Ask people if they’ve heard about Whoop’s activity tracking device and will either look at you blankly or say they couldn’t work, sleep or live without it. It’s a wearable wristband for fitness fans (professional and college athletes, CrossFitters and weekend warriors) and stands out for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, the only way to get a Whoop to be brought in is to pay a monthly or annual subscription fee. And two, one of its tent features is that it tells users how much physical stress they can endure on a given day.
You may not think this business model will be worth $ 3.6 billion. But some investors — and an unsubscribed number of subscribers — seem to think Whoop is a big whoop. Now, the Boston company is expanding its product line and putting on “smart” clothing: the Whoop module that is normally worn on the wrist has been redesigned so that it can also be connected to the brand’s sportswear. Whoop. The new Whoop, which the company has dubbed Whoop 4.0, is also the first consumer product on the market to ship with a new type of supercharged silicon lithium battery.
“Smart clothing” has struggled to gain strength before, and when it comes to wrist-specific clothing, Apple dominates that market. But Whoop believes that its combination of continuous health surveillance and new “Any-Wear” technology, which will supposedly determine where you carry the Whoop and adjust tracking data accordingly, will differentiate it into a sea of tracking technology.
“We have long felt that portable technology should be fresh or invisible. These are the only two paradigms we want to develop, “says Will Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of Whoop. get dressed. But “invisible” is, “How do we make it disappear?”
Buyers may also notice that their dollars disappear when they bill a $ 24 monthly subscription to Whoop’s physical tracking software platform — hardware included — and the cost of Whoop’s new clothing, which includes boxers. $ 69, a $ 79 sports bra and $ 109 leggings. But serious athletes who are used to paying the highest price for fitness clothing may not suffer an eye for these costs. (And if they took a look, Whoop would definitely keep an eye on it).
Track Star
The new Whoop fitness tracker can be worn with a band on the wrist as before or can be slipped into one of the company’s new workout garments, such as these leggings.
Photography: WHOOPWhoop tracks heart rate variability, resting heart rate, respiratory rate, and sleep. The new Whoop 4.0 sensor module still tracks all of the above, but is 33 percent smaller than the third-generation Whoop, Ahmed says. This is partly what makes the Whoop clothing line possible: the device had to be small enough to fit comfortably in clothing pockets. It must also be well-fitted to the skin, so that there is a “good fit between the sensor and the skin” and accurate data can be captured, says John Capodilupo, another co-founder and head of technology at the company.