Q: How has Xrunner sustained where so many others have failed?
A: It’s impossible to comment on each company individually as there have been various different reasons for each enterprise. When OCR was born, it became very popular very quickly overtaking triathlons as the most rapidly expanding sport in popularity.
Over the last few years dozens and dozens of new events sprang up and then more recently we have seen dozens shut down. We’ve lost a lot of smaller ones and some really great ones too, Warrior Dash, Survival of the Fittest, Furlong Fury, Rock Solid Races, Vision Wild Run (a lesson for those who piggy back event names perhaps?), Suffering Races, Judgement Day to name a few and now Tough Mudder Canada and possibly Tough Mudder globally!
People think it is easy to run an event like this but it’s not easy at all. They say it takes 10 years to master a skill and I would agree as we learn something new every event we host. It is a mistake to assume that because you enjoy something as a customer, you will be master it as an organiser.
We started with a budget of zero and a lot of help from friends and family, the business has been self funding, we have never borrowed money, so we have no creditors and no debt, we reinvested every penny and didn’t take an income from the business for the first four years. We reinvented the brand in 2015 to keep it fresh and we are constantly analysing our data, customer feed back, financials, the competition, everything we can to ensure we offer what our customers want and that we stay in business.
x-runner