From its name alone, you may have not considered Decathlon as a place to shop for swimming products. But their own range of branded swim gear offer some great quality and good value options for open water, pool and training swimmers.

We recently caught up with Kornel Pintara, a keen swimmer and Commercial Leader for water sports at Decathlon, to find out a bit more about the retailer and their exclusive swim brand, Nabaiji.

Decathlon was founded by Michel Leclercq in 1976, and started with a store in Lille, France.

It now has over 2000 stores and local online websites across the world selling products for 70+ sports under one roof. Decathlon offers products from beginner to advanced level and our main mission is to make sport accessible to as many people as we can.

We have our own sports brands such as Quechua (Hiking / Camping) and Wed’ze (Skiing & Snowboarding). Our water Sports brands are Nabaiji (Swimming), Olaian(Surfing), Subea (Snorkeling / Scuba Diving), Itiwit (Kayaks / SUP) and Orao (Kites and Kitesurfing).

Decathlon is the name of the whole company, which sells 70+ sports under one roof. Swimming is one of them, with Nabaiji as an in-house brand.

Nabaiji was born as a new swimming brand in 2008. Our main office, full of keen swimmers who design, create and test our products, is located in Hendaye at Athlantic coast in southern France.

We now sell 1.7 million swimming products a year in the UK and 65 million across Europe.

Our best-sellers are our swimming goggles, compact swimming towels and swimming headwear. Also, training accessories are getting more popular as we have good choice of fins, paddles and pull buoys.

The majority of the Nabaiji range has been created for beginner and intermediate swimmers. Nabaiji aims to help our customers to get into swimming and to help them to continue swimming. For example, we do majority of goggles and masks models in two sizes (large and small) to help our customers find the perfect fit for their face. The hero model for beginners XBase starts from £2.99 (single colour) and has already an adjustable nose bridge, adjustable head strap, anti-fog treatment inside the lens and it has also anti-UV component.

As mentioned before, Nabaiji is a brand that wants everyone to be able to swim, to make swimming more accessible, safe and comfortable. We would like to be with our customers when they first enter the swimming pool and learn how to float to when they do mile after mile at a good pace, full of confidence. This is how we design our products and build our wide offer.

We have full confidence in our products and this is why we offer two years warranty across our whole range. All of our 45 stores across the UK offer swimming products and always stock a variety of models.

We try to provide a full package for all swimmers, with good value gear. We have something for all age groups and different levels. In terms of open water, we began to work on this activity 5-6 year ago and each year we are trying to bring new, affordable products into the market.

We have partnered with Decathlon to celebrate their Nabaiji swimming range and they would like to offer one lucky Outdoor Swimmer fan the chance to win a swimming set worth over £50. Click here to enter.