Under Armour Acquisition Fitness Application

Under Armour, which recently spent $700 million to buy two fitness apps, said it would not focus solely on selling more clothes and shoes with these products.

The company's CEO Kevin Plank says their long-term goal is to create smart clothing that can automatically track body movements and physiological indicators.

According to reports, when he met with investors, he said: "if we all believe that the future of mankind is determined by these hard glass chips and plastic sheets (referring to the current wearable devices), the world will be over.

Ultimately, these technologies should be applied to clothing. "

What he is mocking is probably the failure attempt of his company on intelligent devices: in 2011, Under Armour launched a company.

The plan also hopes to monitor data on various physiological indicators during exercise.

But the imagined clothes eventually turned into a chest band that only monitors heart rate, and because of the low volume of sales worldwide, it was eventually abandoned by the company.

In 2014, Under Armour also served as the US downhill skiing team at the Winter Olympics.

It costs millions of dollars to design high-tech ski suits.

But this stuff is not like shark skin.

As popular among athletes, they are disliked, affected, and thrown aside.

But when discussing the two fitness applications with MapMyFitness and MyFitnessPal, Plank gave an advertisement video to the founders of the two companies: a girl wearing Under Armour clothes was doing yoga, her clothes touched lightly, so that they could change colors, and perfectly fit the curve, and could analyze whether her yoga posture was any problem. When morning running, the sensor on the clothes would shine.

The voice over of the advertisement is like this: "although this product has not yet been listed, Under Armour has been working hard for it."

We all thought that the cooperation between wearable devices and sports brands is the most perfect result.

But when Nike began to abandon hardware devices and concentrate on software applications, she had to admire Under Armour's courage to not go back to the south wall without looking back.

Under Armour became the second biggest sport brand in the United States over Adidas in 2014, and Nike has also taken it as one of its rivals.

Related links:

When you see a small number of Abercrombie & Fitch stores in China, you will have the feeling of "this is a teenager brand": the shop is filled with strong Cologne and muscled, and the salesmen who are naked on the upper part will greet guests at the door of the shop, the music of the channel is deafening and the clothes sold are loud and bright.

But in the US, the A&F brand is becoming more and more mature. Since September 2014, the perfume spray used by shop assistants has decreased by 25%, and the models have begun to wear clothes. The shop is brighter, and there are windows display models (of course clothes). In addition to the close fitting T-shirt, you can buy more comfortable sizes and black clothes that have disappeared for many years, and like fast fashion brands, company Logo is gradually disappearing from the prominent position of clothes.

In this round of reform, the only place you can see naked models is A&F's own Cologne "Fierce".

After all, the image of a hot figure is still popular in the category of perfume.

The "Fierce" brand was founded in 2002 and is regarded by A&F as "the sexiest perfume in the world".

In order to protect this brand, A&F also took the lead of famous singer Beyonce to court in 2009 on the grounds of product infringement.

In 1992, Mike Jeffries, who took over the CEO position of the company, saw the potential of the US youth market, and made the brand of "the coolest college wind" out of the brand with a history of 100 years.

The photographer Bruce Weber made the brand hotter for A&F's action provocative photos and exposed models. At that time, everyone in the US wanted to have a A&F.

Jeffries is no doubt the Savior of A&F: in the first ten years he took over, the number of stores has doubled, and annual sales have jumped from $50 million to $4 billion 500 million.

But with the emergence of cheaper fast fashion brands such as Forever 21 and H&M, the A&F logo is no longer so cool for young Americans.

11 consecutive quarters of same store sales declined, leaving Jeffries at the end of 2014.

Because of product marketing and store design, American Eagle Outfitters and Aeropostale, the other two retailers that follow the A&F model, have been disappointing in recent years.

The sales volume of the three companies in 2013 fiscal year dropped to varying degrees, of which the largest decline was Aeropostale of 12.4%, which was only 2 billion 90 million dollars.

The stock prices of the three listed companies also fell by at least 30%.

In addition to letting their models wear clothes, another way A&F can think of it is to do social marketing as well as other enterprises.

On Instagram, A&F's corporate account will issue 300 new messages every week, and many fashion bloggers will also be involved.

This is indeed effective - Craig Brommers, the company's senior vice president of marketing, told Bloomberg in May 2014 that users' participation in social media was at least four times higher than that in January.

But to regain the market in the fast fashion field of strong feed, it may become more and more difficult for A&F.