Adding Value to Runkeeper

Runkeeper is a Boston Baby, one of our darlings in the local tech community. Their philosophy is about the love of running, that it can be fun for anyone at any skill level (hey I’m only at 5k myself). It’s about motivation and maintaining the long run (see my pun?). Runkeeper is now moving into a new phase of its life where it’s expanding that idea, and a particular focus appears to be its eCommerce frontline.

Let’s step briefly into what’s going on. Back in February, ASICS acquired Runkeeper for $85M. Out of an investment capital of at least $11M, I’m sure investors were pretty happy — Runkeeper’s original crew that is. One month later, Sports Authority files for bankruptcy. They used to be the largest sporting goods retailer in the Americas, and after struggling under their debt load, further struggle to make their way through bankruptcy. A bankruptcy, in which ASICS is owed about $23.3M. To push the issue further, big retailers were generally hurting (remember American Apparel’s bankruptcy, Radio Shack?), and the Athleisure industry is currently in a slump. Under Armour itself reported slower growth this past quarter. Fuel to the fire, ASICS reported that its first quarter Americas revenue fell to $581.6M, with its operating income dropping 84% to $7M. Meanwhile, Adidas returns to the scene and steals market share. Kanye probably helped that, but I still credit Run-DMC.

So, ASICS Americas is hurting, but it has Runkeeper up its sleeve. See, Under Armour and Lululemon are simply brands, but Runkeeper is a community with a brand. Athletic communities like this are growing. A great local example is the November Project (another Boston Baby, and now under the patronage of North Face). NP is a free fitness community that’s been steadily growing across the nation promoting connections, movement, playfulness and feeling youthful. I’m pretty sure that out of Runkeeper’s 45M active users, quite a few join NP’s 6:30am workouts. Putting all of this together, Runkeeper is a community platform geared towards making running fun and lifelong, with corresponding user activity & data. So, to comfortably place eCommerce activities within its scope is feasible (and what ASICS needs), but to be done as a value-add to the community.

Incidentally, I previously ran an eCommerce site with a community approach. So, my ideas regarding Runkeeper are inspired by this philosophy.

Runkeeper can bring value to the table in a few ways, let’s slice it up in two: Value by curation, & value by activities.

Let’s talk curation first. ASICS has a huge advantage with Runkeeper when compared to other Athletic brands. They know who I am. I have an account with Runkeeper that knows how active I am, what my sport is, what my build is, my email address, and my social media. That’s a lot of proactively shared information. Yet when I navigate to the Runkeeper store, they promptly forget who I am. Jumping into the Runkeeper store, I’m immediately offered women’s sneakers and capris.

First order of business, leverage all the information I gave you. When I jump into your eCommerce site, you have the data to offer a tailored landing page with men’s running shoes, properly sized shirts and shorts. When a user is already logged in, take advantage of this information.

Second, my data can be used more effectively than simply knowing my gender and size. Runkeeper knows how many miles I run, and compare that to the average life of my running shoes. A simple calculation could anticipate my need for new sneakers beforehand and even offer a discount for the in-house brand. What’s the anticipated weather for the coming season, maybe even curate the selection of athletic wear more closely.

Let’s talk about activity-based value now. While this is not a physical consumer product, Runkeeper could consider race entries. One possibility is to offer up a pool of bibs for the Runkeeper community with flexibility for runner cancellation and last minute signups. In other words, a secondary market for racing bibs.

To extend the racing bib pool further. An amazing feature would simply be bib membership, with a physical bib (or possibly the Runkeeper app acting as race bib). Maybe even vanity bib numbers. A member could then simply show up to a race on race day, and once they cross the starting line, their membership is given a discounted charge for participating. I imagine on the tech side of this offering, there would need to be a partnership with race tracking systems using smartphone radios (wifi? bluetooth? nearfield / rfid? most likely that last one). On the business side, I imagine economies occurring from wholesale purchasing of race entries with a minor margin against members running the race, while still enjoying the discount.

So, there you have two broad ideas on how Runkeeper can add value to their offering. As a runner at the 5k level, I can definitely appreciate these. As a technologist, I can definitely see the technological feasibility of these offerings. As a marketer, I can see these value-adds building out more market share. And of course, for ASICS, this would be a great footing (no pun intended) to pump up their Americas revenue.