The Under Armour story: Success by Fueling Innovation
Article“A clear vision is the base for innovation,” said Joseph Giles, the CIO of Under Armour, a company that has grown from a simple idea into a USD 1.4 billion innovation machine.
American football, hockey, basketball, golf, soccer, skiing and other sports took center stage during Jody Giles’ presentation on the Relentless Pursuit of Innovation – the Under Armour story.
Photo: Arne Hyckenberg
“A clear vision is the base for innovation,” says Joseph Giles, the CIO of Under Armour, a company that has grown from a simple idea into a USD 1.4 billion innovation machine giving established players like Puma and Adidas a run for their money. Under Armour is a Technia customer.
A David vs. Goliath story, Under Armour is the brainchild of entrepreneur and former college football star Kevin Plank who got tired of wearing hot, sweaty and heavy T-shirts under his shoulder pads during practice. Why couldn’t they wear the kinds of performance fabrics one sees in cycling, for example, he asked himself.
The Under Armour vision is simple: ‘Making athletes perform better.’
In other words, there was a need, and a superior solution to that need.
Fifteen years ago, Plank started selling tight, 6-ounce shirts to football players up and down the east coast of the US with the promise that less weight is a competitive advantage. Today, Under Armour has 85 stores in the US and is growing internationally in countries like Spain, China and Korea.
“We are a new company every six months,” explains Giles.
With men and women’s sport apparel for most sports, a line of footwear also for most sports, international and direct web sales, as well as retail outlets, Under Armour has found its niche by constantly innovating. And it is not about dreaming up new products, instead, as in the T-shirt case above, it is about applying existing technology to a new sport.
Some of Under Armour’s recent breakthrough products include a shirt made of recycled plastic bottles (6 million bottles so far), and building heart rate and breathing sensors into shirts (instead of those straps runners often have around their chests).
“Imagine a coach who can monitor all of his players’ biometrics at once on his iPad. Well that day is now,” says Giles. This product is also used by the US military.
A key to Under Armour’s success:
“We want to be unrivaled in our execution. Not only doe we want to be innovative, but we need really good feedback loops to keep our employees, our teammates and our athletes fully productive. So with the help of Technia, this our dashboard……,” said Giles, going on to explain how Under Armour’s Technia system allows to stay on calendar for deliveries.