KingSmith: the maker of the WalkingPad rethinks how a home holds a gym

KingSmith presents itself as the creator and inventor of the WalkingPad, the folding treadmill that turned a strip of floor into a walking lane and then let it disappear again. The company says it has been active continuously since 2016, building outward from that first idea into rowers, exercise bikes and strength equipment meant for the home rather than the gym. It is a narrow premise — equipment that works hard and then takes up almost no space — but it is the premise the whole catalogue is built on.

Where it began

The starting point, according to the brand, was the WalkingPad itself: a treadmill conceived to fold down small enough to slide under a desk or against a wall. KingSmith does not present this as a side project or a variation on an existing machine — it describes itself as the inventor of the format. From there, the company says its activity has continued without interruption since 2016, expanding what began as a single folding treadmill into a broader line of home fitness equipment built around the same principle of disappearing when not in use.

What they build

The range KingSmith describes covers three main families: folding treadmills, water rowers and strength equipment, all designed for domestic settings rather than commercial gyms. Recent additions sketch out how that range has grown. The WalkingPad Z3 Just Walk, a folding treadmill, went live in March. The same month brought the W1B, a folding exercise bike. A little later came the WR20, a tri-fold water rower that the brand presents with a reinforced resistance system. Together, these three recent launches give a sense of a company still filling out its own format — treadmill, bike, rower — with each new model folding down along the same logic as the first.

Craft and recognition

KingSmith attributes the design of its folding treadmills to a search for original form combined with space-saving folding technology, and it says that combination has been recognised externally. The brand claims the Red Dot Design Award for both 2019 and 2022, and the iF Design Award for the same two years. It links these to the treadmills’ design, finish and folding mechanism specifically — the part of the product that has to work smoothly and repeatedly for the equipment to earn its place in a small flat or a shared room.

What the brand stands for

KingSmith frames its products around a fairly narrow but consistent idea: equipment built for people who do not have a spare room to dedicate to fitness. It backs this with a standard promise across its range — a one-year warranty, with the option to extend it — which suggests a brand expecting its machines to be used repeatedly over time rather than occasionally. Everything else the brand says about itself, from the awards to the folding mechanisms, points back to that same practical constraint: fitness equipment has to fit into daily life, not the other way around.

Right now

The past months have been active ones for the brand. The WR20 tri-fold water rower, with what KingSmith describes as a reinforced resistance system, went live in June 2025. Shortly before that, in March 2025, the company launched both the WalkingPad Z3 Just Walk treadmill and the W1B folding exercise bike, rounding out its three core categories with fresh models within the space of a few months. The O!deal team met KingSmith at IFA Berlin 2026.