Japanese sportswear giant Asics has purchased Runkeeper, a popular GPS fitness-tracking company. This is not the first platform to have been acquired by manufacturers of sports clothing in recent times.
Today’s purchase comes only 6 months after rival fitness app Runtastic was picked up by Adidas for a whopping $239 million, while American sports clothing firm Under Armour snapped up Endomondo and MyFitnessPal – two of the biggest fitness platforms – for $560 million a year ago.
Founded back in 1949, Asics has taken a genius approach to embracing the digital world; instead of trying to update its own products for the era we live it, the easier route is to simply acquire companies that were actually born in the digital world.
And buying Runkeeper could be one of the best decisions, seeing that this fitness company is an old player in the iOS game. Its first app was introduced on the market shortly after the App Store changed our lives in 2008. Today, eight years later, Runkeeper boasts over 40 million users across all platforms.
Even though Asics also manufactures sporting apparel, the firm is probably better known for its top-notch sports shoes. Any runner who respects himself has one pair of the popular shoes, or has at least heard of them.
Interestingly, an in-app shoe-tracking feature has revealed that “Asics is the shoe most commonly worn by its users,” a fun fact recently posted on the official Runkeeper website.
Trying to wipe away any concerns related to this acquisition, Runkeeper’s users were assured by the company that “not a great deal will change,” at least not from the end-user standpoint.
According to Runkeeper CEO Jason Jacobs, “not only will the Runkeeper product carry on, but we will be able to move even faster.” This new leadership comes with new resources, which will allow the company to “pursue the vision we’ve set out to pursue all along,”
Neither Runkeeper nor Asics commented about the terms of the deal. However, Runkeeper recently had to cut 30 percent of its workforce, but with Asics’ help – which boasts to be billion-dollar company – the fitness company has one less concern.
Image Source: Runkeeper Blog
