Niki and Becca have been swimming competitively since they were little and when their high school hosted a business pitch competition during their sophomore year, they knew right away they wanted to create something that could improve the female swimmer’s experience in and beyond the lane.  

Of course the girls crushed it and became finalists in the competition, going on to get successful funding on Kickstarter and have their company, Wotter, featured by Entrepreneur Magazine.  

Two years later, the girls are seniors in high school and swimHERs all over the world are wearing the swim parka they created.

“Girls leave swimming at twice the rate of boys by the time they graduate from high school and with only one female coach to every 3 male coaches, there are too few female role models on deck for girls.  Swimming has meant so much to both of us, we really wanted to play a part in changing those statistics.”  

With this mission in mind, Niki and Becca decided to challenge the status quo and reinvent the old unisex (aka, made for boys) swim parka by creating one designed just for girls. 

“It’s time to acknowledge that girls in swimming have different needs in gear.  The parka is a symbolic staple garment that never really acknowledged and validated girls in the sport.  With Wotter, we are creating an option that we hope helps girls feel more confident on deck.”

“JOLYN was a huge inspiration for us.  When we look around the deck, we and many of the girls on our team are in JOLYN suits.  It really is the modern, style choice for girls. This tells you that girls want something that is made just for them from a company that is focused only on their needs.  We love our JOLYNs, not just because we love the fit, the styles and choices of print we love JOLYN because it is made just for us girls and that feels good, it makes us feel confident.  We want Wotter to give girls that same kind of inner power.”

“We hope that girls will see what we are doing and want to make their own social impact.  This entrepreneurial journey has been incredible, we have seen and done things we never dreamed possible.  Swimming gave us the foundation and drive to work for personal bests, entrepreneurship gave us a new pool in which to earn them.”

Of course it’s your hard work and training that get you the gold, but we get it. When you feel good about your fit, you get an extra boost of confidence that makes our sport more fun and fulfilling. We’re so happy to see other companies sharing our mission to make the pool deck a more empowering place for women.