How Did Under Armour Become The Second Largest Sports Brand In The United States?

How did a brand that started in professional sports and gymnasium suddenly become popular in the US market? This may be a question that Nike and Adidas want to ask.

We are talking about Under Armour, which is famous for its fast dry tights, but it is very expensive to watch it, but even with its technology and content, some people even want to wear it together with the formal dress. After 18 consecutive months of revenue growth of more than 20%, it finally surpassed Adidas in the second half of 2014 and became the second largest sport brand in the US market.

After releasing the brightest 2014 fourth quarter earnings report, Under Armour Kevin Planck was also heavily charged with Adidas: in an interview, the 41 year old company founder and CEO Plank (Kevin) said she did not want to be compared with the "most stupid competitor".

In the sports market of North America, competition for second is much easier than competition. In 2014, the total revenue of Under Armour exceeded $3 billion, but this is still only 1/10 of Nike. However, in the stock market, the price of Under Armour listed in 2005 is almost two times that of Nike.

Under Armour does not seem to be afraid of confrontation with Nike. In the summer of 2014, Kevin Durant, who jumped out of the Nike sponsorship contract, was faced with a very sincere sponsorship contract of Under Armour - the total price of $285 million in 10 years, Kevin Durant (NBA). Finally, Nike had to match the offer before winning the NBA leader.

stay clothes In addition to sports and social interaction outside of shoes, Under Armour wants to become another Nike. In the past two years, it has bought three App related to fitness and health. At the beginning of CES 2015, Under Armour also announced cooperation with HTC to enter the more wearable device field in the past two years.

If you look back now to see the history of the development of Under Armour brand (only 20 years), you will find that this is a company that is quite focused on subdivision. In the first 10 years, they only sell tight fitting sportswear which is fast and dry, and they don't even do sports shoes. Until now, Under Armour still occupies 79% of the United States sports apparel market.

In 1996, when Planck graduated from University of Maryland, he was determined to use his knowledge of business administration to transform the cotton underwear which was comfortable and sweating. His final choice of polyester material can be breathable, fast drying, assisting muscle strength, and can be compressed to a very small volume, easy to carry.

After trying out the first batch of samples to several college football players, Planck's fast drying business quickly spread to the top league circles such as NFL. More and more athletes began to place orders with him privately. Under Armour also took the opportunity to sign a now very cost-effective sponsorship business that could sponsor us baseball star Barry Bonds for the whole season with us $5000.

It's hard to imagine that a sports brand is heated up by sports such as rugby and baseball, which rely highly on professional protective gear. But many athletes feel that wearing UA's quick drying clothes can make them look cool. At that time, middle school athletes even wore an alternative method: buy UA's long sleeved quick drying clothes, then cut off their sleeves to show off their muscles better.

In 2004, the annual sales volume of Under Armour exceeded $200 million, and it was successfully listed on the NYSE in 2005. On the day of listing, the price of the stock was doubled. According to its latest earnings report, in fiscal year 2014, Under Armour's revenue was $3 billion 80 million, up 32% compared to the same period last year, and maintained a high gross margin of 49%.

But if you look at the structure of revenue, you will still think that Under Armour is the brand that relies on tights, which is more than 75% of its income from clothing category. In recent years, Nike, which exploded the running trend of cities, has made more money on sports shoes. Adidas, which earned a good reputation in the world cup in 2014, has almost the same sales of clothing and footwear.

Indeed, Under Armour is a bit slow in addition to tights. In 2006, they officially began to enter the field of sports shoes, and still do spikes for rugby matches. It was not until 2009 that Under Armour began selling more basketball shoes in the US market on the basis of a number of NBA star resources. The lower base also makes Under Armour sneakers become a category of sales surging in recent years.

What is most proud of this lab is a technology called "ColdGear Infrared". By improving the ceramic shell technology of fighter, the outdoor products of Under Armour can now take care of warmth, ventilation and waterproof.

The difference between Under Armour and mass sports brand positioning can be described by the difference between "Athlete" (athlete) and "Sportymen" (sports person). Let every consumer become an athlete, Planck is always emphasizing the unique competitiveness.

This can also be seen from the image of Under Armour's exclusive store: half of the shop salesmen are professional athletes, and the shop decoration style is rough and chill, with the combination of cement plate texture and cold light, and the aesthetic elements of chill run through. American stores even have bottled water for consumers in the locker room, as in the arena.

In graphic and digital media advertising, Under Armour is keen to use the "pain" instant to show strong, wild, tough and aggressive brand image. In addition to its strong visual impact publicity, advertising and other hard advertising, Under Armour has implanted its own Logo in many action movies in recent years, such as Rock in speed and passion, Van Diesel in special forces, and so on, which are very consistent with the brand characteristics of Under Armour.

But for ordinary consumers, they will not only think of Under Armour when they are in sports. Because of the color matching and the brand logo are not obvious, Under Armour has become a new "national uniform" that can cross the formal dress, casual wear and sportswear.

This trend also includes women consumers who were ignored by Under Armour. When the women's clothing product line has just been launched, the company's thinking is extraordinarily simple and brutal: it's better to make the size of the men's dress smaller and change it into pink. This is obviously not acceptable.

Let's jump out and talk about the Nike as the strategic focus of the 2014. In September 2014, Nike integrated the original female product line into Nike Women, putting forward the slogan of entering the "lifestyle" field for the first time. Nike also hopes that when its total revenue in 2017 reached US $36 billion, the contribution of women's products could account for 20% of total revenue.

Youth, love of consumption, sport as a new social life and lifestyle are the typical user images expected by Nike Women. But in fact, most women are not very sensitive to athletes and competitive sports. They are motivated by the power of friends around them, or to yearn for a certain form of life. So Nike still develops products from the needs of athletes, but it soon turns the new poster into routine: women on the gym, women running on the streets of San Francisco, women who stretch training in the gym.

Under Armour has also gradually found greater plasticity in the female market. In 2013, UA launched a digital marketing campaign called "Whats Beautiful", specifically for women. This is an online fitness competition. Women can participate in the fitness program to share their videos, photos, diaries, etc. while Under Armour will send professional fitness trainers to guide them.

In 2014, UA also hired Gisele Bundchen as spokesperson for its high price of more than 590 million dollars, and produced an advertising film "I Will What I Want" for its audience. The audience was directed at women, Gisele. This is the response of another spokesperson and Lindsey Vonn of the company. At present, the sales revenue of female products can account for 30% of the company's revenue.

Gisele Bundchen is a rare Under Armour spokesman for non professional athletes. Since 2003, Under Armour has been taking the top athletes as spokesmen of products in all kinds of sports fields beyond football and baseball. The latest big player signed is Muhammad Ali, 73 years old, who will have the entire product line named after himself, like Bruce Lee and Tyson. And around the 2015 NBA all star Stephen Currie Stephen Curry, Under Armour also launched a series of promotional activities ahead of schedule.

So what is the drawback of Under Armour, which has already been so popular?

Compared with the channel to borrow apple, large-scale promotion of social application Nike+ and (abandoned FuelBand) Nike, Under Armour are very slow in the two most popular Internet concepts, social networking and wearable devices.

In 2013, Under Armour spent $150 million to acquire MapMyFitness, an online health service provider. MapMyFitness has a App across the mainstream mobile platform, which can record all kinds of fitness information of users. Currently, the number of registered users exceeds 20 million.

Previously, Under Armour has launched a motion monitoring application called Armour39, which is used in conjunction with a chest strap product to record user's heart rate, calorie burning and other fitness messages. This is also the first test of Under Armour on wearable devices.

More noteworthy is the plan for cooperation with UA announced by HTC on CES 2015. This time, they are not targeting ordinary consumers, but are back at their best.