We finally have a case where we are seeing how the data collected from wearable is not only helping the consumer but is a win-win situation for everyone including brands and retailers.
Milestone sports, the company behind MilestonePod have collected 500,000 miles of unique running data from its wearable device designed for runners. As a result, the company that focuses on using wearable to connect brands and retailers with consumers have unprecedented understanding of how runners run including preferred brand, type and durability of the shoe both real-time as well as over time.
Read more: Data from Sports Wearable. Who owns?
How and what does it collect:
Using the wearable device, the company obviously have details on the running habit of the consumer such as how often, how fast, duration, impact, foot strike, cadence stance time, stride length and leg swing.
Secondly, using the mobile app, the company is able to link the running habit to user information such as gender, height, age, shoe brand and model.
Thirdly, the wearable device has a one-to-one relationship with a pair of shoes and acts as a shoe-life odometer. This allows company to collect data on how long a pair of shoes lasts.
Meir Machlin, CTO of Milestone Sports. “We provide anonymized, yet real life, up-to-the minute shoe-use data to guide marketing, product development and sales strategy, for their own brand and their competitors. With the MilestonePod we can answer questions such as, how exactly do customers run and how often? What is their average age? What shoes provide the lowest rate of impact? The ways to look at the data are limitless. This puts Milestone Sports in a unique position within the running industry.”
What are the findings?
- A runner’s rate of impact begins to increase when their shoes reach 65% of its suggested life span; a runner’s rate of impact increases dramatically when their shoes reach 110% of its suggested life span.
- Across all brands, a runner’s rate of impact increases dramatically when their shoes reach the 425-mile mark
- At the end of a shoe’s life (at the 105% mark of suggested life span and beyond), runners intuitively seem to know how to deal with increased rate of impact from shoe breakdown: by staying on the ground for less time. They accomplish this through increased cadence, higher leg swing and decreased stance time.
- Within all runs of 30 minutes or longer, average cadence increases during the first 10% of the run, then generally plateaus until dramatically dropping during the last 10% of the run, showing smart warm ups and cool downs.
- Pace generally slows at about the half way mark within runs of 30 minutes or longer, but rate of impact and cadence does not deteriorate at the same rate. This may show that form does not automatically break down when a runner begins to tire.
- The top three shoe models for women are Brooks Glycerin 12, Brooks Ghost 7 and Asics Gel-Kayano 20.
- The top three shoe models for men are Adidas Boost, Asics Gel Kayano 21 and Brooks Glycerin 12.
Read more: Tune, a wearable for those who run
Milestone Pod website also provides a summarized statistics on its website for users to compare their performance with others so we are assuming that the company have the consent from its users to use the data.
While the privacy question is unanswered, we are pretty excited to see the statistics and can see how this data can transform the marketing landscape of retailers and brand names. We are not surprised that Newton running is partnering with Milestone Sports to offer marketing platform
What are your thoughts? Would you like to share your data for comparison? Does that make you buy a wearable? Are you happy to have this data available for brands and retailers to make informed decisions? Could this drive the next generation brand advertisement?
