Asics — Company History

Financial history 1966–2025 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded
1949
Head office
Kobe, Hyogo, Japan
Listed
1964 · TYO: 7936
Founder
Onitsuka Kihachiro
Former names
Onitsuka Shokai (1949) · Onitsuka Co. (1949–1977, shoes sold as Onitsuka Tiger)
Revenue · FYE Mar 2025
$5.4B (¥811bn)
Net profit · FYE Mar 2025
$659.5M (¥99bn)
Asics: long-term performance & turning pointsSales (revenue) and profit-margin ratio
Sales (¥ bn)Net margin (%)

1949Twenty-eight years from a Kobe trading shop to Onitsuka Tiger and Asics

Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY1966 · unconsolidated
Revenue$3M
Net income$0K
Net margin0%
FY1977 · unconsolidated
Revenue$54M
Net income$2M
Net margin2.9%
  1. 1949Onitsuka Kihachiro starts Onitsuka Shokai in Kobe in March
  2. 1949Onitsuka Co. incorporated in September; production and sale of basketball and other sports shoes begins
  3. 1953Own factory, the Tiger Rubber Works, opens in Kobe
  4. 1955Tokyo Onitsuka set up as the sales base for Kanto and Tohoku
  5. 1956Company shoes worn at the Melbourne Olympics and other international meets
  6. 1957Tiger Rubber Works reorganised into Onitsuka Co., Ltd.
  7. 1958Onitsuka Co. and Tokyo Onitsuka absorbed; capital reaches $23,056 (¥8m)
  8. 1963Chuo Sangyo absorbs Onitsuka and immediately takes the Onitsuka name
  9. 1964Listed on the Kobe Stock Exchange in February, Osaka second section in April
  10. 1969Tottori Onitsuka — later Sanin Asics Industry — set up as a shoe plant
  11. 1972Listed on the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  12. 1974Designated to the first sections of the Tokyo and Osaka exchanges
  13. 1975Onitsuka Tiger GmbH — later Asics Deutschland — opens Europe
  14. 1977Renamed Asics; merger with Jiitio and Jelenk brings seven plants and Jelenk U.S.A.

Asics begins with a man who knew nothing about shoes deciding that sport was the way to keep the orphaned young of a burnt-out Kobe from going wrong, and building a company to supply it. In twenty-eight years the rubber-footwear wholesaler became Japan's largest maker of sports shoes and a first-section listing — sales grew from $3.1M (¥1bn) in 1966 to $54.1M (¥14bn) in 1977 — and then gave up the founder's own surname, merging with two rivals and taking a Latin motto as its name.

Betting on sports shoes alone in the Kobe of the post-war recovery

The origin is March 1949, when Onitsuka Kihachiro started Onitsuka Shokai 鬼塚商会 as a sole proprietorship wholesaling rubber footwear at Yamamotodori in the Ikuta ward of Kobe. In September of the same year the business was reorganised as Onitsuka Co. 鬼塚株式会社 of Kobe, at first a distribution wholesaler of rubber footwear and of bicycle tyres and tubes, and an appointed agency for the Hyogo Prefectural Police Headquarters. But Onitsuka held the conviction that the raising of post-war youth lies in the flourishing of sport, and in 1950 the firm shed that trade to become a specialist maker of sports shoes, beginning research into basketball shoes and other sport-specific footwear. When rubber came off the controlled-goods list in 1951 it moved into manufacture and sale in earnest, widening its channel to sporting-goods stores across western Japan. It set out small — capital of $833 (¥300,000) and two employees — a local Kobe manufacturer reaching for the sports demand of the recovery years.

In May 1953 the company opened its own factory, the Tiger Rubber Works タイガーゴム工業所 in Kobe with some fifty employees, putting production in-house. In 1954 it became an appointed plant for Toyo Rayon in the footwear field and began researching and making nylon sports shoes, and in August 1955 it set up Tokyo Onitsuka 東京鬼塚株式会社 in Tokyo as a sales base for the Kanto and Tohoku regions, giving it a foothold in eastern Japan. The technical standard of the products rose with it: in 1956 the company's shoes were worn at the Melbourne Olympics and other international competitions, and in 1957 it received the Director-General's Award of the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency as a model small firm. In June of that same 1957 the Tiger Rubber Works was reorganised into Onitsuka Co., Ltd. オニツカ株式会社 as the manufacturing arm, and in July 1958 Onitsuka Co. and Tokyo Onitsuka were absorbed into Onitsuka Co., Ltd., uniting production and sales and bringing capital to $23,056 (¥8m). Nine years after its founding it had assembled the structure of a specialist shoe maker under the Onitsuka Tiger brand.

The listings of the 1960s and the diversification and globalisation of the 1970s

In February 1964 the company listed on the Kobe Stock Exchange, and in April of the same year on the second section of the Osaka Securities Exchange. By then it had grown to boast the largest share of sports footwear in Japan, its managerial distinction being high-mix, low-volume production, while running integrated manufacture for those products that could be made in quantity. On the financial side it had worked since 1964 under a three-year plan to improve its equity ratio, and expected to carry that ratio into the 40 per cent range by 1969, its twentieth anniversary. After listing on the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in May 1972, it was designated to the first sections of both the Tokyo and Osaka exchanges in June 1974. Twenty-five years from its founding to a first-section listing: a fast-listing case among the start-ups of the post-war recovery. In August 1975, to open the European market, it established Onitsuka Tiger GmbH — later Asics Deutschland GmbH — and began its European business.

In July 1977 the company changed its trade name to Asics Corporation and merged with Jiitio 株式会社ジィティオ and Jelenk ジェレンク株式会社, taking over seven sewing plants and Jelenk U.S.A., Inc. — later Asics Sports of America Inc. — among other assets. The name ASICS comes from the initials of the Latin anima sana in corpore sano — may there be a sound mind in a sound body — placing the founding philosophy of Onitsuka Kihachiro into the name of the company itself. Twenty-eight years after its founding it turned its trade name from Onitsuka to Asics and, in the same stroke, executed a three-way consolidation with rivals Jiitio, Jelenk and Jelenk U.S.A. that expanded the scale of both its manufacturing and its sales.

Read the full history in Japanese →

1977Thirty years from Onitsuka to Oyama, and the building of an international network

Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY1977 · unconsolidated
Revenue$54M
Net income$2M
Net margin2.9%
FY2015 · consolidated
Revenue$3.5B
Net income$84M
Net margin2.4%
  1. 1980Tottori Asics Industry — later Sanin Asics Industry — established
  2. 1981Asics Tiger Corporation established for the United States market
  3. 1985New head office built on Port Island, Kobe; registered office moved
  4. 1985Institute of Sport Science founded in November
  5. 1986Asics Tiger Oceania Pty. Ltd. established
  6. 1990Asics Institute of Sport Science and Human Resource Development Centre completed
  7. 1994Jiangsu Asics Co., Ltd. established in China
  8. 1994Asics Europe B.V. set up in the Netherlands as the European headquarters
  9. 1997Sales operations consolidated into Asics Hokkaido Sales and Asics Chubu Sales
  10. 2005Asics Taiwan 台湾亞瑟士運動用品股份有限公司 established
  11. 2006Asics Shanghai 愛世克私（上海）商貿有限公司 established
  12. 2007Asics Shoji, an equity-method affiliate, made a subsidiary
  13. 2010Haglöfs Holding AB of Sweden made a consolidated subsidiary
  14. 2012Asics Japan established for domestic marketing and sales
  15. 2013Japanese business split off into Asics Japan and Asics Sports Sales
  16. 2014Asics Shoji made a wholly owned subsidiary by tender offer and share exchange

With the name settled, the work of the next three decades was geography and science: subsidiary after subsidiary across Europe, North America, Oceania and South-East Asia, a Chinese plant, and an Institute of Sport Science built to make the shoes measurably better. Sales ran from $54.1M (¥14bn) in 1977 to $3.5B (¥429bn) in 2015, and the company passed from its founder through three non-family presidents to a chief executive brought in from a trading house — the succession the 1977 merger had promised.

The founder's years: overseas bases and a research arm

From the 1980s, immediately after the change of name, the company set up bases in Europe, North America, Oceania and South-East Asia in quick succession. In July 1981 it wound up Asics Sports of America Inc. and established Asics Tiger Corporation — later Asics America Corporation — as a new base for opening the United States market, completing the shift to a directly owned North American operation. In July 1985 it built a new head-office building on Port Island in Kobe and moved its registered office there, and in November of the same year set up the Institute of Sport Science to strengthen its scientific basic research. Establishing a research arm to reinforce sports science was the turning point at which technical differentiation from rivals was embedded at the level of organisation rather than of product.

Sales subsidiaries followed one after another: Australia in July 1986, France in March 1990, the Netherlands in May 1991 and Italy in June 1991, the United Kingdom in March 1992. In September 1994 the company established Jiangsu Asics Co., Ltd. 江蘇愛世克私有限公司 in China as a plant for sports shoes and sportswear, completing its acquisition of a Chinese production base. In December 1994 it set up Asics Europe B.V. in the Netherlands to put a European headquarters structure in place. The founder Onitsuka Kihachiro handed the presidency to the second president, Mihara Seiji (三原聖治), in 1992; through three non-founding-family successions — Mihara, then Takahashi Yoshiyuki (高橋義行), then Wada Kiyomi (和田清美) — and up to the handover in 2008 to the fifth president, Oyama Motoi, who came from Sojitz, the building of the international network was the central theme.

The fifth president, Oyama Motoi: global management control and entry into outdoor

In September 2007 Asics Shoji アシックス商事 and its subsidiaries, until then equity-method affiliates, were made consolidated subsidiaries, taking a trading-house function in-house. When Oyama Motoi — who had passed through Nissho Iwai, now Sojitz, before joining Asics in 1982 — became president in 2008, the strengthening of global management control and the diversification of the business both accelerated. In August 2010, to strengthen and expand the outdoor business on a global scale, the company made Haglöfs Holding AB of Sweden and its subsidiaries consolidated subsidiaries and entered the outdoor field.

In September 2012 Asics Japan アシックスジャパン株式会社 was established to strengthen domestic marketing and sales functions, beginning a reorganisation of marketing and selling in Japan. In January 2013, to sharpen global management control and product development, the global headquarters function was separated from the Japanese business: the Japanese business was split off by absorption into Asics Japan and Asics Sports Sales アシックススポーツ販売, and Asics Sports Sales, as the surviving company, merged the six regional sales companies and changed its name to Asics Sales Corporation アシックス販売株式会社. This structural separation of the global headquarters from the Japanese business secured the independence of global decision-making. In March 2014, through a tender offer and a share exchange, Asics Shoji and its subsidiaries were made wholly owned subsidiaries, completing the absorption of the trading-house function.

Read the full history in Japanese →

2016Structural reform after the losses of FY18 and FY20, and a record ¥142.5bn

Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY2016 · consolidated
Revenue$3.7B
Net income$143M
Net margin3.9%
FY2025 · consolidated
Revenue$5.4B
Net income$660M
Net margin12.2%
  1. 2016FitnessKeeper Inc. — later Asics Digital — acquired outright for DTC
  2. 2018Net loss of $183.9M (¥20bn), the first in fifteen years, on overseas impairments
  3. 2018Hirota Yasuhito becomes president and COO in March
  4. 2019Race Roster operator Fast North Corporation's business acquired
  5. 2020Pandemic year brings an operating loss of $37.5M (¥4bn)
  6. 2021Return to profit with operating profit of $199.5M (¥22bn); Registration Logic Pty Ltd acquired
  7. 2022R-bies acquired with Nippon Television Holdings; njuko SAS made a subsidiary
  8. 2023Haglöfs AB sold, ending the outdoor business
  9. 2024Tominaga Mitsuyuki becomes president and COO; $330M (¥50bn) of shares bought back
  10. 2024Operating profit passes ¥100 billion for the first time
  11. 202525 million shares retired and the ASICS Foundation established
  12. 2025Sales of $5.4B (¥811bn) and a record operating profit of $952.2M (¥143bn)

The decade opens with the company buying its way into direct-to-consumer running apps and closes with the highest profits in its history, but the line between the two runs through the bottom of a ditch: an impairment-driven net loss in 2018, a pandemic loss in 2020, and a decision to give up the outdoor business it had bought in 2010. Operating profit went from $95.1M (¥11bn) to $952.2M (¥143bn), and the margin from 2.7 per cent to 17.6 per cent.

Buying a DTC and digital platform, and the Oyama chairman-president years

In March 2016, to strengthen its direct-to-consumer strategy, Asics acquired all the shares of FitnessKeeper Inc. of the United States — later Asics Digital Inc. — making it a consolidated subsidiary. The purchase brought in ASICS Runkeeper and other running apps and digital infrastructure, and began the shift of the company's centre of gravity from shop-counter shoe sales towards DTC and digital. From that year Oyama Motoi carried the core of management as representative director, chairman, president and CEO, drawing up the long-term VISION 2030 and the Mid-Term Plan 2023 covering 2021 to 2023, and setting out a policy that put sustainability at the centre of management.

But the year to December 2018 brought consolidated sales of $3.5B (¥387bn), operating profit of $95.1M (¥11bn) and a net loss of $183.9M (¥20bn) — the first loss in fifteen years, since 2003, with an extraordinary loss of $220.1M (¥24bn) booked — as a reassessment of the overseas subsidiaries' businesses drove impairments that tipped the bottom line into the red. In March 2018 the sixth president, Hirota Yasuhito, who had joined Mitsubishi Corporation before coming to Asics in 2014, took office as representative director, president and COO, and took over the command of structural reform.

The sharp reversal from the FY20 pandemic loss under Hirota Yasuhito

In October 2019 the company took over the business of Fast North Corporation of the United States, which ran the race-registration site Race Roster, acquiring a running-digital platform. But the year to December 2020 fell into a second consecutive loss under the shock of the pandemic, with consolidated sales of $3.1B (¥329bn), an operating loss of $37.5M (¥4bn) and a net loss of $150.8M (¥16bn). Hirota, as president and COO, treated this as the bottom and concentrated his resources on focusing the business around running and on reworking the cost structure.

FY21, the year to December 2021, returned to profit with operating profit of $199.5M (¥22bn); then came $258.8M (¥34bn) in FY22, $385.7M (¥54bn) in FY23, $660.7M (¥100bn) in FY24 — the first time it passed ¥100 billion — and $952.2M (¥143bn) in FY25, a record renewed for four consecutive years. The operating margin improved 14.9 points from its floor of 2.7 per cent in FY18 to 17.6 per cent in FY25, reversing the company's performance out of the back-to-back losses of FY18 and FY20. In parallel, in August 2022 Asics acquired, jointly with Nippon Television Holdings, the shares of R-bies Inc. 株式会社アールビーズ, a major operator of marathon events, making it a consolidated subsidiary and gaining the running community in Japan. In December 2023 it executed the sale of its shares in Haglöfs AB, withdrawing from the outdoor business and completing the concentration of resources on running and the core business.

The two-headed structure of chairman Hirota and president Tominaga, and a foundation as capital policy

In January 2024 Hirota Yasuhito moved to representative director, chairman and CEO, and Tominaga Mitsuyuki — born in 1962, from the New York office of Accenture, formerly Andersen Consulting — took office as the seventh president and COO. He was the first Asics president to come from a foreign consulting firm, and a two-headed structure was formed in which Tominaga held the execution of the business and Hirota the long-term direction. Two buybacks, in February and August 2024, repurchased $330M (¥50bn) of the company's own shares, and the equity ratio rose 1.4 percentage points.

In February 2025 the board resolved on a further buyback of up to $133.6M (¥20bn) and up to 7 million shares, and on the retirement of 25 million shares — 3.29 per cent of shares outstanding — while at the same time establishing the ASICS Foundation 一般財団法人ASICS Foundation, to which roughly 0.98 per cent of the treasury stock was allocated under a trust, with the voting rights not exercised, so that dividend income would be applied to social support for young people, people with disabilities, women and others. Recasting the long-term structure of shareholder return while dispelling the suspicion that this was a takeover defence is what marks the company's capital allocation under an ownership structure dominated by institutional investors. In FY25, the year to December 2025, consolidated sales grew to $5.4B (¥811bn) with operating profit of $952.2M (¥143bn) and an operating margin of 17.6 per cent, leaving a 76-year-old sports maker standing where it must assemble the business base of its next decade under a vision of transformation into a Global Integrated Enterprise.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Key decisions — the author’s view

The turning points, read in full: what was at stake, what was chosen and what the revenue did around it. The Japanese edition is the edition of record and carries the sourced dossier behind each decision — background, options weighed, outcome — linked under every decision.

Key decision · 1949

Betting on sports shoes alone in a burnt-out Kobe: the founding of Onitsuka Shokai (1949)

The origin of a view of management that holds private desire down and treats the company as a public instrument

The core of this founding can be seen to lie less in the ingenuity of the idea that produced a good product than in the way Onitsuka conducted himself as the man running the business. He drew a hard line between the household accounts and the company's books, put his wife in charge of catering at the employee dormitory, and held his own household income down to a monthly salary of ¥10,000. Taking as his negative model the previous employer that had treated its company as private property, and beginning his business by incorporating precisely in order to keep the public and the private apart, was something other than the road travelled by the post-war profiteers. The motive of raising the young, and the discipline of holding personal desire down, appear to have been bound inseparably together from the very start.

In the fourth and again in the seventh year after founding, Onitsuka collapsed with pulmonary tuberculosis, and at the edge of death survived on the devotion of his young employees. Out of the view of human nature he took from that experience, he marked the company's tenth year by dividing seventy per cent of the Onitsuka family's shareholding among the staff, and came in time to say that a company is not the private property of its manager; it is a public instrument. Not to build a single generation's fortune on one man's commercial gift, but to leave behind the company as a body of people who could be entrusted with a purpose — the story that begins with a single racing shoe born from the suckers of an octopus is carried on into the name Asics, which crowns it with the initials of the Latin for "may there be a sound mind in a sound body". How that origin is passed to the next generation remains a question the company still faces, having cut off the hereditary succession of its founding family.

This decision in Japanese — the full sourced dossier →

Revenue (¥ bn) · net margin % · around FY1977

Key decision · 1977

The three-way merger of Onitsuka, Jiitio and Jelenk that created Asics (1977)

A merger made possible by severing hereditary succession

The core of this reorganisation can be seen to lie less in the addition of businesses than in what the founder offered up in order to make a merger of equals possible: the renunciation of hereditary succession. When three owners come together in a merger, fights break out easily over whose son will take over and which company will hold the initiative. Onitsuka replaced that tinder, at the very entrance to the merger, with a promise to "break out of the family firm". That he was himself a founder and was the first to be seen surrendering the privileges of his own family is what appears to have given this merger its power to persuade.

Taking the founder's surname Onitsuka out of the company name, and entrusting a view of sport as the raising of the young to the initials of a Latin phrase, lay along the same line of thought. The doubling of scale after the merger shows that the three businesses did genuinely complement one another. Whether a merger that raised the banner of breaking with family control led in a straight line to the later successions by non-founding-family managers, and to the recent appointment of professional executives, is for the years that followed to answer. Asics placed the question of how to reconcile a founding family's succession with a merger of equals at the centre of its management from the moment it came into being.

This decision in Japanese — the full sourced dossier →

Written & translated by Yutaka Sugiura

References & sources

This English edition follows the Japanese one chapter by chapter. The Japanese edition remains the edition of record: it carries the source-by-source citations, the financial tables and the shareholder and executive records. 日本語版（詳細）— Asics full history in Japanese →

  1. Asics Corporation — 有価証券報告書 (annual securities reports), including the 沿革 corporate-history section and the consolidated filings for FY2018, FY2020 and FY2025.
  2. Asics Corporation — investor-relations disclosures: the VISION 2030 long-term vision, the Mid-Term Plan 2023 and Mid-Term Plan 2026, quarterly results presentations, and the board resolutions of February 2025 on the share buyback, the retirement of 25 million shares and the establishment of the ASICS Foundation.
  3. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968), the Onitsuka entry, on the founding, the move into sports shoes and the equity-ratio plan of the 1960s.

Yen amounts are converted at the average rate of each figure’s own year — not today’s rate; revenue charts are shown in yen. Exchange rates & sources — the full ¥/US$ table →

Data API

Asics’s history, financials, executives and shareholders are published as static JSON — no key, plain GET. Full specification →

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