Garmin brand continues to grow with Cochrane, Alta., roots

Fitness watches, bike computers, GPS devices for boats and even trackers to monitor horses’ health are produced at Garmin Canada HQ in Cochrane.

Garmin Canada’s headquarters in Cochrane, Alta., west of Calgary, continues to grow with new innovations.

“We have a great community here,” said Garmin Canada managing director Jim Rooney.

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Twenty-seven years ago, he and three other engineers founded Dynastream Innovations, a company that created a device measuring how fast someone could run and how far they could go.

Before the fitness innovations came along, Rooney says in order to find out your distance travelled, you would have to drive your car and monitor the odometer, then run that same route.

He describes the company’s first innovation, a running foot pod, which took sensors made for airbags, integrating them into a little pod for running shoes that communicated to a person watch, allowing the runner to track how far and fast they ran.

That product lead to Nike being their first customer.

“We had to figure out how to move it from the back of the shoe to the front of the shoe,” said Rooney. “We realized, hey, maybe this, this is something that really could go somewhere and we ended up starting a company out of it.”

From there the 32-year-old computer science engineer’s business has gone on its own marathon.

In 2006 Dynastream was acquired by Garmin but continued operating under the Dynastream name until 2018 while supporting Garmin projects while also managing the business-to-business Dynastream was built on.

In 2018 the Cochrane location became the official Canadian headquarters, and Jim Rooney assumed the role of managing director for Garmin Canada.

From the evolution of that first foot pod, the company has branched out and now makes cycling products, along with heart rate monitors and smart watches helping making its mark in the fitness industry.

Garmin Canada has also tapped into the marine segment of the market with recent engineering contributions to Garmin trolling motors.

Most of the 290 people working for Garmin Canada are based out of the Cochrane headquarters.

“Where I am standing here, is I believe the seventh building we have been in here in Cochrane,” Rooney said.

In 2024, it added a third floor to its headquarters to help with the increase in staffing.

In four of the past five years the company has grown by 18 per cent or more each year.

Residents in the community are also able to test products which Garmin’s product performance team manages.

Meredith Root is a cyclist and brand ambassador for the company and has used their watches to track her progress.

“Having access to some of the more advanced, like adventure watch features on, a slightly lighter and sleeker platform has been really handy for, for maps, for performance,” said Root.

According to Longbow Research, fitness wearables has began to resonate more with consumers over the past five years.

“The fitness wearables market now is being valued at around $60-70 billion,” said Longbow Research senior analyst David MacGregor. “It’s growing at about a high teens to low twenties percent annual rate.”

MacGregor says Garmin is a smaller player in the highly fragmented market, but points to its strong products and trusted brand allowing its growth to outpace the market.

“They have a lot of innovation ready to come to market over the next couple of years,” said MacGregor.

“What they’re very good at is staying very close to their users and their customers and then incorporating that interest back into the product design.”

One innovation he points to is Garmin’s equine Blaze product, which attaches to a horse’s tail while the sensor gives insight into a horse’s health and fitness.

“It actually took some of the heart rate technology that we developed here,” said Rooney.

“I think there will be somebody with it at the Stampede.”

The product was first unveiled in August and is priced at $839.