Fortune - 04.2020

0

200

400

600

800

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