It all started with a simple plan to make a superior T-shirt. As special teams captain during the mid-1990s for the University of Maryland football team, Kevin Plank hated having to repeatedly change the cotton T-shirt he wore under his jersey as it became wet and heavy during the course of a game.112 He knew there had to be a better alternative and set out to make it. After a year of fabric and product testing, Plank introduced the first Under Armour compression product—a synthetic shirt worn like a second skin under a uniform or jersey. And it was an immediate hit! The silky fabric was light and made athletes feel faster and fresher, giving them, according to Plank, an important psychological edge. Today, Under Armour continues to passionately strive to make all athletes better by relentlessly pursuing innovation and design. A telling sign of the company’s philosophy is found over the door of its product design studios: “We have not yet built our defining product.” Today, Baltimore-based Under Armour (UA) is a $4.9 billion company. In 20 years, it has grown from a college start-up to a “formidable competitor of the Beaverton, Oregon, behemoth” (better known as Nike, a $32 billion company). The company has nearly 3 percent of the fragmented U.S. sports apparel market and sells products from shirts, shorts, and cleats to underwear. In addition, more than 100 universities wear UA uniforms. The company’s logo—an interlocking U and A—is becoming almost as recognizable as the Nike swoosh. Starting out, Plank sold his shirts using the only advantage he had—his athletic connections. “Among his teams from high school, military school, and the University of Maryland, he knew at least 40 NFL players well enough to call and offer them the shirt.” He was soon joined by another Maryland player, Kip Fulks, who played lacrosse. Fulks used the same “six-degrees strategy” in the lacrosse world. (Today, Fulks is the company’s COO.) Believe it or not, the strategy worked. UA sales quickly gained momentum. However, selling products to teams and schools would take a business only so far. That’s when Plank began to look at the mass market. In 2000, he made his first deal with a big-box store, Galyan’s (which was eventually bought by Dick’s Sporting Goods). Today, almost 30 percent of UA’s sales come from Dick’s. But they haven’t forgotten where they started, either. The company has all-school deals with numerous Division 1 schools. According to Plank, “Although these deals don’t bring in big bucks, they deliver brand visibility . . . .” Despite their marketing successes, innovation continues to be the name of the game at UA. How important is innovation to the company’s heart and soul? Consider what you have to do to enter its new products lab. “Place your hands inside a state-of-the-art scanner that reads—and calculates—the exact pattern of the veins on the back. If it recognizes the pattern, which it does for only 20 out of 5,000 employees, you’re in. If it doesn’t, the vault-like door won’t budge.” In the unmarked lab at the company’s headquarters campus in Baltimore, products being developed include a shirt that can monitor an athlete’s heart rate, a running shoe designed like your back spine, and a sweatshirt that repels water almost as well as a duck’s feathers. There’s also work being done on a shirt that may help air-condition your body by reading your vital signs. So what’s next for Under Armor? Innovation will continue to be important. Building a business beyond what it’s known for—that is, what athletes wear next to their skin—is going to be challenging. However, Plank is “utterly determined to conquer that next layer, and the layer after that.” He says, “There’s not a product we can’t build.”
- What do you think of UA’s approach to innovation? Would you expect to see this type of innovation in an athletic wear company? Explain.
- What do you think UA’s culture might be like in regard to innovation?
- Could design thinking help UA improve its innovation efforts?
- What is your interpretation of the company’s philosophy posted prominently over the door of its design studio? What does it say about innovation?
- What could other companies learn from the way UA innovates?
