Active Overwatch 006

Here’s what we got this week in the business world of health, fitness, & wellness:

🗞️ The Story - Apple Watch is getting major health & fitness upgrades

📈 The Strategy - On x Zendaya partnership going ghost

🛍️ The Product - New shoes dropped from Nike, On, & Vivo Barefoot

The Story

Apple unveiled a preview to watchOS11 and it includes some upgraded features in the health & fitness realm.

The quick list of new features:

1. The vitals app will now give you feedback and better context on the metrics it tracks. Analyzing things like heart rate, respiratory rate, skin temp, sleep numbers, & blood oxygen. Then telling you noteworthy metrics and notifying you if things seem off.
2. Training load will now be measured for you by analyzing the strain workouts are putting on your body. Giving you insights into recovery and if your body should take it easy or is ready to push it.
3. New support for pregnant users. The watch will now track gestational age and allow you to log mental & physical symptoms. For monitoring health status over trimesters.
4. You can now customize activity rings by day. So the activity goals you set on the watch can be different each day. To help you account for rest days, injuries, or anything else life may throw at you.

Apple is clearly taking inspiration from other fitness wearables like Whoop and Oura.

For some time, Apple was lagging behind those wearables in terms of in-depth analytics and actionable insights provided.

And for how long it took, I started to wonder if that was a game they were purposefully trying to stay out of.

But it appears they were letting the space play out more and being strategic about what features they wanted to replicate.

I don’t think this is all bad for Whoop and Oura.

While they are all in the same wearables space, each of their products is catered to a different consumer preference.

Apple = screen watch, fashionable, phone like capabilities

Whoop = no screen, highly analytical, can be worn on other parts of body with accessories.

Oura = ring, fashionable, no screen, highly analytical

If anything, the added competition from Apple will force Whoop & Oura to become more innovative and push the envelope for what is possible in health & fitness wearables.

The Strategy

On announced their newest brand partner, Zendaya, in a multi-year collaboration.

You see her featured on the home page of the On website and all over On’s Instagram page.

But if you go to Zendaya’s Instagram… nothing about On.

I’m not gonna speculate and get into the details of what this might mean.

It could be a number of factors, deal terms, or just simply timing for why Zendaya has been silent about the partnership.

But I wanted to highlight this detail of the partnership for other reasons.

Traditionally, celebrity brand deals have always been “we pay you $, you promote to your audience of millions, we get more sales from it".

The celebrity was not involved in the business day to day, nor were they a decision maker.

But in recent years, many social media stars have become bigger names than the faces on your TV.

And with that, a new type of partnership deal has become trendy.

The creator led company.

Where a creator partners with an operator to launch a company together.

A company whose product matches the needs of the creator’s audience

And the creator is both involved in the company AND a major lever for distribution, as they promote it to their audience.

And yes, each of these partnership strategies serve a different purpose and one is not always better than the other.

Many factors go into play such as timing, size of your company, the market you are in, your distribution channels, etc…

But me personally, I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I like the 0 to 1 process of taking an idea and bringing it to life.

And for the 0 to 1 process, the creator led company strategy is what I would choose almost every time.

The Product

Nike, On, and Vivo Barefoot all decided to drop a new shoe this past week.

Each noteworthy, in their own way.

1. Nike officially launched the Pegasus 41. The newest version of their flagship running shoe.
2. On launched the Cyclon Cloudrise. The newest addition to their recyclable shoe collection, available as a subscription.
3. Vivo Barefoot launched the Motus Flex. Their most flexible strength training shoe yet.

Each of these shoes are unique, despite both the Nike and On shoes being for running.

One is for standard running, one is a subscription recyclable shoe, and the other is a flexible strength training shoe.

And the uniqueness made me realize something about my shoe closet.

I now have a pair of shoes for almost every niche specific fitness activity that I do.

I have everyday runners, race running shoes, trail running shoes, strength training shoes, recovery shoes, and flexible lightweight shoes.

The all purpose fitness shoe that we grew up wearing for every activity, is on its way out.

And just like we see so many CPG brands winning by niching down, we are seeing this same shift in shoe brands.

Hyper specific, purpose built shoes so that consumers are best suited for the activity they are doing.