Under Armour has been a favorite brand in the sports world for over a decade. The Under Armour story has been a case study in success; a tiny company that makes good competing against the giants in their space (i.e.- Nike & Adidas). They’ve grown up a lot from those early days in founder Kevin Plank’s basement; Under Armour is now a publicly traded company (NYSE: UA) with almost a billion dollars in revenue.
One of the characteristics that has made Under Armour successful is their aggressive attitude towards growth. They quickly diversified from an innovative apparel company into many other facets of the sportswear industry, including athletic footwear. With each new expansion of their business they seemed to thumb their nose at the established players in that space and set their sights on domination. Under Armour’s bravado was never more obvious then when they used the tagline “The future is ours” during their 2008 Super Bowl spot. But these days Under Armour is discovering that being one of the biggest brands in their space, a successful publicly traded company, has some downside.
Under Armour expansion into footwear has not gone as smoothly as planned, which has caused analysts and investors to loudly criticize UA’s moves thereby pummeling their stock price. This AdAge article says that analysts have characterized Under Armour’s moves as “weak”; particularly the decision by the company to pull back on how aggressively they plan to expand their shoe line. The negative attention has caused Under Armour’s stock price to drop dramatically to $26 per share from its previous 52-week high of $33 per share (Source: Yahoo Finance). It also means that Under Armour has some tough sledding ahead if it wants to continue to live up to its aggressive brand image.
Their are still big opportunities available to Under Armour in the athletic footwear category, but they might need to be a little more conservative. Perhaps they should follow the advice one expert said and grow things a little slower. Try to develop their niche in the shoe market organically, rather than forcing their way with a big media blitz (i.e.- Super Bowl commercial). There is a lot of established competition in shoes and Under Armour isn’t entering the space with anything revolutionary like they did in sports apparel with their moisture wicking shirts. If I was Under Armour I would try to focus on a certain niche in shoes, like: football cleats, workout shoes or casual shoes. Once successful in that space, then I would grow their product line into the more competitive categories like running shoes. Sometimes bigger isn’t better, even for big brands like Under Armour.
Under Armour
