Millions of people wore Huami's products without knowing its name. The company from Hefei, in central China, was Xiaomi's sole partner for designing and making the Mi Band, a fitness tracker that sold for a small fraction of the price of a Fitbit. When Huami went public in February 2018, it was one of the largest wearable makers in the world. It also wanted shoppers to know its own brand, Amazfit.

Riding on Xiaomi

Wang Huang founded Huami in 2013 and held 45.8 percent of the company before the IPO. Huami built Xiaomi-branded bands, watches and scales, and it collected heart rate, sleep and step data from a huge base of users. The bet was that low prices and Xiaomi's reach would win the mass market, and that the data and know-how would let Huami launch its own watches and health services.

A Small Gain on a Bad Day

Huami priced its ADSs at $11 in February 2018 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as HMI. On a day when the major indexes fell about 4 percent, the stock closed its first day up 2.3 percent. In 2021 the company renamed itself Zepp Health and changed its ticker to ZEPP, putting its own Amazfit watches at the center of the business. It remains listed on the NYSE.

Cover: The Races, Édouard Manet. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for racing horses (tracking every stride).