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History
IPICO Sports was launched in March 2007 through a distributorship agreement between the Mercury Sports Group of Peoria, Ill., and IPICO Inc.
Mercury’s founders are members of the Illinois Valley Striders, a Peoria-based running club. In 2001, the club considered buying a chip timing system for the events it produces—more than 100 events annually, including a Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure with 25,000 participants; the Steamboat Classic, a large international event; and the Illinois State High School Cross Country Championships. The club also hosts other collegiate and high school invitational and championship events as well as a variety of smaller events.
Initial inquiries to a large chip timing company were ignored; when a response finally came, the club experienced both "sticker shock" and "complexity shock." The systems were too expensive and too complicated. As Chief Technology Officer Philip Lockwood began looking to an alternative using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, he found the unique dual frequency technology developed by IPICO Holdings in South Africa.
In March 2007, IPICO Inc. and Mercury Sports Group Inc. entered into an exclusive distributor relationship. As part of this agreement, Mercury conducts all business under the brand "IPICO Sports," positioning the company to take a leading role in providing system level solutions to the global sports market.
Using their decades of sports management experience, Mercury founders took this world-leading technology and launched a turnkey tracking and timing solution that is more accurate, more reliable, less expensive and easier to use than other systems. |
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