It’s Not a Watch, It’s a WHOOP

There is a new innovative way for personal training and working out, and WHOOP is leading the pack. WHOOP is an innovative wearable technology that helps you improve the way you workout, sleep, recover, and assess the strain your body can take during a workout. Being able to understand your body, no matter what time of day, is critical to balancing a workout and how to take better care of your body. WHOOP is looking to take on the next level of fitness and fan experience, with major brand deals and an expansion of market value. 

Founder of WHOOP, Will Ahmed, started his journey while he played squash at Harvard. Being an athlete himself, he realized how difficult it was to find a good balance with working out, sleeping, and taking care of yourself while being a full-time student-athlete. The origins of WHOOP started in professional sports, working their way through deals with the National Football League and Major League Baseball. Some known athletes who support the brand, as well as own the wearable, are LeBron James and Michael Phelps. The wearable slowly started to grow more in professional sports with Eli Manning becoming a huge advocate for the brand, and MLB approving WHOOP as the first wearable to be worn during games. WHOOP also worked with the United States Navy Seals on improving their overall health and wellness.  

Recently, the human performance company has taken the PGA Tour by storm. Striking a deal in the middle of 2020, the PGA Tour will feature live highlights from players’ heart rates and biometric data, during important pivotal moments. Players like Rory McIlory, who is an investor in the human performance company, proclaims how having the wearable be seen on live broadcasts will change the viewership for the PGA. Fans want to see what is happening and being able to see the heart rate during big moments and actively seeing how the player is feeling, is something that will draw in more crowds. WHOOP has also looked to better the fan experience in other events such as the CrossFit Games and NASCAR. 

So why are we talking about WHOOP? Well, their recent value of the company just hit 3.6 billion dollars. Receiving almost 200 million dollars in funding for their new expansion of technology. With this funding, WHOOP is looking to put more into the research and development process of the wearable. With WHOOP on the rise in the market, it leaves other brands like Fitbit, which was just bought out by Google for 2.1 billion dollars, and Apple, who have their new watch series being released soon, scrambling to figure out how the market is responding to WHOOP. Amazon is also in that grouping, coming out with their new “halo,” something very similar to the wearable of WHOOP. The difference between all these brands is the style of them all. WHOOP goes in with its motto of the brand, “it is not a watch, it is a WHOOP.” The emphasis of the wearable is on the data and human performance rather than the extra bells and whistles that their competitors focus on. The fitness world does not seem to be slowing down, expecting a 12% growth in the upcoming year, averaging almost 12 million dollars in the market of fitness trackers. 

WHOOP 4.0 is the latest update for the personal workout wearable. The newest installment helps find your individual baseline for your workouts, instead of guessing to see where you may be. WHOOP identifies your typical heart rate, resting heart rate, heart-rate variability, skin temperature, and blood oxygen levels. The wearable and app collect over 50-100 megabytes of data on a single person a day. With this data, they try to keep you a step ahead in your workout plan, then focusing on what just happened. The newest update also includes wireless charging and the ability to wear it in the shower or pool, with new waterproof technology. 

Want to know more about WHOOP and its growth in the world of innovation? Listen to Josh Walker, as he dives deeper into the biometric data of WHOOP on our Fluid Fan Market Watch, and hear it from Will himself, as he meets with Angela Ruggerio on the Fluid Fan Podcast.