Asics began as
Onitsuka Co., Ltd. on January 1, 1949. Founder began manufacturing basketball shoes in his hometown of Kobe in
Hyōgo Prefecture. The range of sports activities serviced by the company expanded to a variety of Olympic styles used since the 1950s by athletes worldwide. Onitsuka became particularly known for the
Mexico 66 design, in which the distinctive crossed stripes (now synonymous with the company as the
Tiger Stripes) were featured for the first time; martial artist
Bruce Lee helped popularize the shoe. Onitsuka Tiger merged with fishing and
sporting goods company GTO and athletic uniform maker Jelenk to form ASICS Corporation in 1977; In 2015, Asics launched its
Asics Tiger lifestyle brand to market sportswear inspired by the company's designs of the 1970s to 1990s. Asics bought the Swedish
outdoor brand
Haglöfs for ($128.7 million) on July 12, 2010. In February 2016, Asics acquired the fitness app
Runkeeper. LionRock Capital Limited acquired a 100% interest in Haglöfs from Asics on December 18, 2023. Asics generated in
net sales and in net income in fiscal year 2023. 50% of the company's income came from the sale of performance running shoes, 33% from other shoes, 6% from apparel and equipment, and 11% from Onitsuka Tiger. 16% of the company's sales were in Japan, 21% in North America, 27% in Europe, 14% in China and 21% in other regions. In January 2016, the operator of Asics stores in the US, Windsor Financial Group LLC, filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid an ongoing dispute with the Asics company. In March 2021, Asics launched
Unoha (ウノハ), a brand geared towards women. The brand mainly sells its products online and does not use physical locations other than
temporary pop-ups that appear around Japan. Apart from being a female-focused clothing brand, it also pledged to use
organic and environmentally-friendly materials in its products. Unoha's first
brand ambassador was
Harumi Sato. On July 1, 2024, Asics announced that it had discontinued the brand the previous month after only 3 years of existence.
Relationship with Nike Nike, Inc. (originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports) was founded to sell Onitsuka Tiger shoes in the U.S. When
Phil Knight visited Japan in 1963, shortly after graduating from
Stanford University, he was impressed by the company's shoes, and immediately visited the Onitsuka Tiger office and asked to be their U.S. sales agent. After a number of years, the relationship crumbled and both companies sued each other, with Nike retaining the naming rights to several shoes. ==Sponsorships==