Any colour as long as it’s orange!

When you think of orange in biking, it’s usual to think of KTM. But there’s another team orange in the motorcycle world, based in Croydon rather than Austria: D3O, the firm behind some of the most innovative motorcycle body armour products in recent years. Alan Dowds went along to its South London HQ to learn more.

I was welcomed into a large modern building full of professional-looking, keen young workers, then taken to a product showroom its walls lined with the company’s products. The firm makes a range of foam protective armour products, which protect humans (and machines, from smartphones to F1 cars) from excessive vibration and impacts. It uses clever non-Newtonian polymer materials, and patented production methods with special ingredients, to absorb impact and vibration. It’s seen primarily in the bike trade as body armour, of course, with the polymer material cast and moulded into elbow, knee, shoulder, chest and back protectors. It’s also used in a bespoke fashion, for example, for a boot maker to incorporate into a crash-proof sole or a glove maker into a palm protector. In that respect, it’s similar to a brand like Gore-Tex, which supplies its materials and know-how for third-party manufacturers to incorporate into their products.

Away from bikes, which make up 25% of the firm’s turnover according to chief marketing officer Mostyn Thomas, we can also see D3O products featured in industrial PPE for construction and manufacturing workers, gloves, safety boots, and helmets, as well as protective kits for winter sports, American football, mountain biking, ice hockey – anything taking big impacts, in other words. It’s even built into smartphone and tablet cases.

There’s also a display of military products, such as ballistic helmet liners, knee pads, and other armour. D3O has a defence and law enforcement arm named Delta Three Oscar, which supplies customers including the US Army, French Gendarmerie, Croatian SWAT teams, plus many others.

Mostyn Thomas takes me through the firm’s history: set up by serial entrepreneur Richard Palmer in the early 2000s, its first project was to supply protection for the American Winter Olympics team in 2006 in Turin, Italy. From there, Stuart Sawyer expanded the company after Palmer moved on to new projects. CEO Sawyer is responsible for commercialising D3O technology and expanding the business. Now, the firm has its main HQ in Croydon and two other offices in the US, a defence sales office on the East Coast and a consumer office on the West Coast – in Orange County, California, appropriately enough! The American offices are essential to sell to the US military; indeed, the firm has to physically produce its materials in the US to comply with defence spending regulations. The firm is presently a privately run operation, with private equity backing from Elysian Capital. “We have great investors,” says Thomas.

I asked Thomas about the firm’s plans for the future. It currently supplies some of the big names in bike clothing: Furygan, Belstaff, TCX boots, Held, Rukka, Richa, Triumph, Harley-Davidson, Ikon, Klim and Sidi. Would D3O consider making its own end-user products, as other armour firms like Knox have done in the past? The answer is a definite no: “We don’t want to do that: all we’d do is cannibalise our own business and upset all our own customers. What we have really works, and we have more than enough growth opportunities doing what we do. That’s a whole new business; you start to lose focus on what you’re about and why you’re here in the first place.”

Company profile over, we go into the main part of the building to see some proper materials science. The firm carries out its main R&D in Croydon, just down the road from Costco and a stone’s throw from Ikea. I see some sample material being mixed up and formed in a casting mould. The labs have limited production facilities to make small runs of new materials and next door; there’s a testing lab where they drop weights onto anvils to measure how well the armour absorbs impact energy – its ultimate job when it comes down to it.

We finish off the day with a chat about the role of body armour and a look at some of the new Diablo armour the firm launched at the Milan show. It’s lighter and thinner than before to suit more casual clothing fitments, yet still complies with the CE Level 1 impact testing regs. As you’d expect, it’s also in very bright orange!
www.d3o.com