr Dee,

    Thanks for joining the conversation. I know our product is not for everyone so fully appreciate your comment.

    If only more people did spend the additional £200 we might be in a better position… Out of curiosity what is in your opinion the best product to reduce your use of single-use plastic? For me, I think it is my buying a Britta filter as this equates to me saving 4-litre bottles per day we dont use.

    So many great products out there!

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