ASICS Rises From the Humiliation of a 0% Wear Rate to a New Golden Age

ASICS has gone from a humiliating 0% showing at Japan’s famous Hakone Ekiden to enjoying a new golden age powered by the global running boom.

The 77-year-old Japanese brand is recording its best-ever performance again this year. Yet just five years ago, ASICS was being overlooked even in its home market. The article asks how a company in that position became a globally recognized brand known for strong profitability.

The turning point is presented as a matter of field-focused agile development and strict concentration on selected priorities. Rather than spreading its efforts everywhere, ASICS focused on understanding what runners needed and developing products through an agile process close to the market.

The scale of its earlier decline became impossible to ignore in January 2021. At the nationally televised Hakone Ekiden relay, none of the 210 participating athletes wore ASICS. The event, broadcast live across Japan over two days, publicly exposed the brand’s dismal position.

The article, adapted from Dong-A Ilbo’s Deep Dive newsletter, follows ASICS’s remarkable reversal from that 0% humiliation to its current run of record results.