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MANILA, Philippines – Behind the sports brand that carries the name of Stephen "Steph" Curry– Golden State Warrior, jersey no. 30, the reigning Most Valuable Player of the National Basketball Association – is the man who masterminded a business that raked in $3 billion in revenues last year.
Chief executive and founder Kevin Plank, a former fullback for the University of Maryland football team, built Under Armour by initially crafting a sweat-wicking shirt, considered an innovation in 1996. The shirt, which combined the concepts of performance synthetics and compression, later sparked bigger competitors to launch apparel and technology of the same kind.
With a market capitalization of $20.6 billion (NYSE:UA), the company has branched out completely to other categories – athletic performance products in sports such as golf, baseball, and of course, basketball.
Its CEO and team joined Curry in Manila on Saturday, September 5, in the second leg of the Under Armour Roadshow in Asia, which began in Tokyo, Japan and will end in a third city in China.
Rappler sat with Plank to ask a few things regarding Under Armour goings-on beyond the September 6 launch of Curry Two Shoes in Beijing.
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Kevin Plank (KP): There are great examples of where it worked with the athletes. There are other examples that just by signing in any athlete did not lead to success. There are plenty of examples in our industry where that could happen.
Steph Curry was the result of a decade of trying to get into the sport of basketball, beginning with apparel; then beginning making shoes in 2008; and then selling shoes in 2010. Here we are 5 years – going on 6 years – later, and we now have who we think is the number 1 basketball player in the world: the NBA’s reigning MVP (most valuable player) and world champion.
So with that, sales will certainly follow. But the sales are not going to happen just because people like Stephen. It needs to be a great product; it needs to be a great shoe.
And frankly, we believe that we delivered that for Stephen. And really part of the reason that he was able to win the NBA and the MVP, and win this championship, on a very small part was because of his relationship with Under Armour – I think our trust, our belief, and what we did with him.
The thing you will find in all of our athletes and all of our assets is that, time and time again, they’re – almost to a person – better people than they are actually athletes. And they are pretty amazing athletes. So we are very proud with the relationship we have [with him].
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KP: What I’ve said all along when we signed Steph is that under our plan we’d build a $1-billion basketball business. (Editor's note: Under Armour struck a less than $4 million deal per year with Stephen Curry.)
And so prior to this we had a little less than $100 million in revenues. And Steph this year, we haven’t released specific figures around Steph’s product, but it’s a multiple. And when you speak to people in this space with so much being successful with basketball in the past, it’s been about how much you’re limiting product.
Now, I’m not saying we’re going to open up the floodgates with the amount of products we have in the marketplace, but we do believe we have an amazing human and athlete in Steph, and we think there is a great desire from the consumer that’s going to want to play and participate with this product in a big way.
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KP: Being a brand, to carry a true signature product is really difficult. We have in sports market, whenever they bring us an athlete, say, we want to sign in this asset, the response to that is always everybody wants to have a signature shoe.
But the fact is not everybody can sell a signature shoe. And it’s a very rare area where Steph is, especially traveling here to Asia, where I think you see him and he is not this, he looks like some regular person walking down the street. He just happens to be an extraordinary basketball player. I think he is very relatable.
When kids are practicing or thinking about what they’re going to do and what they’re going to become, they know that if they just practice enough in their backyard, taking shots, and doing those other things that they too, they can become the best in the world at something.
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KP: We had people telling us that being in basketball was almost an impossibility. It’s because we have such deeply-entrenched competitors. And I think we demonstrated an incredible resolve to ensure that that wasn’t the case. And this didn’t happen, it didn’t happen overnight.
There’s years and years and decades of building up grassroots, of signing collegiate programs, of getting, building relationships for the athletes, creating the trust through Steph and our product first and foremost, but also our team and the resource. We have a support.
Being able to bring in a tour like this was something like we saw, became a perfect moment in time for us to be able act and execute on.
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KP: Investments have been going on since early 2006 probably, and frankly, longer than that.
I’ve been traveling to Asia for a long way back to 1990. That was my first trip here when I went to Tokyo. Our largest business outside North America is actually in Japan and closing up $400 million in revenues right now. And the dollar investment is one that’s been, we spent a lot of years not making money, but I’ll give you a great example.
In the Philippines we’re very new. We’re just in here in the last two years. We have 3 stores here and the market will be opening more.
But China is a great example where I think we see the opportunity for growth. We began, opening our first store in China in 2010 at the Raffles Mall in Shanghai. We went from 2010 to 2012 from zero to $3 million. In 2013, we have $7 million. In 2014, we did just under $30 million. This year there will be over $70-75 million. So next year the number is close to about doubling that, about $140-150 million.
So you look at that growth and scale, we believe from China alone there is a billion-dollar opportunity waiting for us to happen.
We roll into Southeast Asia – it’s an incredibly important part of our mix. And what we’ll do is we’ll define global: our definition of global should be more than half of our revenues should come from outside of our own country versus today that’s about 90% of our business come from North America.
We have a long way to go, we have a lot of runway, a lot of place we can go in, and we can get to.
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KP: The first thing I’d say to entrepreneurs is that many entrepreneurs typically have another job, and they’re thinking about being an entrepreneur, they’re thinking about starting – there’s something holding them back.
And the one thing I can say is that your product will never be perfect. Having the courage to push print, to publish your product, and they get it out there, and they find out very simply if [their] product can sell – it’s one thing.
I think one of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make is [staying] in hypothesis and theory before they just say, "you know what, if I can convince someone to carry it in their store and tell them I won’t pay them unless it sells." I won’t take money unless it sells, and convince and compel them to be in that position where you can find out if someone would want to take hard-earned cash out of their pocket, pay it, and exchange for the good or service you have.
The second thing that I would say is become famous for one thing. Where most entrepreneurs lose actually is that they lose focus. They’re doing too much. They believe they start with one great idea and they start trying to proliferate that to 5 or 10 things because they’re reading about someone else that is a huge competitor in their field. They’re saying, "well, they’re making all these things so I have to."
The thing that made Under Armour – the small-known secret of Under Armour is that we made the first, the one shirt for the first 5 years of business over and over and over, perfecting it, making it perfect. And it wasn’t going into all this additional excuse when you begin.
Find out if you can sell and become famous for one thing. And then once you’re famous, your consumer will pull you in the other places that you should be, not where you think or project you’re supposed to be. – Rappler.com
Shadz Loresco is a freelance business writer for both online and print. Follow her on Twitter: @shadzloresco.
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