For the upcoming ispo winter 06 we have put together an X-Socks catalogue with novelties for 2006/2007, including our Energy Accumulator series of compression socks. This is available for download now.

Our X-Socks Ambassador Martina Glagow (Germany) was successful again last weekend during the Anterselva Biathlon World-Cup (Italy) winning the 12,5 km women’s mass start race.

But it’s not like only the German team is using our products. These are the biathlon teams equipped with X-Socks and X-Bionic UnderGear:

Teams marked with an * are not equipped with X-Bionic UnderGear.

In our last newsletter we talked about one of Henk Sipers past adventures, the Ultramarathon de Sable. Several people have asked which model of X-Socks Henk used there, so I thought I’d post the answer here:

He has mostly used the Desert Storm.

You’ll find a lot more information (in Dutch) on Henk’s website.

Also last night we received a mail from Volvo SportsDesign Awards:

Last wednesday, the jury meeting for the 2nd VOLVO SportsDesign AWARD at ispo winter 06 took place in Munich. The international jury had the task of choosing the best SportsDesign products in seven categories and finally made their desisions.
Out of the 222 applications from the industry, your entry, the Energy Accumulator, was one of the best products of a category and was nominated for this year’s AWARD along with 4 other products of the same category. Congratulations!

Ten days to go until the winners are announced at the pre-ispo Volvo SportsDesign Forum. This is exciting!

Last night, the Well-Tech Award people wrote us an e-mail:

Dear Sirs,

We are pleased to inform you that your product X-UnderGear has been pre-selected for the Well-Tech Award 2006, Innovation Technology Prize.

I can say that we are pleased as well.

Our German X-Socks Ambassadors Michael Greis and Martina Glagow have been successful at the Oberhof Biathlon World Cup.

Michael Greis pushed the men’s relay team from third (21 seconds behind) to first on the last leg. Martina Glagow celebrated her first win this year.

Also with X-Socks - as most biathletes including the whole Swiss and German national teams - and also with a gold medal was Kathi Wilhelm.

Congratulations to all of you!

French “Trek Magazine”, who have tested our products before, made a visit to the factory in Italy. Fabrice, responsible for X-Technology products at SIDAS, explains how X-Socks and X-Bionic UnderGear are developed, produced and quality checked. But the best part of it - they filmed the visit and put it on their DVD.

I’d love to tell you more, now. But first, I have to get a translation. If you are from France, be sure to get a copy of the magazine. It’s the December issue of “Trek Magazine”.

about.com’s Wendy Bumgardner has done a review of X-Socks Power Walking.

She writes

X-Socks are the most highly engineered high tech socks I’ve ever seen. The Power Walking version is an ankle-high sock with nine specific features. The sock comes in both men’s and women’s versions to fit the shape of male and female feet.

The year has just begun, but that doesn’t mean we can’t achieve any awards yet.

Every year, the iF Industrial Forum Design, Hannover, Germany awards designers world-wide for “outstanding achievements in the field of design”. For 2006 they have picked four of our products:

In November, German discounter ALDI Süd offered functional underwear for 14,99 €. So far, so good. Had they not used our thermographic scans of the X-Bionic UnderGear. Their packaging features an identical copy of our image.

We charged their supplier a fee to use the image for one day. However, that does not change the fact that our image does not really match their underwear (left image is our scan, right is an actual scan of the crane underwear that ALDI sold):