Glasses on the run Newsletter #25

Hi,

The spring seems to be finally here in Sofia, although maybe just for a few weeks before the summer starts. Anyway, I hope you enjoy today's newsletter, press Reply and let me know.

What was interesting in the business of running

There were a number of interesting quarterly results over the last couple of weeks.

Starting with Asics who had a very strong first quarter, generating Yen 152 billion in revenues (~$1.1 blillion). That was the highest ever for Q1 and 44.6% higher than the same period last year. The free OneASICS membership program now has 7.8 million members and drives Asics's digital sales, which grew by 45.1% year on year. And here is an interesting quote from the quarterly report:

Net sales for our running service channel, for which we started to disclose newly in this first quarter ended March 31, increased significantly to ¥2.7 billion from ¥0.3 billion of the same period of the previous fiscal year partly due to the effects of M&A of race registration companies.

Asics previously acquired Runkeeper in 2016 (now available as part of the One ASICS membership), Race Roster in 2019 and most recently R-bies CO in 2022 together with Nippon Television Holdings, Inc.

Performance Running is the largest business line for Asics with just over half of its revenue for the quarter, but Core Performance Sports is the fastest growing - with 122.4% higher than the same period last year. While Europe remains the largest market for Asics with 29.9% of its sales for the quarter.

Moving on with ON Running, who also had a record breaking quarter. ON registered sales of CHF 420.2 million (~$468 million) - 78.3% higher than the sales for the same period last year. The DTC channel makes up 32.6% of the total and its share decreased year on year. 95.3% of the sales were shoes and Americas was the largest region with 64.3% of the total.

And one more - Wolverine also reported its first quarter results. While the Wolverine sales overall decreased year on year with 2.5%, Saucony's sales grew 21.2% to $132.6 million. Saucony is Wolverine's second largest brand after Merrell.

Moving away from earning reports, Adidas finally decided what to do with the pile of Yeezy shoes - it will sell them and donate the proceeds to charity.

And finally, Strava announced a wide range of new product features. Here is a great overview from DC Rainmaker.

As always, thank you for reading,

Momchil