How Whoop became the go-to wearable for athletes

The wearable market is crowed. Garmin, Fitbit, Apple Watch, Oura. Big brand names that have developed substantial market share, finding new ways to help people hit their ‘10,000 steps’ or set other health goals. So when Whoop launched in 2012, any new brand would need to carve out a new niche to make headway. Fortunately, Whoop CEO Will Ahmed wanted to do something different than the 10,000-step crowd. He saw an opportunity to build a wearable company that better helped athletes like himself, and position a wearable brand in a fresh way.

On the Whoop podcast Ahmed outlined the origins of the company, and how his own frustrations with overtraining prompted him to position Whoop as a product that didn’t just tally your progress, but helped you understand when to train and when to rest.

“I got recruited to Harvard to play squash and I became captain of the team there, but I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing to my body while I was training,” said Ahmed. “A lot of athletes overtrain, undertrain, misinterpret fitness peaks, don’t necessarily understand the importance of recovery or sleep, and I was certainly one of them. I used to overtrain almost every season, which is the ultimate betrayal, because you’re putting so much effort into getting fitter and stronger and then all of a sudden you fall off a cliff because you’ve just pushed your body well past what it’s capable of. So I got very interested in what I could measure about my body to prevent me from doing that.”

Ahmed recognized that there was both a gap in the market and the technology available to deliver on his vision. “I did a ton of physiology research. I read something like 500 medical papers while I was in school. I ultimately wrote a paper myself around how I thought you could continuously understand the human body. That really became the business plan for WHOOP. I didn’t set out to start a company as an undergraduate in school, but one thing just led to another and I just became completely obsessed with this concept of continuously monitoring the human body.”

Ahmed’s obsession translated into a well-positioned company. From the outset Whoop positioned itself as the ‘wearable for athletes’ and that impacted everything from product development to the brand’s early go-to-market strategy. Whoop still allowed people track elements of their exercise regime, but shifted the focus to the impact on your body via strain, and how well the body was recovering.

Their brand positioning gave direction to their early partner approach, enabling Whoop to expand their early user base and further cement their position in the market. “Our origins are really in professional sports. We started working with the best athletes in the world when the first product came out. Two of our first 100 users were LeBron James and Michael Phelps. We became partners with the NFL Players Association, so we were distributed to every player in the NFL. We became the first [wearable] approved in Major League Baseball. And over time, we developed WHOOP into a consumer brand. … It’s been pretty fascinating to go from a high-end sports wearable to now a product that a lot of people are finding value in in just bettering their daily lives.”

Whoop’s positioning also gave direction to product development decisions. Unlike other trackers Whoop doesn’t track basic aspects such as steps - data that had become popular but is largely irrelevant to amateur and elite athletes. Instead the Strain Coach tells you when you are ready to perform at your best, and the sleep coach gives you direction on how best to optimize your recovery based on your desired training or performance the next day.

As they have grown Whoop has stayed tight to that brand positioning, enabling clarity in their consumer messaging, partnerships and content creation.

THE TAKEAWAY

• Develop a strong brand positioning to stand out in a crowded marketplace

• Ensure you then leverage that brand positioning to go to market through partnerships, content and communications

GO DEEPER

• Listen to Will Ahmed on the founding of Whoop here.

• See how Whoop uses athletes data to cement their positioning here.