Runtastic owner Adidas makes more apps disappear. Almost a third of the employees have to leave the successful Austrian fitness company.
The Runtastic founders celebrated a great success in 2015 with the takeover by the sports group Adidas. Eight years later, there is not much left of the startup – and soon there is almost nothing left. Company boss Scott Dunlap, who was appointed in 2019 as the successor to co-founder and CEO Florian Gschwandtner, is now further cutting Runtastic: At the Pasching site near Linz, 70 of the 250 employees will be cut in the coming months. According to Linkedin posts, the restructuring affects people in all departments.
Runtastic was founded in 2009 by Florian Gschwandtner, Christian Kaar, René Giretzlehner and Alfred Luger and has enjoyed great success with its sports apps. These are now largely over. According to the Austrian company, the company will focus solely on the “Running App” in the future. However, it has long had the Adidas logo.
Cooperation instead of own fitness apps
According to Runtastic CEO Dunlap, the previously existing “Trainings App”, which offers workout plans, will be discontinued in the coming months. The corona pandemic has had a strong impact on the demand for training and fitness apps in recent years. In terms of training in particular, it has become clear that users can offer users greater added value if Runtastic enters into partnerships with other fitness platforms.
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Ex-frontman Gschwandtner, who is now an investor and founder of the coaching startup Leaders21, still believes in the success of sports apps. He has just reported back as a solo and sidepreneur: the first product called “100 Push-Ups Push-Up Coach”. It should, says Gschwandtner in the self-confident superlative, be the “best push-up app in the world“. It includes a training plan, different levels, a leaderboard that you can use to compete with others, and various social functions. Three more apps related to individual exercises are to be added to the portfolio of Gschwandtner’s company Foxyfitness before the end of this year.
Runtastic recently hit the headlines because the parent company wanted to transfer user data to its own servers to avoid activities, followers, challenge participations and contributions, newsfeed entries and goals being deleted and the group not more are available. At the same time, Adidas uses Runtastic patents to sue US competitor Nike for IP infringements in apps.
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