Fortune - 04.2020

(Wang) #1
0

200

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600

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1,000%

DEC. 08, 2000 2005 2010

CHANGE IN
GARMIN
STOCK PRICE
SINCE IPO

AUGUST 2003
Garmin’s first
wearable, the
Forerunner 101, tracks
running time, distance,
pace, and location.

JUNE 2007
Apple
debuts the
iPhone, with
Google Maps
installed.

OCTOBER 2007
Garmin announces a 79%
jump in third-quarter revenue
led by its auto segment.

42 FORTUNE APRIL 2020

OR ALL THE TIME, effort, and money
companies plow into the endless
hunt for innovation, many of their
best ideas come from within. A
Procter & Gamble chemist in the
19th century figured a bar of soap
that floated in the tub would en-
liven the bathing experience, and
Ivory Soap was born. In the 1970s,
a 3M employee, craving a better
way to mark pages in his hymnal,
modified an uncommercialized
adhesive invented a few years
earlier by a colleague; Post-it Notes became
an iconic 3M success story. And at Garmin,
a suburban Kansas City maker of naviga-
tional devices for boats, planes, and cars,
a group of running-obsessed employees
applied their know-how to their hobby—a
move that revitalized the company when it
badly needed a win.
It was the early 2000s, and Garmin had
grown from its niche of making consumer
devices utilizing the government’s global
positioning system, or GPS, technology. To-
gether with rival TomTom, Garmin domi-
nated the market for in-car navigational de-
vices, game-changing gadgets that marked

F

the beginning of the end for foldable
maps. GPS for personal fitness wasn’t
popular before the Garmin jogging
klatch began noodling. “They said,
‘We do all these GPS things. Why
don’t we have a GPS product for run-
ners?’ ” recalls Cliff Pemble, Garmin’s
CEO and a 31-year company veteran.
In 2003, Garmin offered its first
fitness wearable, the Forerunner 101.
What began as an employee side proj-
ect has come to define the company
nearly two decades on—especially
after a lethal technology combina-
tion of the iPhone and Google Maps
laid waste to Garmin’s core automo-
tive business. Today, Garmin is a
rare example of a company far from
Silicon Valley that not only took a
punch from the tech behemoths but

ROLLER COASTER
Garmin’s stock
price soared on
the strength of its
in-car navigational
device. Apple’s
iPhone and Google
Maps erased
those gains. GPS-
enabled fitness
watches sent
shares soaring
again.

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY

Far from Silicon Valley, the gadget
maker focused on its expertise
in GPS technology—and reversed
an onslaught from the likes of Apple
and Google. For now.

BY DANIELLE ABRIL

GARMI N

GOES THE

DISTANCE

GAR.W.0420.XMIT.indd 42 FINAL 3/10/2020 1:28:26 PM

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