It's About Dang Time
Making PFDs has been a personal dream for our co-founder Stig Larsson for a long time. It has been a dream to not only make PFDs but to have the full offering of paddling apparel products that our dealers need. Long story short, you have been asking for it for awhile, and it's about dang time we did it for you.
So for the 2027 season we are proud to announce a full PFD range, top to bottom. Whitewater, sea kayak, touring, rec, with real women's fits on every model, not a shrink-and-pink afterthought. It's the biggest design bet in Level Six history, built the way we build everything now, with PVC-free FREEFLOW foam, recycled fabrics, and zero PFAS. This is the line that completes the kit on your floor, so your paddlers can walk out in Level Six head to toe.
Meet the Thompson and Mattawa: the first harmonized Level 50 PFDs approved on both sides of the border. These bring comfort to another level, designed to make wearing a PFD as unobtrusive as possible. They pull it off by staying extremely low profile while delivering 50 newtons of flotation, safe and comfortable all at once. Because the safest jacket is the one people actually wear and not leave under their seat. This is an exciting whole new category for your customers, harmonized for both Canada and the US in a single SKU.
Ask your local rep about them to schedule a showing and experience the most comfortable PFDs on the market firsthand. Read more about these PFDs in the amazing article by Paddling Mag below.
The design ethos for this line was to make PFDs that enhance the paddling experience rather than hinder it. So from our premium 70 Newton Touring and Whitewater builds all the way down to our 50 Newton builds, these PFDs have all been designed so that your customers barely notice them. Everything else, from the features to the looks were designed only after a PFD could hit that baseline.
We have put a lot into marketing Exhaust Pro and billing it as the largest R&D project in Level Six history, which it was. The fact of the matter is that it does not even come close to the effort that our entire team has put into PFDs. From late nights, failed prototypes, last minute revisions, last minute weekend meetings and double and triple checking all work, this has been the hardest project in company history.
We cannot wait for your customers to experience it first hand.
Ask your local rep about them to schedule a showing
Great fit is more than unisex. While this may seem like a basic concept, it is something that the outdoor industry has struggled with for a long time. Over the past couple of years we have talked a lot about "Shrink It and Pink It," the act of taking a men's product, making it smaller and giving it "girly" colours. This has been especially true when it comes to PFDs. This is not without reason. PFDs are, to put it bluntly, expensive to develop. There are extensive safety and certification programs that you must go through (for good reason) so that you can sell a PFD in any given market and ensure that it meets the required safety standards. In the US alone, these tests can run between $48,000 and $75,000 USD per PFD package. This is on top of all the internal, design, R&D, and testing that a company does, and has led to companies often cutting corners when it comes to women's sizing.
We are proud to say that with our new Halo Fit System we are coming out of the gate with a system that has uniquely designed sizes for both men and women, making sure that we are putting the investment in upfront so that your customers get products that enhance their life on the water instead of taking away from it. We approached this thinking "why would anyone not do this?!" and over the past few years have come to understand why. Getting this right and absorbing the costs of mistakes has been difficult, to say the least. This has been a long process, filled with expensive ups and downs, but we still would not do it any other way. There is a very good reason why not many companies make PFDs, but every setback has made us better and, more importantly, has made the end product better. It is something that we are excited for you to be able to share with your customers next year.
If you have any questions or want to organize a viewing, please contact your local Level Six Sales Rep or salessupport@levelsix.com.