Big Fitness Brands’ Bets: Where They’re Investing Across Wearables, Mobile, And E-Commerce

Health and wellness is one of the most saturated categories within the broad Internet of Things category. Growth has been powered by fitness- and health-tracking devices, including those developed by startups like the now-public Fitbit and still-private Misfit Wearables.

With the fields of fitness, sports, and wellness becoming more quantified and digital, traditional athletic brands are rethinking their business models and products in order to stay competitive.

We used CB Insights’ database to identify the most active private market corporate investors among major fitness brands over the last five years. We mapped their activity using our Business Social Graph tool, which shows how investors and target companies are related, in order to analyze where some of the top fitness brands are striking deals.

Specifically, we analyzed the investment activity of the following fitness brands:

• Nike
• Under Armour
• Adidas
• Asics
• Columbia Sportswear

Investments in the graph below are connected by green lines, acquisitions by orange lines.

Click on the graph to enlarge. 

Some interesting takeaways from analyzing the graph above:

• Nike is the sole fitness brand in the most-active group participating in equity financings of private companies. All the others made only acquisitions. Nike co-invested alongside VCs Formation 8 and Battery Ventures in Reflektion and Grabit, respectively.
• Under Armour made several acquisitions with large price tags: MyFitnessPal, a digital health tracker that saw prior investment from Accel Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was acquired by Under Armour at a valuation of $475M. Under Armour also bought MapMyFitness, a fitness web app and mobile app suite, for $150M.
• Adidas, Asics, and Columbia each made at least one acquisition over the past 5 years. Columbia bought e-commerce site prAna Living, Asics acquired fitness tracking mobile app FitnessKeeper, and Adidas bought Runtastic, another mobile app.
• The only investments or acquisitions outside of e-commerce and connected fitness apps and devices were Nike’s investments in Grabit and Llamasoft. Grabit makes material handling technology for warehouse and manufacturing automation, and Llamasoft develops software for supply chain operations.

Want more data on where fitness brands are investing? Check out our private market database below.

Photo credit: Yutaka Tsutano. Creative Commons license 2.0.