CEO Corner: Outside’s Robin Thurston on the Business of Getting People Moving

As the leader of a sprawling active lifestyle company, Robin Thurston is on a mission to get more people moving, preferably in Mother Nature

Founded by entrepreneur Robin Thurston and rebranded in 2021, Outside Interactive has quickly become one of the biggest companies across the fitness, sports and recreation industries, with a sprawling portfolio that spans magazines, digital apps and booking software. 

Operating as an outdoor and active lifestyle company, Outside Interactive owns major properties including Outside Magazine, Warren Miller Entertainment and MapMyFitness, among many other brands. 

As founder and CEO, Thurston’s vision for Outside is rather simple: become the place outdoor enthusiasts go for all their needs, whether that’s an article on the best skiing destinations, an app that tracks bike rides or a platform that helps them book a vacation getaway. He also wants Outside to play a leading role in getting more people moving, preferably outdoors in Mother Nature. 

Thurston sat down with Athletech News to shed light on Outside’s strategic vision, share his thoughts on the rise of experiential fitness and wellness events and break down key trends.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and the process of creating Outside Interactive?

Robin Thurston: This is my third startup. MapMyFitness – which we reacquired from Under Armour in September – was the first business I started after I got out of the finance world back in 2005. When we sold that to Under Armour (in 2013), we rolled up several other companies into Under Armour, including MyFitnessPal and Endomondo. We had this vision of helping you perform better 24/7, 365.

Part of the reason I left Under Armour was because I wanted Under Armour to build a bigger subscription business around content, sort of like a Red Bull Media House. Unfortunately, at the time, the core business was struggling – this was in 2016 after I’d been there three years. I then joined a company in California in the consumer genetics space. I didn’t love healthcare – I was sort of disillusioned about how hard it was to get anything done. 

I wanted to get back into the active lifestyle/outdoor space. The first company I bought was Pocket Outdoor Media, which owned magazines like Triathlete, Velo and Women’s Running. We then bought a few other assets including Ski Magazine, Backpacker Magazine and Warren Miller Entertainment. I then had the chance to buy Outside. I felt like that was the best brand name in the category, and in February 2021, we rebranded the company to Outside Interactive. 

ATN: Outside Interactive owns properties in media, digital mapping apps and booking software. How do you explain the company’s mission?

Robin Thurston: Our mission has been very clear from the beginning: we want to get more people outdoors. As a company, everything we do is to get you to spend more time being outdoors and being active. We do that through inspiration, activation and celebration.

We want to inspire you through our content, and then take you into activation. If you go see a Warren Miller film in the theater, it’s a great experience. But that’s not what I really care about. What I really care about is how many days you’re going to go skiing after you watch that movie, because our entire ecosystem benefits. Then, ultimately, how do you celebrate that through photos and engagement with other users? 

ATN: Outside recently acquired MapMyFitness and Inntopia, a travel booking platform. What’s your strategy behind those acquisitions? 

RT: Everything we look at is in one of the three buckets I mentioned: inspiration, activation and celebration. A lot of the content we’ve acquired is helping inspire people. But is it helping people actually activate? If you look at MapMyFitness, it’s a clear line – you download the app, search for a route and you go do it, whether it’s bike riding, running or skiing. A lot of our applications, including Map My Fitness, also have a celebratory aspect, where you actually post that activity. That gives you an acknowledgment that what you just did is valuable, and therefore you might do it again. 

Inntopia also helps us move you from inspiration into activation. When you decide to book with Innopia – say you go to Vale to do a big ski vacation, a whole bunch of things happen around that: you start doing gear research, you look up tips on how to ski better, you might look at other activities to do while you’re there on the ground. If I write an article about the top five key destinations in America, I want to take you directly from that article to booking a vacation.

It’s also important for our business that MapMyFitness is an all-subscription business, so it’s recurring annual subscription revenue. Inntopia is a pure SaaS platform, so there’s 100% client retention. Those are very good businesses for us not only to diversify our revenue mix but also create stability over time.

ATN: As someone with a vested interest in getting people outside, how do you view the fitness industry, particularly indoor gyms and studios?

RT: They’re very symbiotic. I’m aware in the fitness space that there are people who just work out indoors; they go to the gym five days a week and that’s all they do. But most customers (do both). I’ve got a Zwift indoor bike in my home office, and we have a gym in the basement.  I ride outdoors 200 days a year but I ride indoors probably 80 or 90 days, and I lift two days a week. So for us, understanding indoor activities is important as we help guide you in a journey where you potentially spend more time outdoors. That’s why we integrate with hundreds of devices including Garmin, Oura, Peloton and Zwift. 

ATN: What are the biggest trends driving fitness, health and wellness today? 

RT:  The core of what I see happening is that we’re moving from a purchasing world to an experience world. Instead of buying more stuff, people are going to take more trips.  I was talking to one of our partners in triathlon – they’re thinking about creating this sort of festival around the triathlon, I think we’re going to see a lot more around that where people take part in these very competitive, indoor/outdoor adventures, like a Hyrox, but you’re also going to see more people planning experiences around these events. We have the Outside Festival, for example. 

I am also bullish on what I call the general health and wellness friend. My 14-year-old daughter is way more aware of health and wellness than I was at 14, even though I was already on the national team for cycling. I also believe that GPL-1s are a big boon for all of our industries, because when somebody loses 10 pounds, they’re more likely to move in general, whatever that is. It could be walking, it could be lifting.

ATN: What are your short and long-term goals for the future of Outside Interactive?

RT: We launched our own social platform in the fall. So in the short term, I’m excited about the rollout of that platform – we now allow you to post user-generated content, interact with other users and interact with different authors and brands.

In the long term, my view is there are some very concerning health trends. Here’s a stat that blows my mind: the average kid under 13 in the United States is getting less time outdoors daily than somebody who is incarcerated. That’s not a good trend. I hope we can plug that dam as long as possible and reverse it at some level to get more people thinking about the outdoors. 

To hear more insights from Robin Thurston, check out his recent appearance on the ATN Unscripted podcast.