Can streetwear be made with zero plastic?
Eric Liedtke says it can be, and he is on a mission to systematically change the fashion industry by shifting away from petroleum-based materials to plant-based materials. In 2014, Eric was already a leader in the fashion industry as the Head of Sports Performance at Adidas when the issues of micro and nano plastics were brought to his attention. As a vegan who loves to surf, Eric could not turn away from the fact that his work in fashion was contributing to the problem. By 2019, he stepped away from his executive board position at Adidas to launch UNLESS Collective, a statement streetwear brand with a regenerative creation model, meaning their products are made sustainably using zero plastic
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Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
Are you ready to go beyond the basics of marketing?
I'm Alan Hart and this is Marketing Beyond, where we talk about the questions that sparkchange and share ideas that challenge the status quo.
Join us as we explore the future of marketing and its endless potential.
(00:27):
consistent with everyone I talk to.
I'm living my life right now with a very clear principle, zero wasted hours.
So if I'm not doing something for myself, for my family, for my friends, for my community,or for my world, I'm not doing it.
Today on the show I've got Eric Litke.
(00:48):
He's the founder and CEO of Unlesse Collective, recently acquired by Under Armour.
He also serves as the president of the Under Armour brand.
Unlesse, through Eric's leaderships, developed a regenerative creation model aimed atchanging the way footwear, apparel, and accessories are designed, distributed, collected,
(01:08):
and safely returned to the earth.
He stepped away from his executive board position at Adidas in December of 2019 to focuson his passion for fighting plastic waste.
At Adidas, he led all brands and businesses, fostering a culture of collaboration andinnovation and scaled the Adidas e-comm platform to reach $4 billion in 2020.
(01:29):
Likki's leadership drove material and process innovation, sustainability initiatives andstreetwear growth, adding over $8 billion in revenue in six years.
And he's initiated partnerships to combat marine pollution, including with Parley for theoceans and drove efforts to eliminate virgin polyester from Edidas products in 2024.
(01:49):
Through all this experience and the conversation today, you'll hear a lot about, unlesscollective, what he's trying to do to help save the oceans, as well as how it fits into
Under Armour strategy and where he thinks the Under Armour brand can go.
That and much more with Eric Litke.
(02:15):
I'm Eric.
Welcome to the show.
Great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I can't wait to have this conversation.
I mean, we're going to get to talk about Under Armour, entrepreneurship, all kinds ofstuff.
I guess before we get started, though, I'd love to know, like, where did you get yourcareer start and how'd you end up here now, like the president of Under Armour?
(02:36):
Is that right?
And you've also got this other role.
Exactly.
So I'm president of the Under Armour brand, which means I look after all creations.
So strategy, operating model, product, digital concepts and things like that.
So just want to make sure we're clear.
have a CEO and I'm just, you know, I'm one of many, my remit is making cool stuff.
(02:57):
How did get my start?
Well, it's a long story.
How far back do you want to go?
But long and short of it is I was sitting in an ad agency in Detroit and I wasn't happy.
was
I was a suit, so I wasn't the creative guy.
I was more of the client relations.
And I just realized that I wasn't happy unless I was doing sport, having done sport, ortalking about sport.
(03:18):
So I got to work, kind of working my network, and back in the day, we called it ourRolodex, and finding out who we could talk to and who was in sport.
And one of my best friends was working for Adidas, Adidas back in the day in the early90s.
He introduced me to some guys that were former Nike guys.
If you're following the industry, you might know the name of Peter Moore who designed thefirst Nike shoes and Rob Strasser who actually signed Jordan among other things.
(03:44):
But those two guys had broken off from Phil at Nike and started the Adidas Americasubsidiary and they were hiring.
And so in 94, I was like, I got to go work there.
And so I, this is before cell phones.
This is before email.
This is like good old fashioned.
writing letters and picking up landlines and calling and I was just relentless.
(04:05):
It took me 12 months to land the job there, but I never looked back.
26 years later, I basically started next to the mail room as what they call sweeper, whichis basically someone that did anything.
then 26 years later, I found myself at the top of the company or 20 years later, I was thebrand president of Adidas and I was in charge of all creation there as a board member and
(04:26):
I was living in Germany.
And then I had this wild idea that we could
make things out of plants versus plastics.
I left Adidas to kind of fix the problem of microplastics and nanoplastics, which I'msuper excited to share with your listeners.
And that kind of led me to being acquired by Under Armour in September of last year.
(04:47):
So it's been a bit of a roller coaster of big to small to big, but it's been super fun.
awesome.
mean, one, mean, just your career going back to 94 before cell phones.
That's, that's fun.
That's fun.
I remember the first Blackberry came out and I was like one of the first ones to have itlike carrying around a Pop Tart in your pocket.
was like, can email, I can call people.
(05:09):
was like, what?
What's going on here?
Honestly, it's like, I hate to say it, but we used a lot of fax machines and teletypemachines and stuff to do sales.
It was like, I feel like I've lived through the world changing events of digitization.
I still miss my Blackberry to be honest, like, you know, that tactile keyboard, not tomention you could skip it across the parking lot and still pick it up and use it.
(05:34):
They, Steve Jobs came in and just swept them out.
I, the Blackberry film is a good one.
If you haven't seen it, it's a really good movie about like, know, the climb and the topand the kind of like the arrogance of being on top and then boom, the humility of just
dropping to the bottom with basically the iPhone coming in and disrupting everything.
(05:55):
Awesome.
Let's talk a little bit about Unless Collective.
Yeah.
You talked about, you know, long kind of storied rise at Adidas or Adidas.
As you will as you will as you okay, you're very European but
It but I think it's more proper, but you know, I don't know.
It is but you know, it all depends where you live and how you your background.
(06:20):
yeah, Adidas is the appropriate thing because this is a little fun fact.
The founder of Adidas name was Adolf Dossler.
And so his nickname was Adi.
So he went Adi and then the first two letters are last name Adi Dots.
So that's basically the guy's name who founded the company.
I love it, I love it, I love it.
Well, you know, from going from there to deciding to focus on plant-based materials,that's a big shift.
(06:46):
Not only like going from big company to small company, but like, you're talking about afundamental technology shift that you're gonna try to take.
I mean, I like to build stuff and I think the big wake up moment was in 2014, Parley forthe Oceans founder, Cyril Gutsch walked in my office when I was at Audi in Germany and
(07:07):
said, hey, would you like to save the oceans?
And I was like, yeah, I think that's important because I am a sportsman and I like thewater even more.
I if I'm doing sports in the water, I'm the happiest person on life in the world.
But I was like, I kind of got a...
job I'm doing.
I'm not going to now go be an activist, but he goes, no, no, no, you understand.
You're part of the problems.
(07:27):
And I was like, what do mean?
And he educated me then on the role of uh nanoplastics and microplastic and how it waskilling the krill and the phytoplanktons that are in the ocean.
The phytoplanktons are responsible for every second breath we have.
once you go down that rabbit hole, it's hard to come back up and be like, oh.
(07:47):
everything's normal again when you when you realize the impact you're having as thepresident of a brand that's producing basically uh billions of products a year that are
made of petroleum based synthetics and nylons and spandexes and things like that that arewonderful, brilliant, breathable, flexible, wicking materials, but they never go away.
(08:11):
They're forever materials.
So I didn't realize that.
And when he opened, when he pulled back that curtain, I was like,
I got to deal with that now.
Not only am I trying to like sell more product, I got to deal with the fact that the stuffI'm selling is now actually killing the ocean and therefore eventually killing us because
then you go deeper and you're like, these nanoplastics are entering into our bodies andsome of us are eating a credit card worth of plastics or drinking a credit card or
(08:38):
spreeding a credit card with plastics a week.
And now you can find out you have a plastic spoon worth of microplastics in your brain.
You find out you're more likely to die.
of a stroke or heart disease when you've got nanoplastics in your arteries, which most ofus are accumulating at a scary rate.
you can't then turn that off.
And there's always so often you can whisper yourself to sleep at night thinking, youyou're doing good things.
(09:03):
Especially when you have children and you want them to have children and then you startand their children and their children, the accumulation.
So at a certain point I had to say, out, I gotta go try and do this full time.
I love my job at Audi.
But I had this thing in my brain that was bigger than sport then it was like, okay, how doI systemically change the fashion industry to get off of petroleum based feed stocks?
(09:28):
And can we, is there a way to change the plants and minerals?
And that was when I left in 2019 and just before COVID hit and COVID hit and I raised somemoney and started a brand, you know, remotely on zoom calls like this, being like, hey,
That's a great idea.
Let's try to make some product out of just plants and minerals.
(09:48):
And we got to work with a hearty bunch of friends that had similar mission alignment.
And it's been a blast.
that was in 2020.
We founded ourselves with some seed capital.
And we then went on to build that up over four years.
And then Kevin Plank, the founder and CEO of Under Armour called and said, hey, would youlike to come on board?
(10:09):
And we'd like to buy unless, and maybe we could have you and unless.
It'd be a nice partnership.
So I hope that explains a little bit about the genesis of why and where it ended up.
No, it does.
does.
then like now with the acquisition and you've got kind of like this dual role thing goingon, like is it bittersweet?
(10:29):
Is it all upside in your mind?
Like how do you think about it?
I'm very consistent with everyone I talk to.
I'm living my life right now with a very clear principle, zero wasted hours.
So if I'm not doing something for myself, for my family, for my friends, for my community,or for my world, I'm not doing it.
So I have a different perspective than the career climbing aspirational person I was whenI was at Adidas.
(10:54):
I've now been fortunate enough to be successful in my career.
When I was at Adidas, we had a lot of.
success.
grew the business $8 billion in six years and we quadrupled the bottom line and all thenumbers were up to the right.
would share price went from $50 to $300 or something.
I was successful.
I had a lot of fun and I was able to take care of my family.
(11:16):
So when I did the startup life, I was at a different place than most startupentrepreneurs.
So now going back into a big machine, I still carry that with me.
So I'm like, okay, I'm here to help Under Armour be the best Under Armour can be.
But I'm really here to scale the endless dream.
I'm really here to scale this promise of a regenerative future for fashion.
And can we systematically change the industry from one that's based on oil and petroleumto one that's based on plants so that we don't have harmful nanoplastics and microplastics
(11:47):
enter in our bodies at an unprecedented rate and we can have it.
Because I just think we're at the tip of the iceberg from what actually is happening to usfrom our plastic exposure.
You know, your skin is your largest organ and it's absorbing things, whether it be sun ormaterials or chemicals at a daily minute-by-minute base.
(12:08):
What you put on your skin, whether it be creams or whether it be scents or whether it beclothing, is having a direct impact on what's going in your body.
So we're now talking about microplastic exposure, but what about the chemical exposure?
Because the other thing that people don't know is plastics require tens of thousands ofchemicals.
to be created and to create and make.
(12:29):
Those chemicals leach into your body when you sweat.
So there's a whole discovery thing that I'm trying to pioneer solutions to with UnderArmour.
Because Under Armour is great because they believe in the mission.
They want to help the mission.
We just launched a collaboration at Milan Design Week, which was fantastic and sold out.
And we're selling it out right now at our Baltimore store really successfully.
(12:52):
they want to scale this idea because
what better place to do it than the brand that was built on a material revolution calledStretch to now reinvent the, disrupt the industry with the next one called Plants.
So I'm super bullish on the force multiplier that we have between the two ideas.
how technical is the solve here?
Meaning you go from performance materials, like stretch to your point, like compression.
(13:17):
mean, that's the historical genesis of Under Armour, right?
It's compression.
And how do you start to think about how do I move that from uh oil-based orpetroleum-based materials into plant-based materials?
And then I also have to believe that like sneakers are the other angle that you've got tofigure out too, right?
(13:41):
So it's a great question.
You clearly know your topic.
yeah, think so as a startup that's got minimal capital, you've got to be very selective onwhat you choose to get into.
We were always founded on the yes, can we make a hundred percent plant based shoe?
And I'm happy to say we did that with the degenerate version one.
(14:02):
It was a work in progress.
It's not perfect, but we did have to work around stretch.
There's five things that we had to work around stretch.
glues, because all glues are petroleum based, foams, most foams are polyurethane, which isa compound plastic.
And then you've got dyes and ink.
So those are like, I call the five horsemen.
Everything else we could kind of get off the shelf.
(14:24):
You know, I'm wearing a crew neck right now.
It's a robust cotton.
We pay attention to how you put it together from a stitch line, from a thread line, from aribbing standpoint.
You know, you can solve those things with mechanical stretch, but for the most part, it'sreally paying attention.
to how you put things together.
So it's the little details.
It's the base material, yes, but then it's the trims and details, the prints and dyes youput on to make it harmlessly go away within industrial compost or even your backyard.
(14:50):
So our stuff, we guarantee everything will go back and create nutrient rich soil.
When you get more technical, when you get into a sock, which took us two years, we do havea sock, but it took us two years to develop with the leading sock operation managers at
FutureStitch to really help us do that because
It's complex to do it without nylons.
It's easy to do it with nylons.
(15:11):
It's easy to do it with synthetics and stretch.
And those are just basically melted plastics.
But to do a mechanical stretch with natural rubber latex, and then you get to the shoe andthe shoe is super complex to do because you've got to figure out how to cure the outsole.
What's the outsole made of?
Okay, you have to procure natural rubber latex.
I worked with a startup called Natural Fiber Welding, which is an unbelievable startupusing only plant polymers out of Peoria, Illinois.
(15:36):
These guys are doing unprecedented work, but they kind of came to fruition the same timewe were at Unlesse.
So we kind of partnered as an arms to say, maybe we could make the impossible shoe.
And that's like, were saying, okay, what's the inspiration from plant based proteins, theplant based polymers and, you know, let's make the impossible shoe.
That was kind of a rallying cry.
(15:56):
We got to work and we figured it out, but it was like, how are you going to create thecompounds?
How are you going to put it together without glues?
So we have, we went to Italy to make sure we were doing
the proper stitching and making going back to the, you know, the intimate, you know,cobblers of Italy that are in the details and they can really make it.
So really, really attention to detail about how those things come together.
(16:16):
Since then we've solved, there's a small company in Maine called Worthing that's makingadhesives that are biodegradable and compostable, which is great.
So now we can use a limited glue, but it's a glue nonetheless.
now we have some glue.
Now there's phone developers coming out.
There's a lot of great innovations going on.
So I think once you start this little, you know, this little snowball on the mountain top,it's quickly can become an avalanche as you find like-minded people and engineers and
(16:44):
designers and chemists trying to solve the same problem of how do we make our product goharmlessly away?
So that's the brief that we have now at Under Armour.
And now we've entered into a company that's, know, multi-billion dollar company with a lotof
capital to invest in research and development more than a little startup that's, trying tolive paycheck to paycheck type thing.
(17:06):
So the step move from being a startup trying to solve for things, as I talked about reallyusing things off the shelf and finding other innovators, giving solutions to now going
inside a big parent company that's as committed to the cause, but now can tap into notonly their own research and development, but working with big chemical companies to solve
(17:28):
the problem of
plastic chemistry versus plant chemistry.
And I'm super excited about some of the things that we're finding out there that we can dowith plant-based solutions.
So we're sticking to the mandate of everything needs to go away, but it's now exciting tohave the capital behind us to develop new things.
That's super interesting.
And as you think about like, we've talked about like how you make it possible to makeproducts that can compete similarly to their predecessors.
(17:55):
How do you think about the market itself, like the consumer, the brand?
Like how does that need to evolve to kind of meet people where they are, but also liketake them on this journey with you?
I think it's so great.
you for that.
I think one of things that we found the company on is that there's a there's a real Ithink my research at Audi and my experience with Ocean Plastic and some of the things we
(18:22):
did there.
There's a real consumer insight that they care.
Right.
That's not a question.
People care.
The question is they don't want to compromise their taste.
Right.
Or the quality of the product for their values.
And they don't want to compromise really too much on price.
We don't want to make it a luxury thing where you have to pay 2x or 3x the price point.
(18:46):
So we really try to meet people at a, we don't want to compromise your taste for yourvalues or your values for your taste.
Because just to give you an example, Oatly Milk came along and did the same thing withplant-based proteins.
It's like, I'm a vegan.
I used to have to choke back an almond milk latte.
But I'm doing it for the world.
(19:07):
But now it's like, oh, an Oatly, I'll take an oat milk one because it's more deliciousthan dairy.
that's the level you need to have when you get into a fashion brand as well.
You can't ask people to compromise those things.
And ultimately, you have to build something that within three years with the right volumescan be a unit economics parity with what's currently offered.
(19:30):
we're not, know, we, oh, we need, sorry about that.
We need to make sure that we have the unit economics that
come together and meet the consumer where they are.
Because if it's just a luxury item, if it's just something that only the very privilegedcan buy, then it's not going to scale.
And my ambition is to systemically change the entire industry from oils to plants.
(19:52):
So we had to meet both of those.
So those are the big challenges to bring the consumer along.
Once you do that, and I would put our current on less offer, which is very lifestyle, veryskate, very workwear meets streetwear oriented.
I would put that up against anything Carhartt and Dickies are doing from a taste levelstandpoint, from a quality standpoint.
So now can we get to the price point?
(20:13):
Yes, but we need more volume.
now it's a question of scaling the volume.
Again, here comes Under Armour, who's going to help us scale audience, help us scaledistribution.
So that's where I think you get into this, this dynamic.
So step one, get the value at the same level they're expecting, get the quality at thesame level they're expecting, get the taste at the same level they're expecting, give it
built on a better stack.
(20:33):
Step two is scale the brand.
and get the volumes to get you and economics on par.
And you just, mentioned kind of where this fits in the scan of things.
You've got, this is in the lifestyle category, if you will.
Like street wear, skate, to your point.
Is there a desire, it sounds like there is, but is there a desire to move this into thecore under armor as well?
(20:58):
At different elements?
hell yes.
I mean, we started where we were because of the, know, the capitalization.
As a startup, you're always undercapitalized, right?
And so you spend your money building the product.
Then you spend your money buying inventory.
You spend your money on your employees.
And then you're like, oh, we're out of money, but nobody knows about us.
So we built this thing.
(21:19):
How do we now tell people about it?
And like everything's paid for play now.
How do we distribute it?
We don't really have a Salesforce and they're not just going to come to our DTC site, oure-comm site without knowing about us.
So now you're like, are you going to pay thousands of dollars a day to try to buy and havesome people see us?
So now the question of how you scale audience and distribution.
So we go inside Under Armour and we're like, okay, now we need to solve for these fivehorsemen.
(21:44):
So the brief I'm working with the research teams, and this is the luxury of being thepresident of Under Armour also, like, okay, strategically, we're focused on this.
We're focused on regenerative.
We're focused on solving some of these big issues that we're limiting the startup world.
And that, know, like that's, solve for stretch, which is to your point is a core piece andcapability of all performance product, right?
(22:04):
You stretch, you need breathability, you need some of these things.
So we need to solve for that, which we don't have right now.
They need to be invented.
And we're, in the process of trying to explore those, those opportunities.
You need to solve for glues.
So if you're to make a running shoe or you're to make a basketball shoe, you're going tomake a football cleat, you got to solve for glues.
You got to solve for plates.
You got to solve for PBEX.
You got to solve for a lot of things.
(22:25):
I think they're all solvable.
but we have to go one after the other.
But the idea is like, can we solve for blues?
Can we solve for stretch?
Can we solve for phones?
Can we solve for prints?
Can we solve for dyes?
If we can do all that, then we can systemically change the $3 trillion fashion industrythat's currently based on the back of petroleum.
stay tuned there, but that's the dream.
(22:45):
Well, I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.
are you?
mean, this is your passion.
You can, you can just feel it, right?
And, and you're driving it at with Under Armour now.
Are you also working on the core Under Armour as well?
Or are you just focused on this?
I'm deep in the machine.
(23:08):
don't wear the title of Under Armour brand president for jokes and giggles.
And that's something I take very serious.
So yeah, we're working on the operating model.
We're working on the strategic plan.
We're working on building a compelling product and building a consumer advocacy.
So yeah, we're deep in the weeds of storytelling and everything else.
I spend 99 % of my time on Under Armour core business and probably 1 % of my time on less.
(23:33):
But we have a general manager that does the day-to-day on my stuff as we build that out.
Gotcha, what do you feel like as a brand, the core, I don't know what it is, maybe it'sthe secret sauce, the core equity that you're trying to play up in the market as you try
to think about how do I propel the Under Armour brand itself?
I think Under Armour is uniquely positioned in the space.
(23:55):
think the roots, mean, first of all, were founder led, which I think gives us a distinctopportunity to lean into.
think anytime you have a founder still engaged in day-to-day business, you still have thatheart and soul.
When I worked at Adidas, the founder was long in the rear view mirror.
I think you've got very few brands, maybe New Bounce, you could argue the Davises arestill running, but very few brands are still.
(24:19):
founder led unless there are small ones coming up like, you know, on running or what haveyou.
So I think, I think from an Under Armour standpoint, having that leadership, having that,you know, North Star is really, is really inspiring and really motivating on a regular
basis.
Being a brand that's in the, in the, in the Baltimore, in the heartland of the Northeast,if you will.
And maybe it's a city that's been taken some harder knocks than it deserves, but it'slike, you know, it's a, it's an industrial city that is, you know, that really represents
(24:48):
the core of Under Armour.
Being a brand that is apparel founded primarily and grew into footwear is also adifferentiator, especially as a multi-billion dollar brand that we are.
It's got, you know, think we leaning into some of these credentials.
So whether it be the founder story of Kevin and then being an underdog, whether it be thehard roots of being in, I mean, you're in Baltimore versus Beaverton.
(25:14):
You're in Baltimore versus Boston.
You're in Baltimore versus Germany.
There's a distinct difference of grit and muscle and hard work and scrap and humility thatgoes into that.
And I'm here for it.
I think Under Armour represents a lot of what America is and the values we hold dear.
(25:35):
It's no coincidence that our headquarters is less than a mile and a half from uh
the Fort McHenry where the Star Spangled Banner was written.
So it's like, there's a lot of there there.
I think Under Armour has always been the alpha brand when it came out.
And I think how we dimensionalize that into representing a few more things is fun andexciting.
(25:59):
I'm excited to build it.
don't wanna divulge too much because we're not fully cooked yet, but I see a lot of whitespace for Under Armour to occupy.
from its unique positioning as some of things I just outlined.
We'll have to have you come back on when you can share more details.
Let's, we're not, we're not at our best right now.
Let's, come back on and celebrate the turnaround, which I'm sure is going to happen, butit's going to take a couple of years.
(26:24):
Yeah, yeah, I hear you, I hear you.
Well, one of the things we like to do on this show is to get to know you a little bitbetter, so I've got a few questions, less about Under Armour, less about Unlesse, and more
about you.
First question, I love asking everyone uh is, has there been an experience of your pastthat defines or makes up who you are today?
(26:45):
Yeah, yeah, many.
mean, that's like, I mean, I don't think there's one inflection point that I had.
I had a pretty privileged upbringing.
My parents were engineers.
My dad was a doctor.
You know, my mom was, you know, basically a civil servant.
was a renowned engineer, worked for NASA.
(27:07):
I helped design the first satellites that went up into space.
My dad was chief of cardiology at University of Wisconsin.
My mom then quit her engineering life to come and raise families and be engaged in ourlives.
And she's basically volunteered her entire life.
I think having role models of parents that were so service oriented and were so um biggerthan transaction.
(27:31):
mean, my dad made the decision as a doctor and you people that will know this, you have tomake a decision.
You can go into private practice, you can go into research and there's two different pathsand they're both intriguing for different reasons.
One's probably much more uh desirable from a financial standpoint, private practice.
One's more desirable to discover solutions to big problems.
(27:51):
My dad went into that one.
So he was a university guy that basically was trying to cure heart disease.
And you don't realize the impact that has on you, but you absorb that.
My mom's that meanwhile, she's volunteering and founding like senior citizens homes.
And she was the CEO and the CFO and raising money to build up, not just senior citizens,but...
(28:11):
assisted living and then the whole network and so now they've got they see basically isYou know that has to help build up this place called um addicts angels in in Madison,
Wisconsin That's this metropolis of just how people can age gracefully is the best way Ican say and and never be shamed to by putting in a home where you to die You know, it's
(28:31):
like no you come in when you want to have assisted meals coming in and you make acommunity and then you okay Then you can graduate to the next level if you need the more
service and the next level.
Yes, it is but it's all there so
So anyway, my long story short, I was surrounded by people that were giving.
I was surrounded by people that were purpose-led and not transactional-led.
um I went the other way.
I went into business.
(28:52):
I became a very transactional, but I've come around full circle now to be very purpose-ledand very intentional with every decision I make.
Even being with you today, it's like, is this gonna help my world, my community, myfriends, my family?
Yeah, yeah, it helps all of them because it helps me get the word out on less.
I believe living your life with purpose and always keeping in mind legacy is reallyimportant.
(29:15):
And I learned it from my parents for years.
Well, what advice would you give your younger self if you were starting this journey allover again?
Hardly less.
with that kind of uh role modeling is hard.
(29:35):
They were high achievers and I was like, I'm rebelling.
I'm going over here and I'm going to drink and smoke and do what I need to do todisconnect from this world of perfection.
So I did that and I came through that and I came through a lot smarter, but I would haveliked to maybe stop a little earlier.
But all kidding aside, I think there's one advice I love giving to myself and everybody Iwork with is don't let perfect get in the way of better.
(30:03):
I think sometimes we dream too much about perfect end states and even being a startup.
we're like, no, just every day you're gonna get better.
Every day just take a step.
Every day take a step.
And if you do that, all of you look up and say, holy shit, look how far I came.
It's like climbing a mountain, right?
You don't realize that when you stand at the trailhead and you look up at the mountain,you're like.
I don't ask a lot and then you look back and my gosh, I've come so far.
(30:26):
my gosh, I've come so far.
So I think it's just really breaking journeys down into steps.
And so I would really lean into that if I were giving that advice to myself.
Love it.
ah Well, is there something either you're trying to learn more about yourself or you thinkmarketers, this is a show primarily for marketers, you think marketers need to be learning
(30:47):
more about?
Could be either.
um I think marketing in general, and I'm learning this, we just hired a head of marketingunder Armour, Tyler Rudstein, um and he's probably 25 years younger than me, which I don't
let him ever hear that, but he's bringing in a whole new playbook.
And I think the marketing rules are changing systemically, just from a general marketingcommunication.
(31:14):
It's no news to anybody that nobody's watching TV anymore.
The cables have been cut.
Everything's streaming all the time.
User generated content is blowing up, but it's it's really paying attention to thosetrends and making sure you can capture on them.
It's the real, if you want to get into the columns marketing 101, it's like, I'm shockedat how fast the industry has changed and continues to change day on and day out.
(31:41):
how, you you go one day from building these glorious cruise ships of
You know, these, these commercials that run for 30 seconds and that you've taken sixmonths to build them and oh my God.
you, it's like, it doesn't matter.
It's like, nobody's watching the Superbowl commercial anymore.
I'm sorry.
It's like, that's a bunch of boomers and Gen Xers.
Like if you want to get to today's consumers, how are you breaking that down for TikTok?
(32:02):
How are you doing it with user generated content?
How are you doing it from almost the most unpolished version you can do?
It's like, this is what, you know, like, let me hold my phone up a selfie is the new cops.
It's like, it's just from a classic train cut marker, like myself, like.
That's just, mean, no, I'm used to being in a studio with LED lights and backdrops and,you know, no, it's like those days are kind of over.
(32:24):
It's the unpolished, the unsanctimized, the raw.
People want real.
They want to feel like they're talking to a real person.
It's like one of the things Tyler taught me yesterday is like internal is the newexternal.
People want to know behind the scenes and they don't want to have a glorious story.
They want to see the innovations in real life.
They want to hear the founder story.
(32:45):
Going back to my...
Again, what Kevin brings that others don't have.
want it.
It's a rich, real, there's authenticity there.
think people crave that.
So how do you become the more authentic, true self on a regular basis is the advice I giveto anybody that cares to take it.
Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
And then two more questions for you.
Is there any like trends or subcultures that you personally follow or take notice of?
(33:10):
just, the question really?
uh
me, to me, it's like, I mean, that's where it like, you have to geek out at what you love.
And there's people that love cars.
There's people love motorcycles.
There's people that love computers.
I love everything surf.
So I'm a pretend surfer.
I like to surf.
I can get on a wave.
(33:30):
I can pop up.
I can ride away, but I'm certainly not an achieved accomplished surfer.
But there's something profound for me about being in the water.
It speaks back to why I'm doing what I'm doing, you know, about feeling.
feeling the breath of the earth underneath your board.
There's something really spiritual about that for me.
And so I just geek out on the whole surf culture, surf vibe, surf look, surf origins,waves, you name it, anything that has to do with that kind of, it's not so much about the
(34:02):
subculture, but there is one big one there.
It's even about the natural elements that create the waves.
The waves is the last,
You know, when you ride a wave, it's the last breath of that wave.
That wave may have traveled thousands of miles, but the end is the beginning, which isthe, you know, it's like, it's like the end is the beginning of your ride.
(34:25):
So anyway, again, like I said, I can get very philosophical here, but it's kind of whatwe're doing with regenerative fashion as well.
We start with the end in mind.
So it's like, it's somehow they all relate back and maybe it's a mistake.
Maybe it's the universe whispering, whispering to me quietly.
It feels like everything in your life is coming in alignment.
I feel very content.
(34:47):
Yeah, well last question I have for you.
What do you think is the largest opportunity or threat facing marketers today?
Well, know, the easy answer there's AI, but you know, but how I think, I think the largestopportunity is absolutely, you know, how do you automate and how do you target people more
(35:07):
effectively?
um I think there's, AI is doing that wonderfully.
I mean, it's like, it's unbelievable what AI can do for you from a creation standpoint,from uh a tool standpoint, from a targeting standpoint, from optimization standpoint, to
storytelling standpoint.
I think that's an opportunity and a threat.
I don't think AI is very authentic yet.
(35:29):
And I think people crave authenticity.
I think there's a reason why people love user generated content.
They love hearing from people they trust.
And you develop these relationships with people you follow through TikTok or throughYouTube or different channels.
think there is a, they let you see behind the scenes.
So you get to the person like I follow this person.
(35:52):
Nathan Florence, which is John John Florence, which is one of the best surfers in theworld But he does these these vlogs on YouTube and I can't get enough of them.
They're 15 20 minutes long and but it's not just him riding waves, which is spectacularIt's him discovering new places him going on tour him and his wife photography and
photographing him him not being able to paddle out because I can relate to that but it'ssuper raw and authentic and I could never do it because it requires a deep insight you
(36:18):
have to go down the rabbit hole of understanding
surfing and his experience of traveling, traveling with a surfboard, with multiplesurfboards and trying to check in an airplane and all that nightmare of them breaking
boards and like all that, but it's all I'm there for it.
Cause it's like, it's a lived experience that you can appreciate.
So I think it's how marketers tomorrow can use the tools of AI, but the craft ofauthenticity.
(36:43):
And so this word I used to like to use it, Adidas from my friend Paul Gaudia.
He used to talk about the best way to craft the few is to,
to the best way to predict the future is to craft it.
So we came up with a term called future craft, which is a beautiful term about how youbring the authenticity of yesterday's atelier shops from a fashion and you blend it with
(37:06):
the innovation of tomorrow.
I think marketers need to think about the same way.
How do you keep it real and personal and human and authentic while using the tools of AItomorrow?
love it.
Well, Eric, thank you for coming on the show.
This has been fascinating.
I hope so.
was enjoyable for me.
always like having discussions about cool stuff.
so, yeah, maybe I'm not the coolest, but I like to talk about things that are interestingto me.
(37:30):
So appreciate your interest and hopefully somebody gets some value out of it.
Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent theviews, thoughts, and opinions of Deloitte.
Material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and doesnot imply endorsement or opposition to any specific company, product, or service.
(37:53):
Hi, it's Alan again.
Marketing Beyond is a Deloitte digital podcast.
It's created and produced by me with post-production support from Sam Robertson.
If you're new to Marketing Beyond, please feel free to write us a review and subscribe onyour favorite listening platform.
also invite you to explore the other Deloitte digital podcast at deloitte digital dot comslash us slash podcast and share the show with your friends and colleagues.
(38:21):
I love hearing from listeners.
can contact me at marketing beyond at Deloitte dot com.
You'll also find complete show notes and links to what's discussed in the podcast today.
and you can search our archives.
I'm Ellen Hart and this is Marketing Beyond.
Are you ready to go beyond the basics of marketing?
I'm Alan Hart and this is Marketing Beyond, where we talk about the questions that sparkchange and share ideas that challenge the status quo.
Join us as we explore the future of marketing and its endless potential.
(00:27):
consistent with everyone I talk to.
I'm living my life right now with a very clear principle, zero wasted hours.
So if I'm not doing something for myself, for my family, for my friends, for my community,or for my world, I'm not doing it.
Today on the show I've got Eric Litke.
(00:48):
He's the founder and CEO of Unlesse Collective, recently acquired by Under Armour.
He also serves as the president of the Under Armour brand.
Unlesse, through Eric's leaderships, developed a regenerative creation model aimed atchanging the way footwear, apparel, and accessories are designed, distributed, collected,
(01:08):
and safely returned to the earth.
He stepped away from his executive board position at Adidas in December of 2019 to focuson his passion for fighting plastic waste.
At Adidas, he led all brands and businesses, fostering a culture of collaboration andinnovation and scaled the Adidas e-comm platform to reach $4 billion in 2020.
(01:29):
Likki's leadership drove material and process innovation, sustainability initiatives andstreetwear growth, adding over $8 billion in revenue in six years.
And he's initiated partnerships to combat marine pollution, including with Parley for theoceans and drove efforts to eliminate virgin polyester from Edidas products in 2024.
(01:49):
Through all this experience and the conversation today, you'll hear a lot about, unlesscollective, what he's trying to do to help save the oceans, as well as how it fits into
Under Armour strategy and where he thinks the Under Armour brand can go.
That and much more with Eric Litke.
(02:15):
I'm Eric.
Welcome to the show.
Great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I can't wait to have this conversation.
I mean, we're going to get to talk about Under Armour, entrepreneurship, all kinds ofstuff.
I guess before we get started, though, I'd love to know, like, where did you get yourcareer start and how'd you end up here now, like the president of Under Armour?
(02:36):
Is that right?
And you've also got this other role.
Exactly.
So I'm president of the Under Armour brand, which means I look after all creations.
So strategy, operating model, product, digital concepts and things like that.
So just want to make sure we're clear.
have a CEO and I'm just, you know, I'm one of many, my remit is making cool stuff.
(02:57):
How did get my start?
Well, it's a long story.
How far back do you want to go?
But long and short of it is I was sitting in an ad agency in Detroit and I wasn't happy.
was
I was a suit, so I wasn't the creative guy.
I was more of the client relations.
And I just realized that I wasn't happy unless I was doing sport, having done sport, ortalking about sport.
(03:18):
So I got to work, kind of working my network, and back in the day, we called it ourRolodex, and finding out who we could talk to and who was in sport.
And one of my best friends was working for Adidas, Adidas back in the day in the early90s.
He introduced me to some guys that were former Nike guys.
If you're following the industry, you might know the name of Peter Moore who designed thefirst Nike shoes and Rob Strasser who actually signed Jordan among other things.
(03:44):
But those two guys had broken off from Phil at Nike and started the Adidas Americasubsidiary and they were hiring.
And so in 94, I was like, I got to go work there.
And so I, this is before cell phones.
This is before email.
This is like good old fashioned.
writing letters and picking up landlines and calling and I was just relentless.
(04:05):
It took me 12 months to land the job there, but I never looked back.
26 years later, I basically started next to the mail room as what they call sweeper, whichis basically someone that did anything.
then 26 years later, I found myself at the top of the company or 20 years later, I was thebrand president of Adidas and I was in charge of all creation there as a board member and
(04:26):
I was living in Germany.
And then I had this wild idea that we could
make things out of plants versus plastics.
I left Adidas to kind of fix the problem of microplastics and nanoplastics, which I'msuper excited to share with your listeners.
And that kind of led me to being acquired by Under Armour in September of last year.
(04:47):
So it's been a bit of a roller coaster of big to small to big, but it's been super fun.
awesome.
mean, one, mean, just your career going back to 94 before cell phones.
That's, that's fun.
That's fun.
I remember the first Blackberry came out and I was like one of the first ones to have itlike carrying around a Pop Tart in your pocket.
was like, can email, I can call people.
(05:09):
was like, what?
What's going on here?
Honestly, it's like, I hate to say it, but we used a lot of fax machines and teletypemachines and stuff to do sales.
It was like, I feel like I've lived through the world changing events of digitization.
I still miss my Blackberry to be honest, like, you know, that tactile keyboard, not tomention you could skip it across the parking lot and still pick it up and use it.
(05:34):
They, Steve Jobs came in and just swept them out.
I, the Blackberry film is a good one.
If you haven't seen it, it's a really good movie about like, know, the climb and the topand the kind of like the arrogance of being on top and then boom, the humility of just
dropping to the bottom with basically the iPhone coming in and disrupting everything.
(05:55):
Awesome.
Let's talk a little bit about Unless Collective.
Yeah.
You talked about, you know, long kind of storied rise at Adidas or Adidas.
As you will as you will as you okay, you're very European but
It but I think it's more proper, but you know, I don't know.
It is but you know, it all depends where you live and how you your background.
(06:20):
yeah, Adidas is the appropriate thing because this is a little fun fact.
The founder of Adidas name was Adolf Dossler.
And so his nickname was Adi.
So he went Adi and then the first two letters are last name Adi Dots.
So that's basically the guy's name who founded the company.
I love it, I love it, I love it.
Well, you know, from going from there to deciding to focus on plant-based materials,that's a big shift.
(06:46):
Not only like going from big company to small company, but like, you're talking about afundamental technology shift that you're gonna try to take.
I mean, I like to build stuff and I think the big wake up moment was in 2014, Parley forthe Oceans founder, Cyril Gutsch walked in my office when I was at Audi in Germany and
(07:07):
said, hey, would you like to save the oceans?
And I was like, yeah, I think that's important because I am a sportsman and I like thewater even more.
I if I'm doing sports in the water, I'm the happiest person on life in the world.
But I was like, I kind of got a...
job I'm doing.
I'm not going to now go be an activist, but he goes, no, no, no, you understand.
You're part of the problems.
(07:27):
And I was like, what do mean?
And he educated me then on the role of uh nanoplastics and microplastic and how it waskilling the krill and the phytoplanktons that are in the ocean.
The phytoplanktons are responsible for every second breath we have.
once you go down that rabbit hole, it's hard to come back up and be like, oh.
(07:47):
everything's normal again when you when you realize the impact you're having as thepresident of a brand that's producing basically uh billions of products a year that are
made of petroleum based synthetics and nylons and spandexes and things like that that arewonderful, brilliant, breathable, flexible, wicking materials, but they never go away.
(08:11):
They're forever materials.
So I didn't realize that.
And when he opened, when he pulled back that curtain, I was like,
I got to deal with that now.
Not only am I trying to like sell more product, I got to deal with the fact that the stuffI'm selling is now actually killing the ocean and therefore eventually killing us because
then you go deeper and you're like, these nanoplastics are entering into our bodies andsome of us are eating a credit card worth of plastics or drinking a credit card or
(08:38):
spreeding a credit card with plastics a week.
And now you can find out you have a plastic spoon worth of microplastics in your brain.
You find out you're more likely to die.
of a stroke or heart disease when you've got nanoplastics in your arteries, which most ofus are accumulating at a scary rate.
you can't then turn that off.
And there's always so often you can whisper yourself to sleep at night thinking, youyou're doing good things.
(09:03):
Especially when you have children and you want them to have children and then you startand their children and their children, the accumulation.
So at a certain point I had to say, out, I gotta go try and do this full time.
I love my job at Audi.
But I had this thing in my brain that was bigger than sport then it was like, okay, how doI systemically change the fashion industry to get off of petroleum based feed stocks?
(09:28):
And can we, is there a way to change the plants and minerals?
And that was when I left in 2019 and just before COVID hit and COVID hit and I raised somemoney and started a brand, you know, remotely on zoom calls like this, being like, hey,
That's a great idea.
Let's try to make some product out of just plants and minerals.
(09:48):
And we got to work with a hearty bunch of friends that had similar mission alignment.
And it's been a blast.
that was in 2020.
We founded ourselves with some seed capital.
And we then went on to build that up over four years.
And then Kevin Plank, the founder and CEO of Under Armour called and said, hey, would youlike to come on board?
(10:09):
And we'd like to buy unless, and maybe we could have you and unless.
It'd be a nice partnership.
So I hope that explains a little bit about the genesis of why and where it ended up.
No, it does.
does.
then like now with the acquisition and you've got kind of like this dual role thing goingon, like is it bittersweet?
(10:29):
Is it all upside in your mind?
Like how do you think about it?
I'm very consistent with everyone I talk to.
I'm living my life right now with a very clear principle, zero wasted hours.
So if I'm not doing something for myself, for my family, for my friends, for my community,or for my world, I'm not doing it.
So I have a different perspective than the career climbing aspirational person I was whenI was at Adidas.
(10:54):
I've now been fortunate enough to be successful in my career.
When I was at Adidas, we had a lot of.
success.
grew the business $8 billion in six years and we quadrupled the bottom line and all thenumbers were up to the right.
would share price went from $50 to $300 or something.
I was successful.
I had a lot of fun and I was able to take care of my family.
(11:16):
So when I did the startup life, I was at a different place than most startupentrepreneurs.
So now going back into a big machine, I still carry that with me.
So I'm like, okay, I'm here to help Under Armour be the best Under Armour can be.
But I'm really here to scale the endless dream.
I'm really here to scale this promise of a regenerative future for fashion.
And can we systematically change the industry from one that's based on oil and petroleumto one that's based on plants so that we don't have harmful nanoplastics and microplastics
(11:47):
enter in our bodies at an unprecedented rate and we can have it.
Because I just think we're at the tip of the iceberg from what actually is happening to usfrom our plastic exposure.
You know, your skin is your largest organ and it's absorbing things, whether it be sun ormaterials or chemicals at a daily minute-by-minute base.
(12:08):
What you put on your skin, whether it be creams or whether it be scents or whether it beclothing, is having a direct impact on what's going in your body.
So we're now talking about microplastic exposure, but what about the chemical exposure?
Because the other thing that people don't know is plastics require tens of thousands ofchemicals.
to be created and to create and make.
(12:29):
Those chemicals leach into your body when you sweat.
So there's a whole discovery thing that I'm trying to pioneer solutions to with UnderArmour.
Because Under Armour is great because they believe in the mission.
They want to help the mission.
We just launched a collaboration at Milan Design Week, which was fantastic and sold out.
And we're selling it out right now at our Baltimore store really successfully.
(12:52):
they want to scale this idea because
what better place to do it than the brand that was built on a material revolution calledStretch to now reinvent the, disrupt the industry with the next one called Plants.
So I'm super bullish on the force multiplier that we have between the two ideas.
how technical is the solve here?
Meaning you go from performance materials, like stretch to your point, like compression.
(13:17):
mean, that's the historical genesis of Under Armour, right?
It's compression.
And how do you start to think about how do I move that from uh oil-based orpetroleum-based materials into plant-based materials?
And then I also have to believe that like sneakers are the other angle that you've got tofigure out too, right?
(13:41):
So it's a great question.
You clearly know your topic.
yeah, think so as a startup that's got minimal capital, you've got to be very selective onwhat you choose to get into.
We were always founded on the yes, can we make a hundred percent plant based shoe?
And I'm happy to say we did that with the degenerate version one.
(14:02):
It was a work in progress.
It's not perfect, but we did have to work around stretch.
There's five things that we had to work around stretch.
glues, because all glues are petroleum based, foams, most foams are polyurethane, which isa compound plastic.
And then you've got dyes and ink.
So those are like, I call the five horsemen.
Everything else we could kind of get off the shelf.
(14:24):
You know, I'm wearing a crew neck right now.
It's a robust cotton.
We pay attention to how you put it together from a stitch line, from a thread line, from aribbing standpoint.
You know, you can solve those things with mechanical stretch, but for the most part, it'sreally paying attention.
to how you put things together.
So it's the little details.
It's the base material, yes, but then it's the trims and details, the prints and dyes youput on to make it harmlessly go away within industrial compost or even your backyard.
(14:50):
So our stuff, we guarantee everything will go back and create nutrient rich soil.
When you get more technical, when you get into a sock, which took us two years, we do havea sock, but it took us two years to develop with the leading sock operation managers at
FutureStitch to really help us do that because
It's complex to do it without nylons.
It's easy to do it with nylons.
(15:11):
It's easy to do it with synthetics and stretch.
And those are just basically melted plastics.
But to do a mechanical stretch with natural rubber latex, and then you get to the shoe andthe shoe is super complex to do because you've got to figure out how to cure the outsole.
What's the outsole made of?
Okay, you have to procure natural rubber latex.
I worked with a startup called Natural Fiber Welding, which is an unbelievable startupusing only plant polymers out of Peoria, Illinois.
(15:36):
These guys are doing unprecedented work, but they kind of came to fruition the same timewe were at Unlesse.
So we kind of partnered as an arms to say, maybe we could make the impossible shoe.
And that's like, were saying, okay, what's the inspiration from plant based proteins, theplant based polymers and, you know, let's make the impossible shoe.
That was kind of a rallying cry.
(15:56):
We got to work and we figured it out, but it was like, how are you going to create thecompounds?
How are you going to put it together without glues?
So we have, we went to Italy to make sure we were doing
the proper stitching and making going back to the, you know, the intimate, you know,cobblers of Italy that are in the details and they can really make it.
So really, really attention to detail about how those things come together.
(16:16):
Since then we've solved, there's a small company in Maine called Worthing that's makingadhesives that are biodegradable and compostable, which is great.
So now we can use a limited glue, but it's a glue nonetheless.
now we have some glue.
Now there's phone developers coming out.
There's a lot of great innovations going on.
So I think once you start this little, you know, this little snowball on the mountain top,it's quickly can become an avalanche as you find like-minded people and engineers and
(16:44):
designers and chemists trying to solve the same problem of how do we make our product goharmlessly away?
So that's the brief that we have now at Under Armour.
And now we've entered into a company that's, know, multi-billion dollar company with a lotof
capital to invest in research and development more than a little startup that's, trying tolive paycheck to paycheck type thing.
(17:06):
So the step move from being a startup trying to solve for things, as I talked about reallyusing things off the shelf and finding other innovators, giving solutions to now going
inside a big parent company that's as committed to the cause, but now can tap into notonly their own research and development, but working with big chemical companies to solve
(17:28):
the problem of
plastic chemistry versus plant chemistry.
And I'm super excited about some of the things that we're finding out there that we can dowith plant-based solutions.
So we're sticking to the mandate of everything needs to go away, but it's now exciting tohave the capital behind us to develop new things.
That's super interesting.
And as you think about like, we've talked about like how you make it possible to makeproducts that can compete similarly to their predecessors.
(17:55):
How do you think about the market itself, like the consumer, the brand?
Like how does that need to evolve to kind of meet people where they are, but also liketake them on this journey with you?
I think it's so great.
you for that.
I think one of things that we found the company on is that there's a there's a real Ithink my research at Audi and my experience with Ocean Plastic and some of the things we
(18:22):
did there.
There's a real consumer insight that they care.
Right.
That's not a question.
People care.
The question is they don't want to compromise their taste.
Right.
Or the quality of the product for their values.
And they don't want to compromise really too much on price.
We don't want to make it a luxury thing where you have to pay 2x or 3x the price point.
(18:46):
So we really try to meet people at a, we don't want to compromise your taste for yourvalues or your values for your taste.
Because just to give you an example, Oatly Milk came along and did the same thing withplant-based proteins.
It's like, I'm a vegan.
I used to have to choke back an almond milk latte.
But I'm doing it for the world.
(19:07):
But now it's like, oh, an Oatly, I'll take an oat milk one because it's more deliciousthan dairy.
that's the level you need to have when you get into a fashion brand as well.
You can't ask people to compromise those things.
And ultimately, you have to build something that within three years with the right volumescan be a unit economics parity with what's currently offered.
(19:30):
we're not, know, we, oh, we need, sorry about that.
We need to make sure that we have the unit economics that
come together and meet the consumer where they are.
Because if it's just a luxury item, if it's just something that only the very privilegedcan buy, then it's not going to scale.
And my ambition is to systemically change the entire industry from oils to plants.
(19:52):
So we had to meet both of those.
So those are the big challenges to bring the consumer along.
Once you do that, and I would put our current on less offer, which is very lifestyle, veryskate, very workwear meets streetwear oriented.
I would put that up against anything Carhartt and Dickies are doing from a taste levelstandpoint, from a quality standpoint.
So now can we get to the price point?
(20:13):
Yes, but we need more volume.
now it's a question of scaling the volume.
Again, here comes Under Armour, who's going to help us scale audience, help us scaledistribution.
So that's where I think you get into this, this dynamic.
So step one, get the value at the same level they're expecting, get the quality at thesame level they're expecting, get the taste at the same level they're expecting, give it
built on a better stack.
(20:33):
Step two is scale the brand.
and get the volumes to get you and economics on par.
And you just, mentioned kind of where this fits in the scan of things.
You've got, this is in the lifestyle category, if you will.
Like street wear, skate, to your point.
Is there a desire, it sounds like there is, but is there a desire to move this into thecore under armor as well?
(20:58):
At different elements?
hell yes.
I mean, we started where we were because of the, know, the capitalization.
As a startup, you're always undercapitalized, right?
And so you spend your money building the product.
Then you spend your money buying inventory.
You spend your money on your employees.
And then you're like, oh, we're out of money, but nobody knows about us.
So we built this thing.
(21:19):
How do we now tell people about it?
And like everything's paid for play now.
How do we distribute it?
We don't really have a Salesforce and they're not just going to come to our DTC site, oure-comm site without knowing about us.
So now you're like, are you going to pay thousands of dollars a day to try to buy and havesome people see us?
So now the question of how you scale audience and distribution.
So we go inside Under Armour and we're like, okay, now we need to solve for these fivehorsemen.
(21:44):
So the brief I'm working with the research teams, and this is the luxury of being thepresident of Under Armour also, like, okay, strategically, we're focused on this.
We're focused on regenerative.
We're focused on solving some of these big issues that we're limiting the startup world.
And that, know, like that's, solve for stretch, which is to your point is a core piece andcapability of all performance product, right?
(22:04):
You stretch, you need breathability, you need some of these things.
So we need to solve for that, which we don't have right now.
They need to be invented.
And we're, in the process of trying to explore those, those opportunities.
You need to solve for glues.
So if you're to make a running shoe or you're to make a basketball shoe, you're going tomake a football cleat, you got to solve for glues.
You got to solve for plates.
You got to solve for PBEX.
You got to solve for a lot of things.
(22:25):
I think they're all solvable.
but we have to go one after the other.
But the idea is like, can we solve for blues?
Can we solve for stretch?
Can we solve for phones?
Can we solve for prints?
Can we solve for dyes?
If we can do all that, then we can systemically change the $3 trillion fashion industrythat's currently based on the back of petroleum.
stay tuned there, but that's the dream.
(22:45):
Well, I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.
are you?
mean, this is your passion.
You can, you can just feel it, right?
And, and you're driving it at with Under Armour now.
Are you also working on the core Under Armour as well?
Or are you just focused on this?
I'm deep in the machine.
(23:08):
don't wear the title of Under Armour brand president for jokes and giggles.
And that's something I take very serious.
So yeah, we're working on the operating model.
We're working on the strategic plan.
We're working on building a compelling product and building a consumer advocacy.
So yeah, we're deep in the weeds of storytelling and everything else.
I spend 99 % of my time on Under Armour core business and probably 1 % of my time on less.
(23:33):
But we have a general manager that does the day-to-day on my stuff as we build that out.
Gotcha, what do you feel like as a brand, the core, I don't know what it is, maybe it'sthe secret sauce, the core equity that you're trying to play up in the market as you try
to think about how do I propel the Under Armour brand itself?
I think Under Armour is uniquely positioned in the space.
(23:55):
think the roots, mean, first of all, were founder led, which I think gives us a distinctopportunity to lean into.
think anytime you have a founder still engaged in day-to-day business, you still have thatheart and soul.
When I worked at Adidas, the founder was long in the rear view mirror.
I think you've got very few brands, maybe New Bounce, you could argue the Davises arestill running, but very few brands are still.
(24:19):
founder led unless there are small ones coming up like, you know, on running or what haveyou.
So I think, I think from an Under Armour standpoint, having that leadership, having that,you know, North Star is really, is really inspiring and really motivating on a regular
basis.
Being a brand that's in the, in the, in the Baltimore, in the heartland of the Northeast,if you will.
And maybe it's a city that's been taken some harder knocks than it deserves, but it'slike, you know, it's a, it's an industrial city that is, you know, that really represents
(24:48):
the core of Under Armour.
Being a brand that is apparel founded primarily and grew into footwear is also adifferentiator, especially as a multi-billion dollar brand that we are.
It's got, you know, think we leaning into some of these credentials.
So whether it be the founder story of Kevin and then being an underdog, whether it be thehard roots of being in, I mean, you're in Baltimore versus Beaverton.
(25:14):
You're in Baltimore versus Boston.
You're in Baltimore versus Germany.
There's a distinct difference of grit and muscle and hard work and scrap and humility thatgoes into that.
And I'm here for it.
I think Under Armour represents a lot of what America is and the values we hold dear.
(25:35):
It's no coincidence that our headquarters is less than a mile and a half from uh
the Fort McHenry where the Star Spangled Banner was written.
So it's like, there's a lot of there there.
I think Under Armour has always been the alpha brand when it came out.
And I think how we dimensionalize that into representing a few more things is fun andexciting.
(25:59):
I'm excited to build it.
don't wanna divulge too much because we're not fully cooked yet, but I see a lot of whitespace for Under Armour to occupy.
from its unique positioning as some of things I just outlined.
We'll have to have you come back on when you can share more details.
Let's, we're not, we're not at our best right now.
Let's, come back on and celebrate the turnaround, which I'm sure is going to happen, butit's going to take a couple of years.
(26:24):
Yeah, yeah, I hear you, I hear you.
Well, one of the things we like to do on this show is to get to know you a little bitbetter, so I've got a few questions, less about Under Armour, less about Unlesse, and more
about you.
First question, I love asking everyone uh is, has there been an experience of your pastthat defines or makes up who you are today?
(26:45):
Yeah, yeah, many.
mean, that's like, I mean, I don't think there's one inflection point that I had.
I had a pretty privileged upbringing.
My parents were engineers.
My dad was a doctor.
You know, my mom was, you know, basically a civil servant.
was a renowned engineer, worked for NASA.
(27:07):
I helped design the first satellites that went up into space.
My dad was chief of cardiology at University of Wisconsin.
My mom then quit her engineering life to come and raise families and be engaged in ourlives.
And she's basically volunteered her entire life.
I think having role models of parents that were so service oriented and were so um biggerthan transaction.
(27:31):
mean, my dad made the decision as a doctor and you people that will know this, you have tomake a decision.
You can go into private practice, you can go into research and there's two different pathsand they're both intriguing for different reasons.
One's probably much more uh desirable from a financial standpoint, private practice.
One's more desirable to discover solutions to big problems.
(27:51):
My dad went into that one.
So he was a university guy that basically was trying to cure heart disease.
And you don't realize the impact that has on you, but you absorb that.
My mom's that meanwhile, she's volunteering and founding like senior citizens homes.
And she was the CEO and the CFO and raising money to build up, not just senior citizens,but...
(28:11):
assisted living and then the whole network and so now they've got they see basically isYou know that has to help build up this place called um addicts angels in in Madison,
Wisconsin That's this metropolis of just how people can age gracefully is the best way Ican say and and never be shamed to by putting in a home where you to die You know, it's
(28:31):
like no you come in when you want to have assisted meals coming in and you make acommunity and then you okay Then you can graduate to the next level if you need the more
service and the next level.
Yes, it is but it's all there so
So anyway, my long story short, I was surrounded by people that were giving.
I was surrounded by people that were purpose-led and not transactional-led.
um I went the other way.
I went into business.
(28:52):
I became a very transactional, but I've come around full circle now to be very purpose-ledand very intentional with every decision I make.
Even being with you today, it's like, is this gonna help my world, my community, myfriends, my family?
Yeah, yeah, it helps all of them because it helps me get the word out on less.
I believe living your life with purpose and always keeping in mind legacy is reallyimportant.
(29:15):
And I learned it from my parents for years.
Well, what advice would you give your younger self if you were starting this journey allover again?
Hardly less.
with that kind of uh role modeling is hard.
(29:35):
They were high achievers and I was like, I'm rebelling.
I'm going over here and I'm going to drink and smoke and do what I need to do todisconnect from this world of perfection.
So I did that and I came through that and I came through a lot smarter, but I would haveliked to maybe stop a little earlier.
But all kidding aside, I think there's one advice I love giving to myself and everybody Iwork with is don't let perfect get in the way of better.
(30:03):
I think sometimes we dream too much about perfect end states and even being a startup.
we're like, no, just every day you're gonna get better.
Every day just take a step.
Every day take a step.
And if you do that, all of you look up and say, holy shit, look how far I came.
It's like climbing a mountain, right?
You don't realize that when you stand at the trailhead and you look up at the mountain,you're like.
I don't ask a lot and then you look back and my gosh, I've come so far.
(30:26):
my gosh, I've come so far.
So I think it's just really breaking journeys down into steps.
And so I would really lean into that if I were giving that advice to myself.
Love it.
ah Well, is there something either you're trying to learn more about yourself or you thinkmarketers, this is a show primarily for marketers, you think marketers need to be learning
(30:47):
more about?
Could be either.
um I think marketing in general, and I'm learning this, we just hired a head of marketingunder Armour, Tyler Rudstein, um and he's probably 25 years younger than me, which I don't
let him ever hear that, but he's bringing in a whole new playbook.
And I think the marketing rules are changing systemically, just from a general marketingcommunication.
(31:14):
It's no news to anybody that nobody's watching TV anymore.
The cables have been cut.
Everything's streaming all the time.
User generated content is blowing up, but it's it's really paying attention to thosetrends and making sure you can capture on them.
It's the real, if you want to get into the columns marketing 101, it's like, I'm shockedat how fast the industry has changed and continues to change day on and day out.
(31:41):
how, you you go one day from building these glorious cruise ships of
You know, these, these commercials that run for 30 seconds and that you've taken sixmonths to build them and oh my God.
you, it's like, it doesn't matter.
It's like, nobody's watching the Superbowl commercial anymore.
I'm sorry.
It's like, that's a bunch of boomers and Gen Xers.
Like if you want to get to today's consumers, how are you breaking that down for TikTok?
(32:02):
How are you doing it with user generated content?
How are you doing it from almost the most unpolished version you can do?
It's like, this is what, you know, like, let me hold my phone up a selfie is the new cops.
It's like, it's just from a classic train cut marker, like myself, like.
That's just, mean, no, I'm used to being in a studio with LED lights and backdrops and,you know, no, it's like those days are kind of over.
(32:24):
It's the unpolished, the unsanctimized, the raw.
People want real.
They want to feel like they're talking to a real person.
It's like one of the things Tyler taught me yesterday is like internal is the newexternal.
People want to know behind the scenes and they don't want to have a glorious story.
They want to see the innovations in real life.
They want to hear the founder story.
(32:45):
Going back to my...
Again, what Kevin brings that others don't have.
want it.
It's a rich, real, there's authenticity there.
think people crave that.
So how do you become the more authentic, true self on a regular basis is the advice I giveto anybody that cares to take it.
Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
And then two more questions for you.
Is there any like trends or subcultures that you personally follow or take notice of?
(33:10):
just, the question really?
uh
me, to me, it's like, I mean, that's where it like, you have to geek out at what you love.
And there's people that love cars.
There's people love motorcycles.
There's people that love computers.
I love everything surf.
So I'm a pretend surfer.
I like to surf.
I can get on a wave.
(33:30):
I can pop up.
I can ride away, but I'm certainly not an achieved accomplished surfer.
But there's something profound for me about being in the water.
It speaks back to why I'm doing what I'm doing, you know, about feeling.
feeling the breath of the earth underneath your board.
There's something really spiritual about that for me.
And so I just geek out on the whole surf culture, surf vibe, surf look, surf origins,waves, you name it, anything that has to do with that kind of, it's not so much about the
(34:02):
subculture, but there is one big one there.
It's even about the natural elements that create the waves.
The waves is the last,
You know, when you ride a wave, it's the last breath of that wave.
That wave may have traveled thousands of miles, but the end is the beginning, which isthe, you know, it's like, it's like the end is the beginning of your ride.
(34:25):
So anyway, again, like I said, I can get very philosophical here, but it's kind of whatwe're doing with regenerative fashion as well.
We start with the end in mind.
So it's like, it's somehow they all relate back and maybe it's a mistake.
Maybe it's the universe whispering, whispering to me quietly.
It feels like everything in your life is coming in alignment.
I feel very content.
(34:47):
Yeah, well last question I have for you.
What do you think is the largest opportunity or threat facing marketers today?
Well, know, the easy answer there's AI, but you know, but how I think, I think the largestopportunity is absolutely, you know, how do you automate and how do you target people more
(35:07):
effectively?
um I think there's, AI is doing that wonderfully.
I mean, it's like, it's unbelievable what AI can do for you from a creation standpoint,from uh a tool standpoint, from a targeting standpoint, from optimization standpoint, to
storytelling standpoint.
I think that's an opportunity and a threat.
I don't think AI is very authentic yet.
(35:29):
And I think people crave authenticity.
I think there's a reason why people love user generated content.
They love hearing from people they trust.
And you develop these relationships with people you follow through TikTok or throughYouTube or different channels.
think there is a, they let you see behind the scenes.
So you get to the person like I follow this person.
(35:52):
Nathan Florence, which is John John Florence, which is one of the best surfers in theworld But he does these these vlogs on YouTube and I can't get enough of them.
They're 15 20 minutes long and but it's not just him riding waves, which is spectacularIt's him discovering new places him going on tour him and his wife photography and
photographing him him not being able to paddle out because I can relate to that but it'ssuper raw and authentic and I could never do it because it requires a deep insight you
(36:18):
have to go down the rabbit hole of understanding
surfing and his experience of traveling, traveling with a surfboard, with multiplesurfboards and trying to check in an airplane and all that nightmare of them breaking
boards and like all that, but it's all I'm there for it.
Cause it's like, it's a lived experience that you can appreciate.
So I think it's how marketers tomorrow can use the tools of AI, but the craft ofauthenticity.
(36:43):
And so this word I used to like to use it, Adidas from my friend Paul Gaudia.
He used to talk about the best way to craft the few is to,
to the best way to predict the future is to craft it.
So we came up with a term called future craft, which is a beautiful term about how youbring the authenticity of yesterday's atelier shops from a fashion and you blend it with
(37:06):
the innovation of tomorrow.
I think marketers need to think about the same way.
How do you keep it real and personal and human and authentic while using the tools of AItomorrow?
love it.
Well, Eric, thank you for coming on the show.
This has been fascinating.
I hope so.
was enjoyable for me.
always like having discussions about cool stuff.
so, yeah, maybe I'm not the coolest, but I like to talk about things that are interestingto me.
(37:30):
So appreciate your interest and hopefully somebody gets some value out of it.
Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent theviews, thoughts, and opinions of Deloitte.
Material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and doesnot imply endorsement or opposition to any specific company, product, or service.
(37:53):
Hi, it's Alan again.
Marketing Beyond is a Deloitte digital podcast.
It's created and produced by me with post-production support from Sam Robertson.
If you're new to Marketing Beyond, please feel free to write us a review and subscribe onyour favorite listening platform.
also invite you to explore the other Deloitte digital podcast at deloitte digital dot comslash us slash podcast and share the show with your friends and colleagues.
(38:21):
I love hearing from listeners.
can contact me at marketing beyond at Deloitte dot com.
You'll also find complete show notes and links to what's discussed in the podcast today.
and you can search our archives.
I'm Ellen Hart and this is Marketing Beyond.
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