In this interview, Liz Bui (Yulex CEO), Kyrrha Martin (Yulex Director of Sales), and Austin Benke (Manera America Sales & Marketing), discussed Manera’s unique business model. They shed light on Manera’s commitment to selling exclusively through surf shops, highlighting the community and environmental benefits of their in-person approach over online sales.
“There are a lot of things to like about Manera, including their wetsuit development created with 3D technology and designed not by a wetsuit designer but by a compression garment designer. But I think where they had me was that they don’t sell their products online (no D2C) but in selected surf shops.
In my opinion this is important for 2 reasons: Community and Environment. Local surf shops have been the cornerstone of the surfing and watersports industry for decades. Most are privately owned and always open- working tirelessly and making smaller margins than consumers appreciate. It’s the place where like-minded people meet up, share experiences, and have a receptive audience. Your local surf shop is also active in their community, contributing to and hosting school and beach events for example.
Manera’s business model of in-person, surf shop, experience only is also better for the environment when you consider packaging and transport. It’s the CO2 emissions from the millions of tons of plastic wrapping, to the billions of trees that are pulped to produce the millions of tons of shipping cartons- and a very small percentage of this actually gets recycled or reused. Then consider the transport of goods and the CO2 emissions generated by e-commerce alone- consumers demand fast delivery and free returns- neither is good for the planet. By one calculation, in 2020, the shipping and return of products accounted for 37% of the total GHG emissions. Yowsa! I know in this age of e-commerce it’s hard not to survive as a business without an online store. I obviously get that too – but how can we do better?
So kudos to MANERA for intentionally swimming upstream. Surf shops and the environment are better for it.”
– Liz Bui
ALT stands for « Alternative ». We have built a greener alternative to conventional wetsuits, with performance in mind. It features a 100% natural YULEX rubber, tapped from FSC-certified Hevea trees forests. All jerseys are recycled, and the wetsuit features all our other standard sustainable processes.
The performances of the ALT are close to a MAGMA’s. We believe the ALT represents a new generation of high-performance wetsuits that has a more reasonable impact on the planet.