New CEO Working to Build Ironman Into a Lifestyle Brand
Collaborations with luxury brands? A branded hotel? A luxury training vacation?
For Scott DeRue, chief executive officer of the Ironman Group, anything is possible.
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That expression is also the motto of the sports company that organizes 225 events in 54 countries across the sports of triathlon, road running, trail running, road cycling and mountain biking. Its marquee event is the Ironman triathlon, a grueling race that consists of a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike and a 26.2-mile run.
About 10 months ago, the Ironman Group, which is owned by Advance, the privately held family-owned company behind Condé Nast and American City Business Journals, poached Equinox president DeRue to become its CEO. Since taking on the role, DeRue has immersed himself in the world of Ironman, even partaking in a half-Ironman race, called an Ironman 70.3 to indicate the total distance traveled by the athletes, in Wilmington, N.C., last month.
DeRue, a dedicated endurance athlete who has competed in ultramarathons and summited Everest, Denali and Kilimanjaro, among others, said the North Carolina race was his first triathlon. And like many other participants, he’s now hooked. He completed the 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike and 13.1-mile run in a highly respective time of 5:45.
“I had a blast,” he said. “I found out I can’t swim in a straight line, but I finished with a smile on my face. And I saw firsthand how engaged the community is. There are not many brands that people tattoo on their bodies.”
That passion is what DeRue intends to capitalize on as he lays out his strategy to grow the Ironman brand.
“The last 10 months have been incredibly inspiring to me,” he said. “There’s a highly engaged and passionate community built around our sport.”
While his primary goal is to better serve the athletes that compete at his races, that reach can be much wider, he believes.
Right now, Ironman has deals with performance brands including Roka, best known for its wetsuits and eyewear; Hoka, a favorite running shoe of endurance athletes; Santini, which manufactures its race kits; Lululemon, which makes Ironman-branded training apparel, and Timex, which has a long history making watches sporting the Ironman name. Starting next year, Zoot Sports will become the exclusive triathlon and cycling apparel partner for all owned Ironman and Ironman 70.3 events globally.
But DeRue sees opportunity to further increase the reach.
He pointed to the watch category as an example. While Timex has been making Ironman watches since 1986, Ironman made a deal with the luxury Swiss watchmaker Breitling in 2019 to create co-branded timepieces pegged to its World Championship events. While a Timex watch can cost under $100, a Breitling timepiece can easily retail for around $4,000.
At the Ironman women’s World Championship race in Nice, France, in September, DeRue said the company held an activation at the Breitling store there that was well-attended. “This has elevated the Ironman brand to a new level,” he said. “Breitling focuses on world-championship events and they sell out quickly. We’re extraordinarily happy with the brands we’ve curated for our community, but we’re always exploring what’s new and on the horizon, and looking for new verticals.”
That can include apparel. “We want the right performance wear, but we also want to build our ecosystem through fashion. That’s going to be a major investment for us this year.”
He said his primary focus is to “put the athlete at the center of everything we do.” That includes not only race days and race weekends, but “every day in between. It’s not only about a great swim, a great bike and a great run, but all the other touch points.”
In the men’s World Championship race in Kona, Hawaii, in October, DeRue said Ironman “enriched” the race experience by partnering with the local community to bring the Hawaiian culture to life. The company also worked with AG1, a health drink, to sponsor the coffee boat that is docked in Kailua Bay where participants and others swim out for a cup during their morning workouts.
“That’s just one of the iconic moments,” DeRue said. Experiences such as these, he said, allow the Ironman community to experience more than just a race course.
Because training for an Ironman is a months-long process, the company lines up partners such as TriDot, a triathlon training company, and Precision Fuel and Hydration, which offers personalized nutrition, and has also made a “big investment” by elevating the bags, T-shirts and medals that the participants receive as swag. “We’ve received extraordinary feedback around the elevated quality and design,” he said.
DeRue is also not opposed to following the lead of his former employer, Equinox, which has “done a great job elevating the brand beyond the gym,” he said. “They think of it as a luxury experience and they build a sense of community and connection. The same is true with Ironman.”
There is an Equinox hotel, high-end partnerships with other brands in fashion, travel, nutrition and entertainment such as the StockX resale site, the Bezel concierge service, the Oura smart ring, and others.
So while Ironman may not open a branded hotel in the near term, it already works with Club La Santa, an active holiday resort in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, to sponsor the race it holds there every spring.
“The resort caters to endurance athletes and many people go there even when they’re not racing,” he said. “That’s a good example of what could be.”
While DeRue works to extend the Ironman reach, he better continue his triathlon training. He said the company is auctioning off a relay spot for the Ironman Lake Placid next July where he and former champion Michellie Jones will compete with the auction winner. And it’ll be up to the auction winner to decide which sport DeRue will do, which means it could be the swim, so he’s got eight months to work on his open-water sighting skills.
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