I've been at Decathlon since 2008 and I had an opportunity to join Subea, when the brand was created. I'm now the design manager and I take care of everything to do with Easybreath as a designer. I also work as backup on a lot of 4 Subea sports products: everything from scuba regulators to cosmetics work on fins and freediving masks. My goal is to have a brand that addresses the full range of Decathlon customers, from those who are totally terrified by this sport to those who enjoy it regularly. My big project when I joined the team was to write the design language with the big idea being to be able to talk about these 4 sports to 4 very different audiences and to tie it all in with the Decathlon values, so as to make it something universal but at the same time something a bit specific.
My most beautiful memory was in the Basque Country, on the Spanish side, in an area called "the Aquarium", during one of my first PADI Open Water sessions. We hadn't seen many marine species, but the suddenly, an enormous starfish. I didn't know anything about the way this speciesbehaves. The instructor took it, put it upside down in the bottom, I thought absolutely nothing was going to happen. But then it curled up and turned over. I realised that it was a completely mobile animal, and not flat and stable as I had imagined. And so, I was totally amazed by somehing really small, yes, but to see a starfish use its limbs just like arms and legs was a hell of a discovery. That's the kind of little thing that can make a dive truly magical.
