Kitchener-based startup TritonWear officially launched its wearable head unit for swimmers just before the new year and sales have already spread to a dozen countries worldwide.

The unit, which athletes strap on to the back of their heads, provides key training metrics such as stroke count and split times, and sends that information automatically to an app that can be accessed by both coach and athlete.

Tristan Lehari, CEO of the startup and co-founder alongside Darius Gai, said the reception to the new product has been overwhelmingly positive.

“There was a lot of anticipation, and I guess even concern sometimes, because it’s kind of black magic to most people,” he said in an interview. “It seems crazy that from the back of a swimmer’s head we can get things like distance per stroke and how far they go underwater, but now that we have it out there with coaches, they’re absolutely loving it.”

The company, which has grown from a team of four to 12 over the past year, also ran a paid beta program with some Ontario clubs for a little over half a year before the launch. They now work with organizations from a dozen countries across the world, including the Malta National Swim Team, the U.S. Nation’s Capital Swim Club and U.S. Vanderbilt Swimming.

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Lehari, who previously co-founded stick testing service Hockey Robotics, says the inspiration behind the product was his own swimming career.

“As an undergrad, I studied mechatronics engineering and swam varsity at the University of Waterloo for five years,” he said. “So I really got to face all the problems that we’re addressing first hand as a swimmer but also got to see it from an engineering standpoint. I guess the big thing that I saw was a solution for a swimmer at first.”

After developing the idea for a while, however, he realized the real market was coaches, who have to compile data by hand on as many as 30 athletes in a pool at once.

Kevin Anderson, Head Coach of Mississauga Swimming and customer since September 2015, notes in a recent video review with TritonWear that, “It makes it a lot easier to put my stopwatches down and actually watch the workout and see what they’re doing.”

Incorporated in January 2014, TritonWear has been headquartered in the Velocity Foundry, but will be moving the majority of its team to a downtown Toronto office within the next two weeks, while still keeping a satellite office in Waterloo for research and development.

In January 2015, TritonWear raised $1 million in seed funding led by Real Ventures in Montreal as well as MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund. The company has no current plan to raise more funding this year.