Pocket Outdoor Media

Market position

The company describes itself as the leading creator of active lifestyle content and experiences, and press coverage characterizes it as the dominant player in outdoors media, with a platform spanning television, mobile, desktop and print. Its stated reach grew from over 15 million monthly consumers in 2020 to 70 million at the time of the February 2021 rebrand, with the company site citing more than 80 million monthly reach, 25 brands and 28 million social followers.

The company assembled a portfolio of long-established outdoor, endurance, fitness and wellness titles and paired them with technology assets—mapping and navigation apps, event registration, event photography and online education—unified by a personalization platform and a single cross-brand subscription, giving it distribution across print, web, podcast, social, mobile and television simultaneously.

Technology

The company built a content technology platform that unifies, personalizes and syndicates content across its brands, including a personalized newsfeed and membership experience. Through acquisitions it added mobile mapping and navigation apps (Gaia GPS, Trailforks), the athleteReg event registration platform and app, the FinisherPix event photography service, the Fastest Known Time record-tracking site, and the Stomp Sessions online action-sports tutorial platform.

Go-to-market

Growth has been driven primarily by acquisition and consolidation of established outdoor, endurance, fitness and wellness brands, combined with cross-brand bundling into a single subscription (Active Pass, then Outside+), distribution across cable, satellite and over-the-top TV as well as web, print, podcast and social channels, and performance-driven marketing partnerships and case-study campaigns for advertisers.

Active lifestyle consumers including runners, cyclists, triathletes, skiers, climbers, backpackers, mountain bikers and yoga and healthy-eating enthusiasts, plus advertisers and marketing partners in the outdoor, fitness and wellness industries, and trade audiences served by titles such as Bicycle Retailer & Industry News and Outside Business Journal.

Geography

Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. In 2020 it also had offices in San Diego, California and Toronto, Canada. As of 2021 offices included Carbondale and Denver, Colorado; Easthampton, Massachusetts; Frankfurt, Germany; Melbourne, Australia; New York City; Ojai, San Diego and San Francisco, California; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Squamish, British Columbia; and Toronto, Ontario.

History

Operating as Pocket Outdoor Media, the company acquired the event production company Roll Massif shortly before announcing, on June 30, 2020, the acquisition of three divisions of Active Interest Media alongside the close of its Series A financing. It purchased Big Stone Publishing in October 2020 and FinisherPix and Paleo magazine in November 2020. On February 22, 2021 it announced the closing of acquisitions of Outside Integrated Media, Outside TV, Gaia GPS, athleteReg and Peloton magazine, funded by a Series B round, and renamed itself Outside. Additional acquisitions followed: Cairn (renamed Outside Shop) in April 2021, Pinkbike, CyclingTips and Trailforks in July 2021, Inkwell Media and Roam Media in November 2021, Fastest Known Time in March 2022 and Stomp Sessions in October 2022. It shut down PodiumRunner in March 2022 and sold IDEA Health and Fitness Association to its CEO in April 2022.

Risks & controversies

The company has grown largely through rapid, debt- or capital-funded acquisitions of legacy print media brands and must integrate numerous separate businesses and locations. Some acquisitions carried regulatory conditions—the Outside TV transaction was subject to FCC approval of certain license transfers—and portions of the portfolio have since been shut down (PodiumRunner) or divested (IDEA Health and Fitness Association).