All Episodes

September 15, 2025 124 mins

Graham Bensinger travels to Baltimore to meet with Kevin Plank, the former collegiate football player and founder of the multi-billion dollar sportswear company Under Armour. They discuss the tragic loss of Plank’s father at 19, address challenges surrounding the company, and explore his ongoing efforts to make a positive impact in the city of Baltimore.


Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
This sounds going to be all right.
You want me to decide I. Think you're there?
If my transcript is showing up in B roll right now, we're going
to have a problem. And then the doctor, you know,
explained to us, you know, your father has multiple myeloma.
He doesn't have very long to live.
Look at my mom. Like how do we not know this?
Why do you think he didn't want you to know?
I don't know. I certainly wept on that day

(00:25):
sitting in my car going you blewit, you blew it, you blew it.
You're getting a lot of like thegrit stuff or the, I don't know,
sort of the the edgy stuff. Who put it over the edge?
Was his daughter Riley? Actually, when you.
Hear some of the like industry analysts that came out when you
came back saying how can this guy help fix the problems he

(00:48):
helped create? You think what?
Right now, where we are, I'm theright person at the right time
to lead this company. So I want to take you back to
when you were a kid growing up. How about best and worst part of

(01:08):
being one of five boys? Latchkey kid, one O 5 boys is
different than being the the youngest of that.
You know, my parents have been through it.
My oldest brother's, you know, he's good, 15 plus years older
than me. And so Bill Stewart, Scott,
Colin and then myself. And so Colin and I were only two
years apart, but the rest of my brothers were, you know, much

(01:29):
bigger. So my parents, my mom, you know,
she's a working mom. My dad, he had a lot of business
in Florida. He was a land developer.
She was always sort of popping around.
And then my mom, she's a mayor of my town, and she worked for
the State Department as the director of intergovernmental
affairs and liaison with state and local government officials.
See, I locked eyes when I said that for you because she made me

(01:49):
memorize basically that statement if I ever wanted to
travel with her. And this is also the 80s.
Like, I mean, she's a bit of a trailblazer.
It's not common for, you know, mother of five to be mayor of a
town or, you know, whatever. Yeah, believe me.
She's like, you know, self-described like she's she's

(02:10):
she's tough and she carried thatwith her.
But, you know, she always had a chip on her shoulder and she's,
you know, forever, you know, she, you know, rest her soul,
she passed away, you know, a couple 2 plus years ago.
But she was always the mayor of Kensington, you know, 13 years,
the mayor of our town where I grew up, and she loved it.
She'd sit on her front porch andshe wear a big, you know, a big,

(02:33):
big hat and glasses. And, you know, she'd look at
everybody walking by. And she was one of those people
who just had the ability to always feel like when you were
there, you were there in her presence.
Like welcome is like, you know, and she'd always say things
like, oh, I see you're wearing my color today.
I'm like, I thought your color was turquoise, Jane.
Like, I'll take pink too. You know, it's like a hot pink.
She'll take this one. She'll take that one.

(02:54):
But she could move easily through a conversation of
talking about, you know, her travels with my dad and living
in Karachi to all the travel that she was lucky enough to
take me on as a young kid because my, my, my brother's
kind of moved on. I was sort of the easy one
that's they need a babysitter for.
So she used to make me travel with her when she worked for the
State Department. And her idea of a vacation was

(03:16):
to take you to some convention in some state somewhere.
Right. Yeah.
I mean, I can, I can remember like a couple times loading up
the Country Square wagon and heading like to the beach where
we'd say my grandmother's like one bedroom apartment down in
Ocean City, MD. And there was, you know, 5 boys
with like, one bedroom. So I got to sleep in the bed
with the parents. And then one was in the bathtub,

(03:38):
one was on the couch, 2 on the floor.
It was like the way you just sort of laid out.
But yeah, she, she, by the time I was in like 1213, you know,
10101112, she'd always travel mewith her.
So when she'd go to these conferences in her role, she
would basically represent the state department of things like
Lieutenant governor's conventions, governor's
conventions. And she was just a
representative. So I had the ability to go down

(03:59):
and meet all these kids from allover the country that would be
in the, you know, kind of a the,the teenage, the group that they
had for kids. And it really taught me.
It was the first experience. It taught me how to walk up to
someone and stick my hand out and look them in the eye and
just go, hi, my name is Kevin Plank.
It's very nice to meet you, which is something I still do to
this day. And one of my major pet peeves
is people that are like, Remember Me, huh?

(04:21):
Remember, remember, like, God, just tell me your name.
You know, just why don't you just walk up and just tell me
your name And so I don't have toembarrass you.
You don't have to embarrass me. Everybody feels awful when I go.
Can you please just help remind me instead?
I can sit and go. Of course I remember you, you
know, like just stand up, grip it and give me a hello.
Sophomore year, I believe you fail two classes in high school,

(04:45):
got into a drunken brawl from what I understand.
What's going on in your life then, and what happens from
there? Yeah, if my transcript is
showing up in B roll right now, we're going to have a problem.
But no, I I actually found my high school transcript and I was
like, well, this would be such agreat story.
And I'm like, actually, no one should ever see this.
You could do this poorly in school and actually do something

(05:10):
other than ending up in a penitentiary.
So. Why?
Why do you think you didn't do well in school?
Probably applied, didn't apply myself.
I, I really grew up with this idea of I, I wanted to play
ball, you know, I wanted to go play major college football.
You know, I grew up with Sports Illustrated covers of Tony
Dorsett running out from the cheerleaders at Pitt and being

(05:30):
like, like celebrating. I love the idea of being a
gladiator in arena. And I thought it was the highest
high. I thought it was something that
everybody wanted to do and I just didn't.
I didn't put two and two together.
I was probably a pretty immature14 or 15 and you know, it led to
some life lessons. It was a good, pretty good time
to get your head straightened out when it gets kicked in.

(05:50):
Because it was Georgetown. High school, Georgetown Prep.
Versus the actually Georgetown University football team it.
Was their founders Day that theyhad at Georgetown University,
but they had like open kegs of free beers.
And so I was 15 years old and we, you know, had too many beers
and and got in trouble and learned a life lesson that had

(06:11):
me a leave Georgetown prep for abetter place called St.
John's in Washington, DC. And one of the hardest things
that I ever had to do. But one of those lessons that
really helped shape me. What does your mom say when you
tell her you think you're getting kicked out and she wants
to go talk to the father to try and convince him to let you

(06:31):
stay? Yeah, yeah.
That was a pretty famous time. It was sort of like, you know,
my wild latchkey kid. But I travelled with my mom and
she was she was great. My my parents were great.
Like growing up, they did everything they were supposed to
do. And I think they taught me
independence, which is really important.
But like, yeah, knowing that I'msort of like on the bubble, like
what's going to happen at school.
And I'm like, I got an appointment.

(06:51):
I'm going to have to do summer school this summer, you know, in
order to stay here. I have four brothers ahead of me
that graduated from this place, you know, and I remember going
to see this guy, Father Roche, who was the president of school,
the head priest. And, you know, he sat down.
He just said, you know, I'm hereto tell you that we're going to
be dismissing your son from Georgetown Preparatory School.

(07:12):
And my mother was sort of like, what does this mean?
How could this happen? I put four boys ahead of them
before you. And then he sort of said, I'm
sorry, but, you know, our decision is final.
And my mother says to the priest, she says, you know, my
gosh, even Peter had three chances, at which point I was
sort of like, there's no way he's letting me back in.

(07:32):
And I'm like, before he starts telling her the other two
chances that I'd probably already blown, like mom was just
getting out of here, so go home.And I'm like, oh, my gosh, this
is the worst day of my life. And I know by the time I got
home, I'd had a call from the the coat head coach at St.
John's. And I was thinking, you know,
what happens to me now? Do I go to, do I have to start

(07:53):
going to work? Do I, you know, life is over.
And they called me and invited me to go join Saint John's.
And I'm like, coach, can you getme?
And he's like, we'll get you in.So I'll never forget my dad
walking in the door that night. And, and then and, you know, I,
I, my mom, like, let, let me, let me talk to dad.
So he walks in. I just go, OK.
Yeah, yeah. Dad, Dad, I got some, I got some

(08:13):
bad news, but I got some good news.
I go, you know the bad news, Like, so I'm, I'm not going to
go to prep anymore. But Saint John's called and it's
like half the tuition. So making the family money,
we're helping us out. How?
Do you receive that? Not well, no.
What? What?
Did you remember what he said? Not on that one's particularly,
but that really, really wasn't my my, my dad's game.

(08:35):
But going there, it was one of the best things that ever
happened to me. It was a wake up call that I
needed in life. And you know, you're lucky when
you can find that at the right age and find it sort of in a
controlled manner like that. And Saint John's was awesome.
It's a great school and it's an even better one today.
So I'm really proud of what thatplace means.
I think high school was five year experience for you.
Your your mom had said the last year of the high school, which

(08:57):
was where you spent a year somewhere else was like paying
for you to go to prison. I I believe.
But you mentioned St. John's being formative
experienced. How so?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, collectively 10 years
between high school and college,that was my they, they call them
doctors usually, but it was. Character building that's.
Right. I, I, I definitely had plenty
of, plenty of character building, but it was, it was the

(09:19):
lesson of moving from there, from from Georgetown prep to
Saint John's and then ultimatelyrealizing that I still need a
little more time. I was young when I graduated
high school, I was only 17 yearsold and I decided to go to go to
prep school, which is place called 14 in Military Academy,
which is pretty extraordinary place in and of itself.
How so? It's really special place, about

(09:40):
30 miles outside of Charlottesville, 14 in Virginia,
and it drew kids from all over the country.
And with some of the best talent, if you've been to junior
college, you'd burn your eligibility.
So going here, you could basically get yourself like
another year of high school, give you a chance to take your
satsa lot of guys went there to get their boards, get their
grades up. Some guys went there to get
better looks. I was like some combination of

(10:00):
all three, and I thought it'd bea good year for me.
My mother, yeah, she called it Lorton, which is the big
penitentiary in DC, which she called Lorton with tuition.
So that was basically where it was because I sent her a a
holiday card that I had, I was awas a picture of four Keenan and
I drew jail bars on it and I hada little picture of me like this

(10:21):
and I can't draw. And it just said Get Me Out of
here. Was my, was my my my postcard.
So did you not like it at the time?
I mean, nobody likes going to a military school, you know, at at
17, going on 18 years old, when I started it, it was my
decision. I wanted to go.
I mean, I I still had this dreamif I wanted to play major
college football. And and that was a step that.

(10:43):
Yeah, I mean, 14 is a really special place.
So the year that when I went to 14 in there was, and it's really
a large part of the reason that Under Armour started to begin
with. There was 135 guys on our our
class. So a one year prep school class
guys went there because they were, you know, all conference,
you know, all met Allstate, whatever the designation is like

(11:04):
a lot of good football players. And I say we had a really
special class. The coach realized he had too
many people and I'm sorry, he said he had to weed this out.
And so the decision was when we started August 8th and practice
camp was going to go 3 weeks, soto the 29th.
So we ran three weeks of three day practices.
So by the end of three days there were about 65 of us left

(11:25):
in that class. So of the 65 though, what was
unique is 23 of them wound up going on to sign Division One
scholarships. I walked on at Maryland, so I
wasn't part of that. 23 of the 2313 got drafted. 4 of them were
first round draft picks. One guy won the Heisman Trophy
in Eddie George. But there was something really
special about the guys that stayed and that made it and that

(11:47):
went through. And there's like a brotherhood
in a bond that still, you know, of course exists and lives to
this day. And it was that relationship
from 14 and that again was a really key, key aspect of why
Under Armour, you know, exists today it.
Seems like you've came from a family of strong women.
Your grandmother has been referred to, at least in media,
as a Georgetown real estate maven.

(12:09):
I think she had like 10 townhouses, had an office that
she kept I think until she passed at 93.
How do you think she influenced you?
I mean, she coaxed me into a good grandmother, you know, foot
rub every now and then. But she was a grandmother.
She didn't give you a dollar or $5.
She was like the special grandmother because she was as

(12:31):
strong as it gets. She'd give you, like a 20.
And if you were really good and she liked you, she gave you a
50. So there you go.
Especially then. Yeah.
So you know how to do it. But, you know, you'd stay the
weekend and you do the whole thing.
But a foot rubber, too, would, would, would get through it and
worth every bit of it. But she was really special.
You know her She famously she had she outlived 3 husbands, all

(12:53):
of which were Marines, the thirdof which was my my mother's or
the the first was my mother's father and my mother was 12.
Her two sisters were six and four years old each.
This is like 1948 or so. 4849 her husband had a heart attack,

(13:13):
dies, leaves a single mom with three kids.
She didn't have a college education, so she went out and
she got a real estate license. She started renting apartments.
Then she was able to, you know, buy her first townhouse.
She was able, She ended up moving in with her, her sister,
my her aunt Bridge at this little house in Georgetown at 14

(13:34):
O 6 35th St. My mother and her sisters were
raised there. And ironically, that's actually
the house that still existed where I ended up when I
graduated college, moved into and started Under Armour, you
know, out of that little house. But she went on to, you know, I
think she owned, you know, 10 or11 properties around Georgetown
by the time she she passed. But she was a, she was a a

(13:55):
self-described, she was a, a, a,a tough woman.
Yeah, Anything that stands out on that front.
With her, I mean, she would sortof the the grit, the shine of
her like she was there was no one really, there was no one
really like her Like she was oneof those big lights in the room.
I'd say she outlived 3 Marines is that she had all these guys
eating out of the palm of her hands.

(14:17):
But you know, she, she, she was,she was just a very, she's a
very special lady who just taught you sort of toughness,
grit. I think a lot of the qualities
that sort of built from, I mean,imagine being in that kind of
situation in some way somehow move with your sister, figure
out, get your degree or get a get a license and and start
selling and just keep moving, you know, not complaining.

(14:38):
What do you think you learned from your dad?
Yeah, I mean, my dad passed whenI was when I was 19.
It gives you perspective. You know, the worst thing is
when someone tells you and I just had, I found out I have
this, this problem or disease orsomething else.
And the first thing people you just say is, oh, let me tell you
about mine. It it's, it's taught me that

(14:59):
when I, I talk to friends of mine as I go through, you know,
a parent passing or moving on, you know how hard that is.
And all I can ever think about is is man, it would have been
great to have had the last, you know, 3033 years, you know, with
my dad, you know, for him to be able to see me and everything
else. But to be honest, the
relationship that we had is probably not unlike, you know,
many people, many of your viewers, the relationships

(15:21):
they've had with their parents too, is when I say, you know,
sports can sports can save the world.
You know, it's a big statement, but sports can certainly, it can
build a relationship. And you know, my dad and my
relationship was, was was sportsand it was pretty cut and dry.
It was like if, you know, if we wanted to talk, if I wanted to
come to my games, like be good start, you know, get on the

(15:44):
team, you know, have a winning team, like fight through it.
So it was all those things of trying to impress my dad.
And there was nothing like, you know, looking and, you know,
during a game and seeing him standing in the, you know, the
end zone between the goal posts,you know, with his arms crossed,
just sitting there, you know, watching.
And he was supportive. He wasn't like he wasn't hard,
like, you know, you missed that tackle.
You had that play. But he just loved come and

(16:04):
seeing it. And he was there all through my
high school years. He was there through forking and
he was there, you know, my, my, my first year at, at Maryland.
So I remember, I remember getting to wash me suit up and
that was pretty special day. You know, it's one of the
lessons I think that I applied today at Under Armour is that,
you know, dad, why don't you come?
Because you're supposed to come.You know, you're my dad.

(16:24):
You should do this. And like, that's one tact.
The other tact is like, I don't know, like he likes sports a
lot. Like I bet, I bet if I'm good, I
bet he'll want to come watch me play football.
You know, I've thrown enough good parties in my life to know
that, you know, you can, you canbeg people, you can pay people,
you can spiff people, like come to the party, do this, or you

(16:45):
can focus on throwing the world's best party.
And everybody's going to want tobe there with my dad.
I'm like, let me, let me show you a great time.
Like come watch me play ball. It'll be a lot of fun.
And that was something that built the connection of he and I
and something that I, I frankly,I translate to Under Armour
today instead of begging or pleading with.
So, so a great party and everybody's going to want to be
there. That's how I think about the
brand. You remember the 7:00 AM snow

(17:06):
shovel days. Yeah, that wasn't anybody else
forcing me though. That was, you know.
You were you were hustling even back then.
Yeah, it was, it was organic to me.
I mean, it was it was just what I did it, it, it felt like my,
my goal when I was a kid, for whatever reason is I always

(17:27):
wanted to, I wanted to be independent.
You know, I didn't want to have to rely on anybody else because
I'd plan on having, you know, a scholarship to go to college.
It's one of the reasons I wantedto play football.
I wanted to impress them. I wanted, you know, my older
brother Stewart had played at Virginia Tech and I'd been to
see a game that they played at West Virginia.
And I walked into the stadium and I saw these gladiators on
the field. I'm like, I want to do that.
Like, oh, and they'll pay. They'll pay you to do that.

(17:49):
And the idea of being able to say to my parents of like, thank
you for, you know, raising me and I'm, I've been a handful for
sure, but you don't have to pay for my college.
That was, you know, sort of my goal and my ambition and.
Even early on like that, you were conscious of that.
Yeah, yeah, I, I, I never liked,you know, my dad was, you know,
he was, he was tight, you know, he was like, you know, hey Dad,

(18:11):
I'm, you know, I got a date thisweekend, you know, like I borrow
$20.20 dollars, we need $10.00 for, I'm not giving you $5, you
know, so. And he lost a lot in the the
crash, right? He, he went through a, he went
through a thing with real estatewhere, you know, at the end of
his life he'd sort of been extended.
He had one building that he basically bet everything on and
he got caught up with the bank and sort of things didn't go so

(18:33):
well so. What do you think that taught
you? Well, you know, I never knew
that he had something was really, you know, personal.
My father had multiple myeloma, which is a cancer that today,
like a good friend, Tom Brokaw, you know, has been, you know,
effectively, there's a number ofpeople like that that I don't
know if we're calling it cured yet, but they're certainly
prolonged for extended period oftime.

(18:56):
But I'll I'll never forget one day.
It was my, my first year at Maryland and I was, I guess it
was my, my, my, my second year. And I came home that day and I
walked in. I remember my mom saying your
dad's not doing well. And I, I, I, I said, what do you
mean dad's not doing well? Because he never told any of us.
We didn't know that he was sick really.

(19:17):
And so this is August of 19901991.
And he, he and I, I hadn't seen him like through this lens,
maybe I just wasn't looking, butI'll never forget.
I said, what do you, what do you, she goes, can you, can you
stay home for your workouts? I'm like, mom, I got to go to my
workouts like I'm not. So what do you want me to do
with dad? And he sort of turned the corner

(19:39):
and I for some reason, he just looked so frail and I hadn't
seen it. And he'd lost a lot of weight
and he was like a 200 and, you know, 5 or 10 LB guy and he was
probably like 175. And it was like, you know, it
happened over a period of time. I remember he turned the corner.
I said, dad, what's going on? And he collapsed.
And then he started, you know, vomiting blood.

(20:01):
And I'm looking at my mother going, what the hell is going
on? And she goes, you know, we got
to, you know, I got to call his doctor.
I said doctor. And so I pick him up, put him in
the back of my mom's car. And I get in there.
She's like, his doctor is in Virginia, you know, And it was,
you know, a 45 minute drive away.
And I think we made it there in 20 minutes.
I was shoulder rolling. I was, you know, blowing by

(20:23):
people. I've got my dad in the back and
he's basically passed out, pulled to the front of the
hospital, grabbed my dad out of the back, you know, walking
inside and say, somebody help me, you know, somebody help my
dad. And the doctor came out and
then, you know, he took him backthere.
And then the doctor, you know, explained to us, you know, your
father has multiple myeloma. He doesn't have very long to

(20:44):
live. Look at my mom.
Like how, how do we not know this?
And he'd been wearing something like a radiation box that he'd
had on him for a period of time.And, you know, I hadn't figured
it out. But then he said, you know, your
father's, you know, his, his illness is terminal.
And so at that point, you know, it's tough that my, my freshman
year is my first year of playing.
I was able to start on all, all four special teams that year.

(21:08):
And he got to come see me play, which is great.
But then we ended up by, you know, December, we had him in
Hospice care and then then we, you know, he passed away January
2nd, 1992. Why do you think he didn't want
you to know? I don't know, I don't know, it's
sort of I grew up in that that that genre where you know,

(21:29):
you're this wasn't like I love you, son.
You know, it wasn't like we never said that.
You know, that wasn't it was thenonverbal was like come to the
game and kind of give the head nod and like that was enough.
And it wasn't me going, I'm there's something missing from
my life with this. But you know, it was, it was, it
was brutal, you know, at a level, but it was one of those

(21:50):
things like, you know, pick up and, and keep moving.
So, you know, I dealt with it, But it's definitely it's, it's
something that served me. And it's something that taught
me, you know, the bar that I want for my relationship with my
daughter and my son too, which is to make sure with my family
that they're in a really loving place.
And, you know, tell them that I love them every single day and
make sure they hear from me. And that's what matters most.

(22:13):
At least indirectly played into your work ethic.
Sure. I think you know, one the chip
on the shoulder, you know when you don't have a dad, you know,
and there's I guess today I hatesaying I think that's maybe more
commonplace. It shouldn't be because
everybody should have a dad thattells them that they love them.

(22:34):
But yeah, without, without question.
I mean, getting kicked out of school, like having that, you
know, I'm going to show them all.
I'm going to show them all. Like, that's that.
That drives a lot. You remember selling at the
Grateful Dead concert and how your sales compared to that of
your brothers. Yeah, yeah, those guys were.
Those guys were Deadbeats. They didn't do a thing.

(22:55):
So it was. Like a shocking difference,
right? Well, I mean, we went down
there. This is a, this is a lot of fun.
It was my brother Scott had beento Guatemala to go learn Spanish
and Scott was one of my early partners in Under Armour 2.
He got like four 4% of the company right early.
On he did, he did great. He did great.
So I had this was when we were, you know, it's one of my

(23:17):
favorite movies. Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross.
It's like, you know, the sign ofthe back says, you know,
salesman are born. They're not made, you know, And
so you have like this, like, is it any or not?
And so my, my brother Scott, I was like 13 or 14 years old and
my Scott was like 18. He just gotten back from
Guatemala, learned some Spanish,but he brought these two bricks
of those hemp bracelets that youfind like Grateful Dead shows

(23:39):
and they cost like $20 a brick. And so he just said, Hey,
there's a there's a dead show intown this weekend.
You know, let's go. We're going to go sell these
bracelets and you guys are goingto roll all the money up to me.
And, you know, here's how it works.
I'm like, I'm not sure I'll go with you.
So we made these cardboard like signs and then we strung the
bracelets across. So basically the people like at
these festivals walking around with the bracelets going, you

(24:02):
know, bracelets, bracelets $2.00a piece, you know, have
bracelets $2.00 a piece, 3 for 5bucks.
So we took the subway down there, got out, had a big
backpack filled with them. Like hid this, hid the bracelets
someplace. And my brother Scott was like,
OK, it was like 11:00 in the morning.
And the festival is all day. The concert didn't start till
that night. And, you know, everybody break

(24:22):
up and go sell bracelets, you know?
So we meet back at, like, 1:00 in the afternoon.
Colin comes back and goes, you know, Colin, how'd you do?
You know, he's a writer in Seattle now.
And he goes, well, I sold the first couple and then I started
feeling guilty about how much money we made.
So I just gave the rest of them away.
My brother Scott comes and it goes, how'd you do?
And it looks like he was changing, you know, trading
beers for, for bracelets or maybe something else.

(24:45):
And he was sort of out there like you guys are like, give me
the rest of them. I got 350 bucks in my pocket.
I've been sold out for an hour. Like, give me the rest.
I'm going to go sell the rest ofthem.
So it was, it was a, it was a good day and, and a lesson and
learning that. Yeah, I loved it.
I loved walking around. And, and then as I got older
from 14 and grew up and continued to do dead shows and

(25:06):
started getting big for football, I started looking too
much like a cop. So people stopped buying stuff.
Really. I heard that.
I tried, I tried to like I'd go and I'd, I'd, I've one time I'd,
I'd put a like a, I'd wear like a big floppy hat and I'd put
like a, you know, big tie dye T-shirt on and it would work a
little bit, but it helped. How'd you avoid the college

(25:27):
rules restricting collegiate athletes from holding jobs?
Yeah, well, the rule. You know, prior to nil was you
were not allowed to have a job, but nobody said anything about
starting a company. So, you know, it between
Maryland, between, you know, in the summers, I did that last
year of, of, of, of banging nails, working construction,

(25:49):
wearing timberlands to work every day and, you know, sweat
and, and, and hard and start in the morning at 6:00 or 7:00.
And then there's a better way todo it.
And it's in working for somebody, for, you know, a
salary or paycheck was not something that inspired me.
And I thought, you know, I'd, I'd rather do it myself.
And as a walk on. I didn't have a scholarship.

(26:10):
I was lucky enough to earn 1 after my after my freshman year
at Maryland, which is like one of the greatest days of my life.
Was it? Yeah.
What? What?
What stands out to you from finding that out?
Well, I mean, I was a walk on. So I was in my freshman year.
So I had my, my, my, my first, my red shirt year.
There was after my, my freshman year and I went down and had a

(26:32):
couple big plays and I was like the special teams guy.
I was like, I made it my thing. And you know, when you have
specialists, it was like, you know, come out and like, I'm
going to run down and you know, we had this thing called be the
hammer, not the nail. It was a be the hammer, not the
nail award. And so like my freshman year, I
got the the hammer award. Like, I don't know, 3-4 or five

(26:52):
times or something. So, and it was basically you'd
run down. I was the wedge Buster guy.
So it was where you'd and again,in in football, they tell you to
keep your head off. They tell you, you know, lead
with your shoulders, all those things.
But I'm like the heaviest thing on my body is my helmet.
Like these guys are about 30% more athletic than I am.
So I'm going to use everything Ihave to throw into being able to
break that wedge and and get to the ball tackler and, you know,

(27:15):
and be on the team, Be a be a part of that arena experience
and, you know, tied in with yourteammates and knowing that
you're working for a goal that'sbigger than any any one of us,
which are like all these lessonsof life.
Then of course, I play you. What about that is your thinking
about it kind of moves you. Team, There's a great line that

(27:36):
Steve Mariucci has, the old great coach, Cal, the 49ers,
etcetera. And he says his favorite part of
football is the huddle. It's where you get all these
different, you know, these people that come from different
places, different backgrounds, different colors, different
religions, different sizes. And it's 1 moment.
Everybody comes together, everybody gets quiet and they

(28:00):
yield to one person to say, whatare we doing?
And that comes from a higher power that's from a press box or
from the sideline and goes to the quarterback.
And then one guy calls to play. Everybody says, you know what,
we got it. They clap hands, they break the
huddle and they go run a play. They get a chance to do it
again. But at that moment, everybody's
doing the exact same coordinatedthing.
And that's what makes, I don't know, I think it makes it, it's

(28:24):
beautiful when you have that when, when the play works, you
know, and what you, and then there's other times when you
have to deal with things like the, you know, when people come
back and they're like, no, no, I, I don't like that play.
We should run a different one. Why aren't we doing this one?
And that's for like, you know what, we're all wearing the same
jersey. And that's a very special thing
is to have your jersey be in thegame, have the ability to

(28:45):
compete. And that's what we get the
chance to do. So do I have this correct?
You stole the Cupid Valentine idea from somebody else.
Yeah, good artists create the best artist steal.
I was at at at College Park. I'd realized that this bracelet
thing, my brother wasn't going to learn Spanish anymore.

(29:05):
And so the I'd I'd sold through the 2000 of of of bracelets and
I was getting into T-shirts. But this is one thing that in
the calendar, you know, as a walk on, I was always trying to
say like, you know, mom, dad, like I got it, like I'll get my
tuition. I'll get my tuition and books.
Now, to be clear, I don't think I told my parents about the
scholarship till at least six months after I had it.

(29:27):
And so like tuition book's like,boy, it's going to be a hard
year. And mom, I hate doing it.
Maybe next year I'll take the three grand.
No, but I, I was my freshman year at Maryland, I'd, I'd gone
and worked for some guy and he said, Hey, I'm, I'm, I've got
this rose service, you know, canyou help me deliver flowers?
And I was like, sure. And the day that I went to go,
I, I showed up at this guy. He's like, you know, how can I
help? He's like, you know, meet me at

(29:47):
my apartment at 2:00. You know, I'll give you flowers
to deliver. And he'd bought flowers from a
wholesaler. He pulled them together.
And I walk in this apartment andit was like, you know, one or
two in the afternoon and there'slike 8 people running around,
totally disorganized. This guy's like assembling
flowers in his in his room. And I'm like, he's like, I need
you to deliver these flowers. He gave me like 12 orders.
And it was like College Park, Bethesda.

(30:09):
It was like in 30 miles apart. It's a Friday afternoon and I
remember getting in the car and I ended up delivering all the
flowers and the last one I delivered was like 10:30 at
night because it was like, this was the mission.
So I, I did the mission for him.I got back and said this was the
worst organized thing I've ever seen.
He's like, yeah, man, I'm graduating.
So it's like, all right, we can,we can do better than that.
So the next year, I, I, I, I'm like, this is a pretty good

(30:31):
business because it comes right after or right in the middle of
winter workouts starting just before spring ball.
So there was like a break where February 14th hit in the
calendar of a football calendar.So it worked perfect.
And again, you can't have a job.They didn't say anything about
starting a company. So I had some guy go out and
draw me this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon of like Calvin beating

(30:52):
Hobbes over the head with a, youknow, doesn't like, why didn't
you buy me roses for Valentine'sDay?
Stuck these Flyers all over campus and called the Cupid's
Valentine. Our kind buds smoke all the
competition, which led to a bunch of knuckleheads calling
like do you really have kind buds?
There was like, this is a serious business.
We're selling flowers $25 for a dozen flowers my freshman year

(31:14):
and bought 1200 flowers, put them in boxes, you know, sold
through all hundred dozen flowers, you know, gross had a
$5 delivery charge. Gross 3 grand cost me like 600
bucks. I'm like, this is great.
Came back the next year and my my my girlfriend at the time,
now my my wife DJ, she was like critical in having the free

(31:36):
labor to be the one who was taking taking phone orders at
this time. Came back to the next show.
Like we can do better than that.We did 250 dozen my junior year.
We did 350 dozen my senior year.Delivered 11186 dozen flowers in
a single day. My problem was the ambition was
selling 1500 dozen flowers in a single day, but it was like 3
days staying up in a row and I'll never forget, you know,

(31:59):
taking phone calls like like leading up into like some of the
like important lessons learned from, you know, flower delivery
was I also bartended on Wednesday nights, which.
I heard you were quite the bartender.
Not bad, but that's why I learned a lot of great lessons
behind a bar too. Where you learn fast math, you
learn how to deal with people you land under manage with, you
know, the person who's like, youknow, they're waving a $10.00

(32:21):
bill at you and, you know, trying to be a big shot or
something else. And like, you know, let's be
clear. I can be bought.
It's just not $10.00 for this, for this amount.
So, you know, and I'll, I'll make her, I'll make her fall in
love with you too. If you you know, let me help out
to be a good bartender. In a weird way, do you think
bartending actually was quite beneficial in teaching you sales

(32:43):
skills? Incredibly important
relationships, control. I'll never forget the first
lesson that I learned at a bar. The guy came in and he says, I'm
going to teach you everything you need to know about being a
bartender. So what's that?
He says it's this, That's what'sthat.
It's just one second. You know, it's like, it's like
there's somebody who owns this bar.
But like when you're behind the bar, like you're in charge and

(33:03):
now you're accountable for the bar.
You're accountable for the environment, the vibe, the
culture at the at the bar as well.
You've got a bank, you're running a business.
There's a lot of people having alot of fun, but you've got a job
to do at the end of it. You've got to sit down, you got
to be clear of mind and thought and be able to count your bank,
have everything reconciled, be able to give that back to the
bank and do a good job. That was something I took a lot
of pride in. Like your tips will be

(33:24):
reflective of the job that you do as well too.
And there's people that did it the wrong way.
There's people that did it the right way.
But I took a lot of pride in like, being, you know, really
great and having people want to come see and come spend time
with you and like helping, you know, helping the bar, promoting
it and all those, all those kinds of things.
It was like, it's critical lessons.
But, you know, when I could go on a Wednesday, you know, for a
gig that started at 9:00 and, you know, close at 12:30, count

(33:47):
my bank by 1:00, back home by 1:30, you know, 2:00 in the
morning, have two or 300 bucks in my pocket.
Like all week. It was like, all right, it kept
it moving and kept it going. So nobody ever knew about that
bartending gig either on Wednesday nights at Nantucket
Landing or Parker's. What do you remember from
visiting New York's Garment District before you graduated?
It was an awesome place. You know, 1996, it's fascinating

(34:10):
to think about 1980. I think it was like 95% of the
apparel worn in the United States was manufactured in the
United States. By 1996, the time that I started
Under Armour, it was 50% of apparel used in the US was
produced in the US. Let me correct my math on these
two. Five years later, it was down to

(34:32):
less than 10%. Today it's less than 1% at best.
And this isn't some ambition of how do we get the manufacturing
district back or manufacturing back to the US.
Because I spent the 1st 5 or 6 years of starting Under Armour
on a soapbox, you know, being proud of the fact that we made
our products, you know, from Baltimore to Bel Air, Ohio to

(34:53):
Afraid of Pennsylvania to Allentown, PA.
And I didn't know anything aboutmanufacturing when I'd started
UA, but I'd heard about this place called the Garment
District in New York City. So I got in my 1991 Ford
Explorer, drove up to 34th and 7th Ave. parked my car, and
started walking around and just trying to find I've got this

(35:15):
synthetic material. Like, is there more stuff like
this? Because I bought this first
sample ripping the content labelout of my compression shorts
that I wore at Maryland. Took him to a local fabric store
called Minnesota Fabrics for something in Beltsville, MD,
just next to College Park. Found this material that fit the
idea. I had made my first seven
prototypes, tried them out on myteam mates and realized this is

(35:36):
something better than a short sleeve cotton T-shirt in the
summer and a long sleeve cotton T-shirt in the winter that
doesn't get wet and soaked and and nobody ever thought about
apparel. Apparel never been part of a
consideration for Is this something that athletes would
want? That's a better solution.
So walking into the garment district, it was like, you know,
100 fabric shops. And I remember I'm like, wow,

(35:59):
there's so much more I can see. I was finding a manufacturer who
was down on 10th Ave. that I'd read up, picked up a copy of WWD
Women's Wear Daily, looked in the back, found a contract
manufacturer. And like, I need to make my, my
first run of shirts here becauseI'd, I'd go into a local tailor
in Maryland, had the 1st 7:00 or8:00 to sort of proof of
concept. Now it's going to go to scale

(36:21):
and build 500 shirts. Found a manufacturer in the old
NBC building, the National Biscuit Company.
These guys were, you know, walked into this shop that was
like interesting, interesting atbest.
The guys that I I found, but they brought them fabric, gave

(36:41):
it to these guys. Supposed to take two weeks to
make my shirts. It took like, you know, two
months to get it, you know, backfrom them.
And it was. And again, the answer was always
like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We shipped them on Tuesday. We shipped them on Tuesday.
Can you give me a tracking number?
Yeah. I'm gonna have to find that
point and get back to you. Oh, they haven't gotten here.
Oh, they must be out. Let me check on them again.
Anyway, I I had my first, my first run of products in New

(37:04):
York City, where I took those first 500 shirts.
And between my high school team St.
John's, there was 11 guys signedindividual and scholarships for
my high school team. Four of them made it to the NFL
and two of them won Super Bowls.The 13 plus guys at 14 and plus
the friends of friends. One of my founding partners,
Ryan Wood at Under Armour Colorado to 14 and Military

(37:26):
Academy went to Youngstown State, won the the one AA
national championship his freshman year with head coach
Jim Tressel lost in the championship game their
sophomore year. Transfers to Arizona State gets
in a rooms with Jake Plummer andso it was like this network of
people that I had his high school best friend was a guy

(37:47):
named Tony Pacelli first number one draft pick for the
Jacksonville Jaguars. So like that was basically the
genesis of Under Armour was it wasn't like a clear product
idea. I was coming out of school or
coming through school and I'm like I know 50-60 guys that are
playing in the NFL. It wasn't like I had this great
idea what do I do? It started with the idea, which
is always the line that I give to to young people, to kids, you

(38:10):
know, give me, you know, tell mesomething smart like, you know,
what can I do to, you know, be agreat entrepreneur?
And my easiest advice is always just like utilize your network.
Well, what does that mean? The personal left or right of
you, They may look like they're just the kid that, you know,
eats nuts all the class or pickstheir nose or something else.
But they may be the next Fortune500 CEO.
There may be the next like keep those relationships fresh.

(38:31):
And that's where my relationships were with these
group group of individuals who had made it to the highest level
of the sport that I aspired to be a part of and realized really
early on that I wasn't going to play in the NFL.
And it wasn't like a lack of ambition like by guy I ever do
it. But like I knew sport was going
to be part of my life. And recognizing that, you know,
these 60, these 60 athletes werethe best use was not me calling

(38:55):
them and saying, Hey, can I borrow $300.00 from you?
Congratulations, you made it to the NFL.
It was, hey, I I went to New York, I made these shirts.
I got about 500 of them and I put about 60 care packages
together to everybody ever played with every friend, a
friend. So Jake Plummer, Tony Boselli,
you know, got them, you know, hey, Ryan, can you send this to

(39:16):
these guys? And Ryan went on to be drafted
by the Dallas Cowboys, played with them as well.
So like. Not an insignificant expense
either, no. No, no, no.
And, and, and sort of an, an awesome opportunity because as I
put, you know, the 1st $16,000 of seed money that I had into
like making this first run of 500 shirts, getting these

(39:38):
packages put together and getting the brand out there.
Because what I realized is number 1, I had a network, but
#2 that network had a, had a life, a lifespan on it.
And the average career in the NFL is 3 years and three games.
The pension kicks in at three years and four games is how it
works in the league. And so I realized these guys are

(39:58):
famous, but they're going to be famous for the next couple of
years. So what can I do?
Without leveraging them, withouttaking things from them, but how
could I be accretive to their process and give them a piece of
performance? So I put together packages of
three T-shirts. I sent them to everybody I knew.
I asked guys like you also give me the names of like, who's your
equipment manager when you were at Florida State?

(40:18):
Who is your equipment manager atMiami?
Who's your equipment manager at USC?
One of these guys, these equipment managers, the guys
that actually in charge of the budgets, I put packages of three
3T shirts together for everybodythat I knew and just said, hey,
this is Planck. There's this company I'm working
for. Because if I said it was me,
they'd be like, oh, you know who, what is this thing?
Is this real or not? So I was always kind of used

(40:39):
like this mystical, you know, there's, there's some bigger
force, you know. Explain why you had two business
cards. One business card, said Kevin
Plank, president. Another business card, 7 Kevin
Planck sales manager. And so I to any customer, I'd
always give them the Kevin Planck Sales Manager business
card. The reason for that is because
when they hit you and say, you know what, we're going to need a
better number. How to negotiate this?
I'm like she said, I'd love to give you a bigger number, but

(41:01):
the old lady back in, back in DCwould never go for it.
So I'm sorry, my number, my number is firm.
And then you needed the President card because when I
talked to our suppliers, our fabric of those, our
manufacturers, they need to knowthat the buck stopped someplace
and that like they're going to get paid and I was the one that
was going to do it for them. So firm handshake again.
Look them in the eye, Kevin blankly.
Yeah, you'll get your money. You upgraded the 91 Ford

(41:22):
Explorer to a 94 Ford Bronco at some point, which also similarly
got a ton of use, right? Yeah. 53,000 miles this first
two years because at 23 startingmy company 2223, I wasn't old
enough to rent a car. So I'd fly to Atlanta and I

(41:43):
tried doing this. Excuse me, can you help me?
This is life before Uber. And so I, I, I, I, I, I tried
working it out with Hertz. I tried working it out with
budget rent a So I realized I'm just going to have to drive
everywhere. If I'd go to, you know, UVA,
Virginia, Virginia Tech, you know, down to South Carolina,

(42:07):
stop through Marshall, like justmap these routes off with how am
I going to go visit, you know, 10/15/20 schools in a trip and
trying to make, you know, one team in the morning, one team in
the afternoon. But I, I, I realized like when
I, I sent out those packages for, for my friends, I was like,
do me a favor. I sent you 3 T-shirts.
You know, try this, try this product, wear it, wear it under

(42:28):
your pads. And if you like it, please give
one to each guy in the locker next to you.
And if they like it, you want more, tell your equipment
manager and have them call me. And that was like one of the
biggest unlocks when I got started as a was the network I
have of guys that would get me in the door to validate the
product. But then it was sort of figured
out. So how does this work?
You know, when you look at AN-96, it was very different

(42:49):
than sort of the way that deals are structured today, which are
very formal. It's very much it's one mono
brand like this is this is our outfit or our supplier.
You know, when I played, it was like Nike shoes, champion
jerseys, you know, things were still sort of coming together.
And I'll never forget when the equipment manager, I, I went to
our equipment manager at Maryland, Ron O Ringer.
And I just said, hey, Ron, if I wanted to sell this product,

(43:09):
like how does it work? And he goes, well, you talk to
me, I said, what does that mean?Not the president, not the
athletic director, not the head coach, not the offensive
coordinator. He's like, that's me, that's the
equipment manager. And by that he's like, I'm in
charge of a budget of, you know,$1,000,000 million and a half
dollars to build uniforms and bring them in.
I'm like really like you guys dothe do the laundry every day.

(43:31):
It's like, Oh no, this is now. And now it's a full blown
administrative job. And back then it was a little
more of like get them dry. But the pitch that we had for
the equipment managers was a this is a much better product
for your athletes. It's works, it's great.
But the other thing that worked and made Under Armour relevant
is to how it grew so quickly wasthe fact that by wearing,
putting synthetic in the washingmachine, these guys basically
had to stay there until all the laundry was done every night.

(43:54):
And so we could get them out of there basically an hour earlier
because Under Armour would dry in the dryer like this versus,
you know, sitting around waitingfor soaking wet cotton T-shirts
to dry. Did you kind of think you were
done when you checked your bank account and there was only $1500
left? Yeah, it was more like -1500
dollars, but. I mean, did you kind of deep
down think that was probably it?Well, that was a longer story.

(44:17):
So I'd had about $2000 in the bank that day.
And I'm giving you you're getting a lot of like the grit
stuff or the, I don't know, sortof the the edgy stuff.
There's like a much softer like the lessons learned from getting
kicked out of high school like those, those definitely trailed
on. But this is life before private
equity, Angel investing like just didn't really exist in 96.

(44:40):
The Small Business Administration played a critical
role in helping finance the company.
And so I'm grateful to the, you know, federal government for
their help of doing that. Lots of credit cards.
Yeah, about 5 different credit cards totaling about $40,000.
So my initial $16,000 in seed money to $40,000 in credit cards
to, you know, friends and family.

(45:01):
And at one point I'm, you know, I'm selling, you know, a point
in the company for 1000 bucks. And it was like, I had one guy
that was a friend of mine and I was like, I, I need $10,000.
And they're like, ah, do I want to invest in you or not?
And then like Hemming and hawingabout it, like, you know what,
I'm going to make the investment.
I'll give you the 10 grand. Great.
I'm going to need the money now.I'm going to need, I'm going to
need that now. He's like, OK, I'll, I'll, I'll

(45:22):
fill out a check. Then right now I'm like, I mean,
I need you like come with me to the bank.
We're going to be like, deposit it right now.
Have you signed the check over? If that's OK?
Like it needs to be clear by 2:00.
So it's one of those. And they, they, they turned me
down. But there was one time where I I
turned and I too. Too bad for that person.
It's OK, it's OK. There's like, there's like 100

(45:43):
people that now like, oh, I was going to invest in your company.
Now I'm like, I don't remember you so, but but that's that,
that's, that's a privilege, That's an honor.
And that's, you know, what a great testament to all the
people that have worked so hard to build, to build you way up.
But there was one time that I, Iwent to the bank and I'm like,
you know, I was, I, I had, I used to sit every night with a

(46:03):
Big Blue checkbook on my lap andI check, call the bank, see what
the balance, how many checks areclear.
This is before digital banking. You basically would write a
check, you'd send it to somebody.
They didn't have to deposit it. How long it took for the float
from one bank to another bank. He had like four or five days of
float that you could play with. So I was constantly in this, I
think I'm going to get this other check.
It'll come in on Thursday. I'll get this other check, it'll
come in on Friday. And one day I was like, I'm just

(46:26):
short and I need to make, you know, my, my payroll, which was
only in myself. Ryan Wood and Kip Faulks, my
original partners with an Under Armour.
And it was like Thursday. It was like Thursday afternoon.
I'm like we're we're short. We need like 2500 bucks.
So I took out the last $2000 in the bank, got my car drove to
Atlantic City and like knowing that I needed to make I need to

(46:49):
double that my basically need tomake I need to come up with 4500
bucks got like $4000 and then proceeded to lose it all and to
like know what broke feels like.So this must have been a year
into the company around 1997. I'd come home from in that drive
like drove to Atlantic City, hadthe the the presence of mind to
fill my car with gasoline beforeI walked into the casino, walked

(47:14):
in, lost my lost all the money that I had in driving back.
I mean, I was broke, like broke,like there was no money.
I was now short of probably about $4000 short of all those
checks are going to come through.
I had no money in my car. And this is back when we used to
have change. Like there was no quarters left.
And I'd gone through the Dimes too.
And like the nickels, like anything silver was going to get

(47:36):
a look for me. But I couldn't even pay the toll
at the Delaware Memorial Bridge coming home.
And what happens when you can't pay the toll at A at a toll
house? They stop the line of traffic,
the person comes out, they writedown your your license, your
license number, They write down your license plate.
It's incredibly embarrassing, like one of the lowest points
and driving back, I know where to go.
And I, I, so I went to my mother's house.

(48:00):
I'm like, I, I need dinner. And to do this was like
demonstrating the love of my mother.
She's terrible cook, wonderful woman, awful cook.
So going that I'm going there for dinner was not a good sign.
So I show up and she's like, how's everything going?
What's going on with the company?
And I'll never forget anything positive you say to somebody,
they're going to tell what one or two people.
Anything negative you say they're going to tell 12 to 15
people. So I, I was always really tight

(48:21):
with that, with that list. And so even my mom, I didn't
want to talk to my brothers and I didn't want to hear like,
how's everything going? And I'm like, it's going great.
Just signed, you know, three more schools, you know, we just,
you know, Georgia Tech's on board.
We've got this one on board. And I'll never forget it was a
day where I actually, I, I haven't wept much, a lot in my
life, but I certainly wept on that day sitting in my car

(48:43):
going, you blew it, you blew it,you blew it, you chose the wrong
thing. What's that place like when
you're in that mindset like? Of I, I blew it.
It's a terrible place. It's doubt, it's disbelief, it's
it's God, it's vulnerability, which I'd say is a weakness.

(49:05):
But today I know it's a strength, but like learning from
that place and like I screwed up, I made the wrong decision.
I was thinking about a couple different things I could have
done after school and I chose this one and it hasn't worked
out. And so now I'm broke.
What am I going to do? Go back to Prudential or or
Yeah, a Prudential life, Jeff. $40,000 job offer from
Prudential. So I end up going to the time I

(49:25):
kept the PO Box because my I wasin a residential neighborhood.
I couldn't register the businessat Grandma's basement.
I couldn't have the phone lines kind I'm coming.
I had to be careful how I answered the phone.
So I went to the PO Box that wasin Kensington near my mother's
house. And I was like, I'll just go
check the mail. And I walk in there, I open the
PO Box and there's a check for seven, $800 from Georgia Tech.
And I'm like, what was I talkingabout back in business?

(49:48):
Let's go get this thing. And I promise it was the last
time that I ever doubted like that.
I make the right choice. From that day forward, I was
like, you know, take the ball and we're going to we're going
to run as hard as we can and go build an incredible company.
You mentioned your mom's cooking, and how about the Froot
Loops and lasagna you lived on with Sal and Debbie?

(50:08):
Oh, that was an awful experience.
The, the, the guy who really taught me manufacturing because
I'd gone from, I was in DC at the time.
I found a manufacturer up here in Baltimore.
I had another friend who was starting a business named Dan
Prunzic, great player at Maryland, and he's had a friend
named Kurt Angle. And Kurt was a big wrestler of,
of WWE fame, but he was a great Olympic wrestler before that.

(50:29):
You're going to build this thingcalled the anklet.
He said, hey, how did you make your product?
How's it work? I said, go to the Chamber of
Commerce, find a group of manufacturers.
He ends up pointing me to this place called AAA in the USA,
which is in Bel Air, Ohio, whichsits right on the Ohio, West
Virginia, Pennsylvania border. And Dan called me and he said,
hey, I'm, I'm here. I'm trying to get the anklet,
which is what we were trying to do.
I'm trying to get the anklet built.

(50:50):
And this guy Sal here, I told him about your business and he
told me to call you. He wants to talk to you.
So I picked up the phone and this guy, Sal is he's like,
Kevin, this is Sal. You know, I'm from the Bronx,
right? Kind of guy started every
sentence with, I've been doing this 35 years.
You don't know, kid. You know, it's just like every
sentence would start that way. And he's like, he's like, where,

(51:12):
where are you making your stuff?And at the time, my manufacturer
in Baltimore was giving me the runaround and I couldn't really
get them the order. And they're like, they had an
order for me. And I'm like, where's my stuff?
He's like, we got a bigger orderfrom Reebok.
We're not making for you anymore.
Loaded up the back of my Ford Explorer.
It was in DC. It's like 9:45 in the morning.
Drove to Baltimore, picked up everything I had loaded in the
back of that car. Drove to Bella, Ohio that

(51:34):
afternoon. Didn't have any place to stay.
Sat there working out patterns with Sal, the line supervisor,
this woman named LMA Holmes, whoactually still works at UA
today. And we sat there working on
patterns till about seven, 8:00 at night.
And at the time it was like, where are you going?
I was like, I'd have to drive home to, you know, get a room.
I'll be back tomorrow morning. 4hours is the the the drive time.

(51:58):
And he said, why don't you come stay at the house?
This is great. And I go to this house and Sal,
it was like this little house inBellaire.
OH, it had these like paper thinwalls and Sal was like a
performer or something. But it was a very, it was, it
was a lonely night of sleeping on some couch like this,
listening to Sal and Debbie, I guess make relations or

(52:19):
something. But it was like it was kind of
holding. My thought is you're going, this
is a very awkward experience andso, but love was in the air and
Under Armour was bound to get billed from something as as
aspirational as that. So no baby that night, but
certainly a brand was built. Or Born.
It seems like there's a kind of confluence of events in 1999.
I mean, because 1. You have any given Sunday where

(52:39):
not only do you convince the Oliver Stone film to use your
product, but they pay the 40 grand or whatever it is to your
fourteen person company. Yeah, you've done your research.
At the time. And then two, you convince your
employees to go without pay for a few weeks to take out the ad
in ESPN the Magazine. Yeah, 1 moment more

(53:03):
consequential than the other foryou.
I mean the any given Sunday was a big deal.
It was heading into Y2K. You know at the time we were so
our first year we did 17,000 in revenues 110,400 thousand
1,000,003 so 90. So what was that 99?
You were, you know, $1,000,000 company and we'd, we'd, we'd, I

(53:28):
needed money. You know, I was, I was working
with the mills, but the orders were picking up.
And the hardest thing about any new business and people ask
what's the most difficult thing,It's cash.
You know, cash is king, cash is queen.
You know, to make sure that you just have enough of it getting
in front of the supply chain because I'd have to place an
order of raw materials. It was 60 to 90 days to have
that from order to being built. You need a credit for that to

(53:51):
happen. I didn't have credit.
I was able to get about an 80 or$90,000 credit line from one of
our important partner mills. And I found out that I could get
people to make the same things at other mills, which would
allow me to go from $80,000 credit here to an $80,000 credit
here, $80,000 credit there. Built that first went out and,
and, and, and had that, that first run of shirts that were,

(54:14):
you know, built from these manufacturers.
These guys really they, they, from what I, I, I learned from
the manufacturers, like how do you, you know, piece together
the, the, the pain of, of cash or getting in front of it 90
days to order the fabric. My credit had to be good, but my
credit was basically maxed the entire time from 97, you know,
at 80 grand. So I'd have to send them checks

(54:36):
to basically pay down to get them to place new orders.
That's why getting other manufacturers helped.
Then you'd have to ship the goods.
Then you had like the Georgia Techs, the check that I'd
forgotten about from Georgia Tech that, you know, the order
that I do them for them six months before going through a
government bureaucracy. It took that long to be able to,
you know, get paid to me. And so trying to increase that

(54:57):
cash on cash cycle is like one of the most difficult things
that I've ever had to bear with.And and then the sales come in
from both the the movie and the magazine.
Well, it was. And.
It was a year off, kind of, and.But it was a bet with the movie.
I mean, that year in 99, everybody was worried about Y2K.
Like what's happening with, you know, is the world going to end

(55:18):
when the, the the zeros turn over on the computers?
And there was this movie coming out.
And I had a friend of mine who was an extra, you know, on the
movie. And I said, what are you doing
after school? Did you make it in the NFL?
And no, I didn't. But I'm doing this Oliver Stone
movie down in Miami. What's that?
You know, can you tell me a little more about it?
Found out who it was, found out what the production office was,

(55:39):
put a package together, wrote a letter and just sent to the head
costume designer from Mary Zofries and just said, you know,
dear Mary, my name is Kevin Plank.
And we have the latest new, new company, which is now
outfitting, you know, the state of Miami alone, Florida State,
University of Florida, University of Miami,
Jacksonville and the Miami Dolphins.
You know, all where they're, youknow all where our our brand.

(56:00):
And I sent the product package on a Monday, got there on a
Tuesday. I got a phone call by Wednesday
afternoon. And it was like, hey, Oliver's
now seen this. He was looking for something
interesting in the product spacethat would be like a character
in the movie. We like your brand a lot.
I'm like, well, that's great. He's like, why don't you go
ahead and send us, you know, canyou send more samples out there?
Sure. And then just send us another

(56:21):
hundred. I'm like, we're going to need to
charge you for the other hundred, you know, like what,
like do you understand the exposure we have?
Like I I get it, but we you know, we're going to we're going
to need to charge you for that. So throughout the course of the
filming of the movie, any given Sunday, which was like this,
nobody knew how big it was goingto be was going to be and Oliver
Stone, you know, biopic, you know, massive deal.

(56:41):
And so they ended up paying for it.
They spent about 40 grand with us.
And Under Armour certainly became a a key character in that
movie, like showing up on Jamie Foxx and showing up on, you
know, LL Cool J and showing up just like on, you know, Al
Pacino, you know, Cameron Diaz, like all these great, you know,
Hollywood stars that were there.But in order to celebrate it, I
was like, this movie's going to come out and we don't we've

(57:03):
never done an ad before. We haven't been in in in
marketing. We've just been sending our
brochures around that we had andwouldn't it be great if we could
market this? And so it called ESPN the
Magazine, which is this is the, the preferred medium at the
time. And it was 25 grand for a half
page ad. So I remember calling a company

(57:24):
meeting, there were like 17 of us at the time.
And to say, listen, you know, wegot, we got a little bit of
money right now, but I want to spend it, you know, I want to
run this ad on ESPN the Magazine.
And we sort of like, we'll let everybody like give their input
and like, I think we should buy.We need more material.
We need more machinery. We need to hire more people.
It's like, I think we should runthe ad.
And so that's where I'm like, and we may need some money.

(57:45):
So anybody that doesn't need their paycheck, like if you want
to skip a week, it'd be really helpful.
We'll appreciate it with, with equity and a bunch of people
participate and some people like, hey, I can't.
And like that was OK, but we ended up we had to prepaid this
$25,000 ad. So for a, you know, one point
whatever $1,000,000 company we ended up doing from that one ad

(58:06):
in ESPN The Magazine, we end up doing like $850,000 like the
next week. So it was like this amount of
flow because I had inventory, itwas just like, well, how are you
going to sell? This was the end of the season,
you know, teams were all done. So it was December.
It was just like basically clearing out our inventory.
So it took me another month to fill all the orders, you know,
just to get the fabric in and get things going.

(58:27):
But like some of my best advice to new entrepreneurs as well as
always, you know, before you worry about private equity or
anything else, do you have inventory?
I've got inventory. Why don't you go sell your
inventory? Because it doesn't come with a
vote or an opinion. And you can actually finish the
vision that you have for that brand and not say there's great
private equity investors. I have many of them too that
help. But you know, early on it's

(58:48):
important to be able to just getthat sort of operation bootstrap
and pull yourself up. The 2005 IPO, what was the cash
offer you got the day before that would have been take home
you personally and why did you decide against it?
It was more like a few months before then, but it was, it was

(59:10):
for like $850 million and my banker sent it over.
It was an offer from an, another, another major company.
Which company? It was VF Corp.
And I'll, I'll never forget. I was thinking like, do I say
that or not? But yeah, it was VF Corp and my
banker called me. He goes.
He, I, I got an offer here. It's 850.
He goes. But you know, if you want it, he
goes, I'll get you a billion dollars easy.

(59:31):
Like, let me, let me go, let me get, let me add them.
And so it's basically a billion bucks on the table.
And I thought about it and I talked to probably 25 or 30
different people at the time. I was 3132 years old and, you
know, I still own 50 some percent of the company.
And I remember I talked to everybody and it's like, I

(59:53):
remember calling my lead director, this guy Buzzy
Krongaard, real funny. He ran Alex Brown, He's the CIA,
the really cool man. And, and everybody was like, Oh
yeah, my God, you got this, Like, what do I do?
And I was like, what do you do? Are you crazy?
I remember calling Buzzy. I said, you know, Buzzy, we got
this offer. You're the lead director.
You know, something really got to think about.
He just goes, so when do we close?
I'm like, well, I'm not really, I'm not really there, but I, I,

(01:00:18):
I talked to. Three people are CFO at the
time, this guy Wayne Marino, really conservative guy.
And he's like, I don't know, I think there's might be something
special here. There was Ed Stack at Dick's
Sporting Goods and you know, hisopinion was, look, I'm partial.
I I'd like a competitor Nike. I think you guys have a chance.
You know, you could do it, you know, and he said for me, you

(01:00:39):
know, Kevin, it was never just about the money.
And like that really stuck with me.
And the third was my wife and I just said, you know, what do you
think? And she just goes, but you love
Under Armour. So I was like, yeah, we, we, we
turned it down. And then, you know, which was
incredibly risky because, you know, a lot of people had
invested some of those, you know, $1000 inputs and things.

(01:01:02):
And, you know, if the stock never got above the billion
dollars, you're vulnerable to lawsuits and all these other bad
things that could happen. So it was definitely a bit of a
risk. Had you taken that, you just
invest that in index funds, you'd still be a billionaire 20
years later and not have, you know, put in the couple decades
of work, work since, since. You're doing the math for me,

(01:01:23):
Yes. Yeah.
I mean I got. It too.
I have to imagine that's you've thought about that.
No, I mean, the beautiful thing about I think the
entrepreneurial mindset is they do a pretty good job of knowing
where we aren't. And like, it hasn't been a bad
ride. It's been an awesome ride.
The experience, the athletes, the interaction.
More important, Like, I don't know what Under Armour exists
today or would be some portfoliobrand, you know, of, of another

(01:01:46):
company that was like here todayand is relying on the the
product manager that was responsible for running it.
But like, we've been able to build Under Armour to something
special. You know, you're sitting here in
our hometown today, you get a chance to see the Under Armour
Sports House, which is as uniqueand extraordinary as it gets.
It's meant to be the living physical manifestation of
walking into an athletic brand, you know, little girls and

(01:02:06):
little boys that now gets a try on and like have that Under
Armour, you know. And I don't know, maybe I can,
maybe I can't. Well, and at some point it's
just money like it. Yeah, I never want to be as now
I've shareholder money. So it's, but it's, it's, it's,
it's a thing that you want to make sure that you're
respectful, that, that you understand that process.
But you know, this is when we're, we're, we're, we're,

(01:02:29):
we're at the big boy and girl room, you know, so we got to
make, we got to make the right decisions.
But it, it, it was but with, without it, you know, fulfilling
the vision of many of the thingswhich Under Armour stands for
today, Because I do believe thatthe greatest chapters of this
company are in front of us. And, you know, it's fun telling
some of these old stories and, you know, kicking back and
getting into it. But like the energy and
excitement of what we have coming for it's like, I'm proud

(01:02:50):
of our story and our past. I really AM.
But the best part of it all is the simplicity of, you know,
that little girl or that little boy when they take an Under
Armour shirt and believing that the world doesn't need another
capable apparel and footwear manufacturer.
The world needs a hope in a dream.
They need something to aspire to.
When you know that you can have something as physical as like a

(01:03:12):
shirt, that when I put this shirt on, like I believe in my
head that there's fundamental magic powers that exist in this
shirt that are giving me some superpower to do something
extraordinary that I can never do on my own.
Like that little bit of a lift is what our brand is meant to be
for. And whether it's somebody trying
to, you know, make varsity, makethe starting roster, maybe just

(01:03:33):
that little girl, little boy, you know, on their first day of
school with a lunch tray and going, where am I supposed to
sit? Like I'm scared.
But this morning I put my head through and my arms through this
shirt and I felt that squeeze onmy body or I pulled this shoe on
my foot and like I'm wearing an Under Armour.
And that's like, that's like they, they make magic, you know,
and they're giving me the superpower like that, that gift,

(01:03:55):
that inspiration, that what if Apple or Tesla made shirts and
shoes? Like I, I don't think our, our
industry is sometimes, you know,look, it's style, it's cool,
it's all those things, but it isinnovation.
It is giving people like, you know, I don't know, is their
shirt better than our shirt? Like my shirt wears a pound and
a half less than their shirt. You know, we're, we're building
something which everything we make should have that component

(01:04:17):
of of special that goes into. It and I understand from talking
to those close to you, innovation and product is just
kind of running through your mind constantly and the rest of
the day is going to be primarilyforward-looking in the future.
But I have one more question, because you mentioned VF Corp.
There were rumors, gosh, decade plus ago that Nike was going to

(01:04:39):
make a run at acquiring Under Armour.
Did they ever reach out? No, no, they just, they, they,
they like, they like killing people sometimes.
So. By the way, you have said before
they don't play fair. Why not?
Because they're a big company, everybody has has tools,
everybody has resources and you know, there's a lot of strengths

(01:05:00):
to being a big company and there's a lot of strengths to
being a small company. You know, we're sort of in this,
this tween stage where I feel that we're, we're more agile
than the bigs and we've got moreresources in the smalls in our
industry today where where people are coming from.
And what's what's your line? We're big enough to do anything,
but not big enough to do everything.
Yeah, and that that's it. Like if we want to go sign an

(01:05:20):
athlete, an asset, a league, youknow, we're a 5 billion ish
dollar company with a half a billion dollar marketing budget.
You know, that's a big enough budget to do anything.
And what I hear from people moreoften, which stepping back into
the CEO chair has been more about is, boy, it doesn't feel
like you guys are spending half a billion dollars on marketing.
And so like, that's one of the big initiatives that I have this
this time around is making sure that like it really, you know,

(01:05:43):
gets through that. We're not just showing up in
sort of, you know, non active aspects of the world of there's
a passive Under Armour logo on on a wall.
If a bank could do the deal, we shouldn't do it like a naming
rights deal or things like that.We should be proactive.
We should be living and breathing with our athletes, you
know, on body, you know, workingwith cool and influence.
And it's different today that the world works.

(01:06:04):
It's not just about signing A-Team or signing an athlete.
Because Steph Curry winning another NBA championship doesn't
mean that sales will skyrocket the next day.
All has to be part of a much bigger plan and a much bigger
process, which is a long work inprocess.
Speaking of marketing and Steph Curry, explain how Ken Bazemore
helped you. Yeah, he's instrumental.

(01:06:27):
Well, if, if, if you want something, you know, you don't
always just have to go right outand sets losing learning, you
know, from maybe being a little more like a, a, a blunt hammer
of learning how to have some tact.
And so Steph Curry was this amazing #7 draft pick and he was
on to his, what, second or thirdyear of his contract and he was

(01:06:47):
coming available with Golden State Warriors.
We had a guy with a relationshipthat, you know, knew Steph but
knew Ken. And Ken was like a journeyman in
the NBA but ended up playing, I don't know, 15-16 years, made a
ton of money. Ken happened to be Steph Curry's
locker mate for the Warriors. And so in seducing Stephen, it
wasn't just to send you a bunch of stuff, you know?

(01:07:09):
So it's like, well, how do we have our first handshake?
So the first handshake was let'ssign the guy in the locker next
to Stephen and then we're going to overwhelm him with product.
And, and Ken was like, you know,a #10 #11 player.
And Steph was starting for the Warriors.
And he was already annoyed by Nike's pitch.
Yeah, yeah. But, but so we just thought,
well, we're going to go ahead and we're going to overwhelm Ken

(01:07:32):
with service, with attention, with product.
We'd send him a package like every day.
He'd just get something else. And that just stuff's like, man,
those guys, they take care of you, huh?
Yeah, Yeah, they take care of me.
Why? They really take care of you.
And Ken, you don't play that much either.
Like, well, I wonder what it'd be like if if I talk to them.
And so it's sort of like began the relationship and there was a
good relationship in place, but that got us in the door and got

(01:07:53):
us our our pitch and our our first shot at Stephen.
And then who put it over the edge?
Was was was his daughter Riley, actually.
What did he say about that? Well, when he was coming down,
we got into the conversations, Nike and Adidas for the two that
he was contemplating. Ken helped us get get Under
Armour into the conversation with Stephen.
And so when he was trying to make the call, I was like,

(01:08:15):
alright, we got to pick a shoe brand.
You know, what do you want to do?
Stephen? He's home with Aisha and his
daughter Riley just at the time,and I think she was like 2 years
old or so. And he's like sitting on the
couch like this. And he had all three shoe boxes
lined up on the coffee table andhe took a shoe out and he had
like a shoe sitting on each one of the three different shoe
boxes. And, you know, one's orange,
one's red and ours is black. And he goes, which one do you

(01:08:39):
think I should do? And so she turns around like a 2
year old and like, you know, wobbles over to the thing and
she picks up the Nike shoe. She looks at it, turns it
backwards, throws it over her shoulder.
She goes, she picks up the Adidas shoe.
She looks at it, turns over, throws her shoulder and she
picks it up and she turns aroundand she goes, here, Daddy, this
one. And so Riley Curry is the reason

(01:08:59):
that Under Armour was able to sign with Stephen so.
OK, tough point in the relationship. 2018.
I think you and your then president and COO travel W to
convince Steph not to leave the brand.
Take me into that meeting and what's discussed.
Culture, love, relationship, personality.

(01:09:24):
You know, the brand was getting punched from a couple different
angles and Stephen was in, you know, he was a he was a great
partner. You know, we went in there and,
and we broke bread and we had a conversation, said what we would
like to do. But that was the that was a
generation of Curry brand. And you know, there there's not
an athlete in the world that doesn't say, you know, or a
call, phone call from an agent that I get, which are typically

(01:09:46):
the eye rolls of OK, get ready for it.
I want you to sit down. But we want to do something
innovative, whatever, whether it's a a film project, whether
it's an athlete, whether it's anasset.
But we'd like to create something kind of like what
Jordan Brand is for Nike. And they're like, yeah, yeah,
everybody wants to build the next Jordan Brand.
It's very difficult to do though.
Our commitment to doing that with Stefan has been in, you

(01:10:08):
know, endeavour of, of love and learning and, and knowing just
how much you just have to be resilient of just staying and
sticking with it just over and over and over.
Again, and I was going to say, going into that meeting, I think
you're annoyed that he's not wearing enough Under Armour
product to games. He's annoyed that his shoes
aren't selling as well as he'd like.

(01:10:30):
As you're thinking about how yougame plan that meeting, what's
going through your head And thenlike, how do you solve it when
you're actually in that situation?
Because, you know, this is just one example.
I'm sure these sorts of things come up all the time when
you're. Yeah.
There's a human dynamic and everything, a bathroom break at

(01:10:51):
the appropriate time as well, just like cool things down, like
make sure everybody can voice but.
And you're conscious of that? Yeah, but this is like any any
athlete relationship is always about people want to be heard.
You know, I'm not just some gimmick, some some some slogan,
but I'm a person. So like my culture, my brand, my
personality have to be a part ofthat.
So it's critical that we have that we're in the the dawn of

(01:11:14):
the Lake Tahoe tournament where,you know, Stefan shows up every
year and he's like best in classand has the dreams of, you know,
playing on the on the at least the senior tour someday.
I think is he is that good, but it was like Curry golf was a
part of it. You know what we do with with
Curry women's, what we do with Curry kids.
You know how we make him the ambassador, you know, like and,

(01:11:34):
and having an interaction like that, like taking him to to Asia
last year, it was extraordinary.You know, we had a four city
tour over six days that was planned.
It turned into a three city tourbecause we showed up at one of
the cities and they said, I'm sorry, but you can't come here,
Mr. Curry. And we said, well, well, why
not? So because your hotel, the Ritz
Carlton, there's 8000 people that are waiting for you to get

(01:11:56):
there. Every room is rented.
There's people just riding the elevators up and down.
And like the phenomenon that he creates is something which is
extraordinary. And so, you know, that's our
obligation is to make sure that we can do a good job of
harvesting that harvest that love that people have of
something that's so pure, which is the the stroke of Stephen
Curry, which there's just nothing else like it.
What lessons have you learned from kind of the uniqueness of

(01:12:18):
that partnership and how do you get it to where you'd like it to
be long term? Yeah, anyone of our
relationships is something whichis meant to be authentic, right?
It has to be like felt, you know, we've been we've been
doing this a long time and we work in a competitive industry.
There's a lot of brands that compete to try to make their

(01:12:40):
version of what's the next greatsports brand or I have the next
great basketball shoe. And that's why, you know, having
an ambassador like Steph and having a product team and the
innovation team like what we have Curry flow is something
we'll show you later today. But the stickiness of the
innovation or technology that exists in that shoe, it's second
to none. And it's part of what helps
create the separation or the stopping power between Stephen

(01:13:00):
and his opponents, which is something which is, you know,
what our brand is meant to do ishelp give you that, that that
little nub, that little edge that just allows you to be a
little bit faster, a little bit stronger, and we fight a little
bit longer. I want to talk to you about your
personality. I was reading one of your
friends that was quoted saying, I mean, they remember you being
intimidating, having a fiery demeanor, competitive back to

(01:13:24):
when you were in fifth grade. But how about the ways in which
you think you're difficult? Certainly patience has been
something, you know, I'm, I'm, I, I want to think about things
like even having this conversation of like, So what is
that energy in the room? Like, Like how do you introduce
it? Because I'm a lot.
What does that mean to you? I've got a point of view, you

(01:13:46):
know, I don't walk in a room andjust say it's lovely to be here.
I'm looking around and going. It's a really nice room.
But you know, they should have had a a second shade on that
blind and it should be somethingthat could be closed right now.
You're thinking like, here's thefive or 10 things that are wrong
with the 90 things that are great.
It doesn't mean that you have tomight be mindful that that you
can't become, you know, so analytical or or make sure that

(01:14:09):
it's not perceived as anything other than I just want it to be
the best, you know, and that's sort of that, you know, that
that aspiration that EOA has is that our job is to, you know, we
say we haven't built our defining product as a brand and
it's looking and going like well, what makes like.
And that's your mantra. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's, that's a, that'sa, that's, that's given
information. I mean, our, our, our vision,

(01:14:30):
our mission statement now is, you know, provide you the
performance solutions that you never knew you needed.
And then once you tried them, you're wondering like, how did I
ever live without this? You know, and it's like, Oh my
gosh, like what did the world dobefore?
You know, stretch and microfiberand moisture management, like
all these great things that now exist that we take for granted.
But Under Armour created that the term performance apparel was
coined by our brand. When I, you know, I had to make
a, a filing at the Patent and Trademark Office, which was, you

(01:14:53):
know, here's the name, it's called Under Armour.
And they're like great, My friend Pat Herson, who was
worked with the the the Patent and Trademark Office and had a
firm that did all of our our licensing and awesome guy.
But I was like, great, I'm goingto file this trademark for you
for the word Under Armour. Talked to him yesterday.
Yeah, cool, cool, great, great guy.
I said I'm going to file this trademark for the word Under

(01:15:14):
Armour. And and he's like, great, You
you need to have a a specific with a generic.
I'm like, what does that mean? He's like, well, you can't just
say, you know, Coca-Cola, if youCoca-Cola beverage or, or, or
soda pop, you know, it's like everything.
So it had to be Under Armour andit was like athletic apparel.
It was like athletic apparel, something didn't fit about that.

(01:15:35):
And so like we're going to go with performance apparel.
It was like performance apparel.It sounds like set of street
tires like it didn't didn't really register with people.
But coining that phrase Under Armour performance apparel.
It really was. It was much bigger than AT
shirt. It's become an entire industry
that's led to pants and shirts and jackets and just a mantra
that why don't we just allow nonperformance from our apparel

(01:15:55):
because we expect it in our footwear, which is where our
industry had been focused I think prior to Under Armour
coming along, which is why that was our our ticket that got
punched. That allowed us to sort of get
to the next level was that we basically said we're going to
take the entire space of appareland we're going to focus on
making everything there actuallydo something to enhance the
performance of an athlete. All right, wait.
I want to get back to you though, because I'm curious kind

(01:16:18):
of your thoughts on your personality and kind of what
makes you tick and all that. If somebody was evaluating you
who knew you well and said theseare where I think there's most
opportunity for improvement, what do you think they'd?
Say I can be relentless, you know, in getting on an idea if I

(01:16:39):
believe it's the right idea. But I'm, I'm a, I'm a big
believer that the best idea wins.
Like this isn't how do we run around and push my idea?
I mean, I've got 2 products I'm most excited about now, which is
a, you know, our, our stealth foreman crushable hat, our, our
new no way backpack. And these are things that came
through our, you know, our incredible team.
Like, I don't, I want to make, Iwant to make sure it's not.
There's a difference between like, you know, running your

(01:17:00):
idea versus running like a greatidea.
What does Relentless look like for you?
I'm not a big sleeper. I, I, I, I'm an, I'm an, I'm an
average golfer at best, like a 13 ish, 14 ish, probably more on
that side. But I'm a great guy to play golf
with. I hit it hard, I play fast, I
tell pretty good stories becauseI'm well travelled and I, I, I

(01:17:24):
sort of, I, I get what's happening, But you know, I, I,
I, I like that aspect of relentless is meant to be a, a,
it's what it takes for business.You know, I, I, the word
relentless, the word resilience are probably maybe two of them.
You know, we're celebrating our 20th year as a public company

(01:17:44):
this November. We'll celebrate our 30th year in
business in, you know, August ofnext year.
You know, in order to have that kind of, you know, consistency,
continuity, you know, that's something that needs to be
shaped and harvested. And So what I'm trying to bring
is having this sort of five yearbreak in the midst of my CEO
tenure at Under Armour is to make sure that I was reflective

(01:18:07):
enough. Because you know, some of the
people you talk to or maybe in month 14 of being back in the
chair, 15 of being back in the chair, really having the
opportunity to start expressing like, So what are the things
that you've learned? Because look, relentless works.
Relentless got Under Armour built the first time, you know,
it, it got us to $5 billion. But understanding what that
means and maybe being able to apply a little bit of wisdom and

(01:18:29):
just like, you know, polishing and going as hard as you can
isn't always the right answer, but it's being able to develop a
little bit of stroke. It's being able, you know, to
not just be the one that's pushing and trying to make the
sale, but maybe, you know, take the glasses, tip it to the edge
of the nose a little bit and just be like, let me be, let me
be thoughtful and reflective on what we want to do.
So I feel like adding that balance or that range to what my

(01:18:52):
persona or my personality has been.
It means relentless is probably still there.
It means being a really good listener.
It means being having the ability to be a little more
patient. You know, I described our, our
go to market calendar of 18 or 20 months better set as forever.
You know, it feels like, you know, forever from now and we're
working on, you know, spring 27,fall 27 right now.

(01:19:13):
And you're like the the thing of, of wanting to fix things
when they're broken or they're not working as well or optimized
where they can be. You know, that's something for
me that you know, I'm, I'm, I'm,I'm proud of being able to bring
that, you know, in this chapter of being a really good listener,
you know, sitting down and making sure that people are are

(01:19:36):
actually heard because that input can come from anywhere.
Now. It needs to be driven by someone
with a point of view. But the inputs that go into
that, they have to be fair because I don't own all the best
ideas and what I've learned thistime around as well.
There was certainly a lot of of force of nature that went to the
first chapter and that wasn't just myself.

(01:19:56):
That was my partners. Ryan was my partner.
Kip, you know, the way that we approach, you know, how long we
working today, I don't know about 10 minutes longer than
you, you know. And so, you know, pulling, you
know, one or two all nighters ina week was not it.
But that's what it takes to crack through in industry that
my first trade show was the the Super Show in Atlanta with

(01:20:18):
13,000 exhibitors. Every one of them trying to
become the next Nike. And for some reason we were able
to breakthrough. It's because it, it, it, it was
personal, it did matter. It was the, the cash coming from
my credit cards. It was our reputations on the
line. And so I think that built into a
bit of the DNA that's Under Armour.
And so I, I want those two things to reflect.

(01:20:40):
I want my personality or my brand with all of my strengths
and frankly being able to be aware of all those weaknesses
and vulnerabilities and other things.
As I said, I'm making those the strengths today.
I think at one point in time youwent to an executive coach.
What did that entail and what did it teach you?
Oh, I have a coach today. Oh, do you?

(01:21:01):
Yeah. So like, what is in?
In what ways does that help? It's phenomenal.
I mean, the approach, it's not like, OK, here's what we're
going to do with the tactics of business.
It's beautiful. It focuses more on like how do
we create love? Like what are you trying to do?
You're trying to go in there andshow everybody that you have the
right answer, but you inspire them to do something great.
And so somebody's got to call the ball and like, you know

(01:21:22):
where we're going, how we're going to get there are the best
tools to get there as well. Those are the kind of things
that you're leaning on your teamthat you're making sure that
it's their voices that are coming through.
It's a, you know, much more evolved, you know, better sense
of understanding. Is that, look, myself, the brand
anybody is certainly a, a work in process, which I've been a

(01:21:42):
part of that journey for a long time.
And so I, I did get lucky, but I've the Chichi Rodriguez used
to say the harder I work, the luckier that I would get.
And so I still believe in that work ethic and that belief in
doing it, but it's working a little smarter.
I wouldn't manage like hard workin terms of the number of hours
as much as I would of the productivity and the output.

(01:22:03):
And what is working smarter looklike?
Measuring 3 times and cutting once, you know, versus measuring
twice. The Under Armour story is when
we were fortunate enough to enjoy this trajectory of growth.
Where, you know, is, is the, the, the, the curve of the slope
looks like this, you know, wherewe're consistently just, you

(01:22:24):
know, growing at 20% a quarter on a regular basis.
And the good news is that I had the blueprint of what built
that, but now doing it through alens, which is a way for us to,
as I like to say, pour concrete this time and ensure that those
lessons are sustainable. And that's why a lot of the
additions we've made, especiallyour brand president who was
hired, you know, just about a year ago and Eric Litke, you

(01:22:46):
know, he had a mandate and he had a brand president meet.
He's responsible for all of our brand and all of our product.
A former Adidas guy. Yeah.
And Eric had spent 26 years at Adidas.
He was the first guy to hold that job in American, a non
German to hold that job for for Adidas when when he was there.
And you know, he started in 13 and from Boost and NMD and Yeezy

(01:23:08):
and like all these, these great things that Eric did there,
having him be able to come here and apply that lesson, it's like
leaning on someone, but bringingEric to run brand new product.
For Under Armour. The mandate was simple.
It was #1 we have a half a billion dollar marketing budget.
Find us $100 million, Find US 20% of that that we can use to
be really agile with, to really go tell our story #2 is write

(01:23:31):
the strategic business plan likeyou've seen.
You've seen what it looks like at the bigs.
You've studied it, you've been around it.
This isn't work for an outside accounting firm.
I believe that you can, you can outsource your cost cutting.
I don't believe you can outsource your strategy.
And so Eric has been pulling allthese pieces together into one,
you know, concise document that we have that now is explainable
for everybody to understand. And #3 was to help us build the

(01:23:52):
operating model because it's themost complicated thing about
running a global business. You know, we've got more than
2000 retail stores around the world, 16,000 people doing
business in 156 countries and every one of them right now is
at that moment like are they about to grow?
Are we about to get there? So the way that you work with
the global dynamics of product or marketing and the way that

(01:24:14):
you pop into the regional approach between we have three
regions with Asia Pacific, EMEA and and the Americas.
And so each one of them has their own leaders.
And so you're in a matrix environment.
We're just, I think about when you know, I, I, I, I do believe

(01:24:35):
in micromanagement at certain levels.
I think it's totally underestimated.
So I was going to ask you about that.
What? Yeah, explain your view on
because you struck me as somebody or from what I've read
that you know, you're willing to, I mean, micromanaging or
something that. Yeah, I, I, I just, I want to
get it right. I want to, I want to get the,

(01:24:56):
you know, I want us to build the, I think there's too much
lost on pretense or structure orprocess.
Like that's great, but the, the,the right answer will save us a
lot of time. And so I, I, I think, I think in
an industry like ours, especially as competitive, it is

(01:25:17):
too, We have a process, but I believe life is mostly about an
8020 rule and being able to build into like what that 8020
rule, you know, looks like is that we do need process.
We do need structure in place, but we also need to build in the
fact that the market's not goingto wait 18 months for all of our
products. And so we need the speed of
market. We need to be able to get things
to market, you know, in 12 months, nine months, six months,

(01:25:38):
if the product's ready, if the story can get on board.
And that shouldn't feel like a burden or a weight.
It should feel like it's part ofour process is that we plan for
eighty, 8590% of our business tobe set and structured.
And then we plan for this 10%. We plan for these free days, We
plan for ourselves just to be able to think a little bit.
I mean, the, the dynamic where Under Armour is today is that

(01:25:58):
it's interesting. We have a, a guy who's running
Asia Pacific for us, who has been in our industry for a long
time. And he said he goes, I, I get
what's happening coming in. He's a a year or so in.
He's like, I now understand the brand.
You guys were, you guys were a brand who then became a company
and now we want to become a brand again.
And I don't think I could explain it any more simply than

(01:26:21):
that is that, you know, when youlook at the we need the
structure, we need the process, we need all those things, but
that can't be dominating us is that world class financials
don't lead to world class brands, World class brands lead
to world class financials. And this isn't some subtle way
of me nodding at Wall Street andsaying, don't worry, the
earnings won't come. It's a very intentional approach

(01:26:42):
to saying like the blueprint forbrand is something that Under
Armour effectively wrote in our first chapter.
Now we did it with a lot of sortof that unbridled, you know,
freshness of growth. Well, now we're a bit of a known
quantity. And what's interesting about our
brand is that nobody's mad at us.
They just haven't heard of us ina long time.
So we want to make sure that we do have that.

(01:27:02):
I wouldn't say the first handshake because many people,
we've got good, good awareness, they're aware of us.
But this next handshake we have with them, we want it to feel
different. It's like when you're asking
about some of my personality traits, it's like I wanted to be
an evolved personality. You know, I don't want to be
the, I don't expect to be that kid at 25.

(01:27:22):
You know, I'm a father of 21 andan 18 year old too.
So being an example to them, youknow, in, in modeling the
behavior, modeling the behavior that I expect my teammates to
live by my employer, you know, the my partners or vendors and
other people they hold, I hold them accountable and they hold
me accountable too. I want to ask you a little bit
about the period where you weren't CEO but you just

(01:27:43):
mentioned being the father of an18 and 21 year old.
You talk about being lucky with Under Armour, super lucky with
family as well. Before we get to kids, your wife
DJ explain just the role she played early on in the company.
And she's awesome. She built, you know, I'd say,

(01:28:08):
free labor. It would cost me dinner.
It would cost me dinner after after Valentine's Day and
staying there for three days in a row.
Pat was telling me yesterday about how you were butt dialing
him repeatedly back in the day when you were out Hawking roses
on the street with DJ and he waslistening to you guys like game
plan, how to sell the last whatever number of roses.

(01:28:30):
So that 11186 dozen flowers I described was meant to be 1500
dozen. Watching 314 dozen die on me
wasn't, wasn't an option. And so I had one of the guys in,
you know, my senior year when I said I'm going to go, we're
going to blow it out this year. I'm going to make all this
money. I've got this idea for Under
Armour. I'm going to use the seed money
to start the company. And we did.
I end up making about $16,000, but it should have been closer

(01:28:53):
to $35,000. But I had a couple guys that
were selling like stands that didn't have permits.
And so like people shut them down.
So I'm at the house, it's 4:00 in the afternoon, it's February
14th. I've been up all day and
somebody comes back and there's like another 200 dozen flowers
that we have that just sitting there.
I'm watching them just going to wilt and die.
So I was in Georgetown at Wisconsin and M basically take

(01:29:15):
my car right by the exorcist steps in Georgetown as you come
off a key bridge back to my FordExplorer down to the bottom.
Load it with as many boxes of flowers like it could could at
4:00 or 4:30 in the afternoon rush hours.
Just stopped, grab roses and just started walking up and down
and we're selling flowers. Apparently I butt dialed Pat and
so he's got like this 25 minutessomewhere on the bridge of like,

(01:29:35):
you know, roses for your wife, $30.00.
I could do 20 right 15 you have cash now give me two dozen for
30. You know, and it was just
working the whole time. So he says he has his voicemail
somewhere and. That's when it was expensive to
call anybody. Oh yeah, absolutely that that it
probably cost me more for the phone call than the the flowers
actually now to me by the end ofthat.
How about what you've learned about yourself through marriage?

(01:29:59):
It's a partnership, right? And you're, you're, you're in
this corporation of life that's meant to be built on love,
number one, but you've got a jobto do and you've got a
responsibility. And that's to raise these
incredible kids and giving them the best you can, the best
thinking that we have. You learn trust, you learn

(01:30:21):
sadness, you learn strength, youlearn how to be smart.
You learn that you're, you're, you're not invincible.
And it's good to have somebody who's rooting for you.
It's good to have your team. I've got, I think about, you
know, family like, you know, it's, it's, it's everything.

(01:30:44):
But then you think about these other concentric circles and I
think about, you know, many of the athletes that we get to live
with and deal with, and they expect us to be one of those
concentric circles. Like here's my high school
friends, here's my college friends.
You've got the circle, maybe a, a church or whatever your
religion following is. You've got this people that you

(01:31:04):
go to a book club with, you know, and, and you got your,
your friends from work and, and for consumers, you're like,
yeah, I'm an, I'm, I'm an Under Armour gal.
I'm an Under Armour guy. I'm an, I'm a, you know, they'll
say one of the other brands. But like, that's what we're
doing. We're building community, you
know, the lessons of, of family is 1 is a, a, a word that I, I
say easily move to business. You have to be careful with that

(01:31:28):
because you are running a business, but it should feel
like a family environment. Everybody knows that they have
to contribute to that family as well and that it's like being on
a team. It's like you don't have to be
great every day because nobody is.
It's not possible, but you got to be great a lot more days than
you do. I call it deposits and
withdrawals. You're coming in today.
Great thing about being a team. You know, I could start my own
company. I could go to something else.

(01:31:49):
You could, but it's a really lonely place to be.
And knowing that some days you need to come in, it's like,
yeah, we expect you to deposit when you come into work and you
give your your best effort and you input that.
But we also recognize there's some days where it's like, you
know what, my dog's sick. I'm in trouble with my partner,
you know, my my kids not doing well in school.
You know, there's some days you do need to take.

(01:32:10):
And that's what being a part of our community, but working at
UA, being on our team is like. And hopefully we give that same
sense of comfort or stability orsecurity to people when they
wear our brand. I know that it's it's something
better. How about the hardest part of
being a parent? It's complicated.

(01:32:30):
You know, I've got 2 great kids.I got a son who's a junior at
the University of Southern California, and I get to live
vicariously through him. And, and watching his journey
and watching him grow up has been awesome.
Of coming from a, you know, a boy graduating high school into
becoming a man. My daughter teaches me lessons

(01:32:51):
every day. You know #1 is that she's not
going to wear Under Armour just because Dad works there.
You know, like, I got to, I got to earn it.
And these are the reminders thatwe have and what we do each and
every day. Because I do want to impress
them. You know, I do want them to fall
in love. And, and I do think about, you
know, what they can give me back.
But I think understanding empathy, it's been important,

(01:33:13):
like understanding this consumertoday, you know, our target demo
is 16 to 24 years old and, you know, having two kids that sit
in the center of that, you know,that both played high school
sports that understand athleticsand athletes and mindset and
sort of culture of where it is today.
You know, it's incredibly instructive.
It makes you know, you know, dinner conversation, it may be a
little, you know, UA centric. And I want to make sure that's

(01:33:35):
not just asking about them for me, but it's asking about them
for them. And I guess if I had to, from
parenthood to my time away from the CEO chair to being able to
bring back this incredible senseof empathy.
I was talking to Maryland's Governor Moore, OK, yesterday
about you, and he said he's kindof leaned on you in figuring out

(01:33:58):
how to be a public parent. And then we get into just, you
know, talking about kids a little bit.
And I'm curious, you know, because of your success, you
have the ability to create endless opportunities for your
kids. How do you figure out what the
balance is between that and doing it in a way that avoids

(01:34:19):
dampening motivation? Affluenza, you want to be
careful of of allowing that everto sink in.
And how do you do it? You know, you don't shy away
from it. You know, I spent a lot of time,
you know, being a part of like being raising my family, our
family in a town like Baltimore,you know, being able to have our

(01:34:40):
kids grow up through what I thought would I always wanted to
just be this very, this very clear, clear lens.
You have to be careful is because they do have the
opportunity to do a lot of different things.
There's two ways to take that. There's the kid that could be,
you know, look what I have and, and be smug, be that guy, that

(01:35:01):
gal that nobody likes. I try to do it just by maybe
introducing or showing them to some of the best.
Like when you, when you do meet,be it a Stephen Curry or a, a
Tom Brady or a Jordan Spieth, there's such an intensity with
like the intentionality they have.
Like this is one thing. I think this might be news

(01:35:22):
breaking, but anybody you you speak to that has dealt with
celebrity at the highest levels and well, it's better, better
said than celebrity excellence. Those that are great is like
they have the ability to just like lock into you.
You know, when you talk to theseguys, it's like, Hey, how you
doing? And it's like an uncomfortable
amount of time. Like, am I really like I'm right
here and I'm present and I'm here for you the entire time.

(01:35:43):
There's nothing else that existsin the world.
I'm just focused on you. I think it's probably a pretty
good rule for life is that beingpresent is something that I
always I always, if people ask for, like give me what are what
are keys to success? It's like it's not being the
person at the parties looking over the shoulder and trying to
find somebody else, but being right here.
It's not being, you know, I'm, I'm above this.
I'm too big for this. I'm here right now.

(01:36:04):
So I'm going to engage in whatever that activity is.
I think that my kids have done an awesome job.
They got a great group of friends and it's certainly not
perfect. My daughter, I'm looking forward
to her being able to start university and be able to, you
know, start a brand new chapter 2.
Because it's one thing that fromhaving gone to three different
high schools, like, I feel like each one of those stages, I was

(01:36:27):
able to reintroduce myself. I remember able to take, you
know, whether it was a roommate or an experience I had with
somebody. And maybe I, I, I wouldn't give
them credit at the time, but I maybe would take some of those
skills from 1 high school And I try to apply it to myself, like
being a, a better roommate, being neater at Maryland, like
cleaning yourself up like this. The hyper learning of I know
that I went through from 141516 years old to becoming that next

(01:36:51):
that next person that I wanted to be, you know, an incredibly
important journey. My kids have done an awesome job
at A2 and but like all of us, they are works in process too.
And so they're not going to be perfect, but we're going to love
them no matter what. The time you weren't CEO, I kind
of went through and tried to pick out the toughest quote I
could find to then kind of get your thoughts on it.

(01:37:15):
September 2024, The Wall Street Journal writes more than half a
dozen former executives said Plank was responsible for much
of the turmoil and complexity that he's now promising to clean
up. In recent years, they say P
foiled marketing plans put in place by others push product

(01:37:37):
ideas that flopped blurred the lines between his brand role and
that of the CEO's who succeeded him.
Your thoughts? What a crazy journey life is.
And so everybody's got an opinion and the reality from
where people will feel are always going to be divergent.

(01:37:59):
And so I don't like our stock price right now.
Our shareholders sure don't likeour stock price right now.
What we're doing about that is creating seismic change and it's
building off the assets we have.By seismic change, I don't mean
it's not how do we just start over, but it is certainly a turn
around. I since really probably 2000,

(01:38:25):
2019 or so you've seen when I left the CEO chair at the end of
19, our stock was in a very different position coming back
in. It was a not quite the size
where it is now. And the ambition we have is not
looking and trying to point fingers because this isn't about
diagnosing the problem like we know what the issue is.
Purchase power is important for us.

(01:38:47):
Making kids fall in love with us, making that 16 to 24 year
old demographic love. UA is the number one ambition
that we have. And the one thing about finding
success, being able to like, youknow, crack to the next level is
that you're always going to havecritics, especially when you
have a, a public stock. It doesn't make anyone right.
It doesn't make anyone wrong. But like, you have to listen to

(01:39:07):
it. Some of the best advice that
I've ever had was actually somebody who's in the in, in, in
the public, in the public scene of the public picture.
And I'd asked Jeff Bezos from Amazon in like 2014 or so.
They were getting hit on all these same topics.
You're a big company, you're in culture.
And this isn't saying anything other than just like, what's the

(01:39:29):
from the best advice you've heard of, like how to deal when
people want to, you know, take shots?
And by the way, I can tell when even just reading that it it
bothers you. Any criticism is going to bother
anybody. And if you didn't, you weren't
human like to to find. I said, hopefully I can bring
some of this to my next chapter of what it feels like what I,

(01:39:51):
what I'd say about. He said, whenever you get
criticism, I said, what do you do?
Because you guys are getting hiton like, you know, the culture
is bad. And when people say that, it's
like, can you talk about that? It's an organization of 16,000
people. Of course there's going to be
bad interaction, but like the standard, the culture, the worst
behavior will tolerate. It's something I think that
would would would be an aspiration anywhere and I'm

(01:40:14):
really proud of that. But like the advice that I got
is that when you when you hear when you hear criticism, I
asked, I said, what do you do? You know, when all this
criticism always writing bad stories about you and how do you
keep up with it, how you processit?
The answer was the first thing Ido is I asked myself if it's
true. You know, like think about that

(01:40:34):
where you sit back and from being defensive and you're like,
I I can see your body language as it bothers you is like, yeah,
of course it does. Like this is talking about the
brand Is is is is. In your baby.
Yeah, of course it's a baby, Butyou want to be great, You want
to do the best you can, but you're never going to get great
unless you do quality control, unless you sit back and watch

(01:40:56):
tape and figure out what you could do better.
Like the only thing that mattersright now is that we do it in a
team. We cheat our team fairly, we
treat our consumers and do the best we can with innovation for
making the best products in the world and doing in a culture
that everybody's really proud of.
There's there's no room or acceptance for some of the
things that have been said. And you know, if there's a
company that's been vetted, so opinions and let's take

(01:41:18):
everything at face level, maybe they're right.
Well, we've been vetted. We've been through 6 plus years
of SEC investigation like we've lived through this process and
there is nothing but a really proud company who's ready to get
on doing exactly what is the best in the world.
That and that's making the world's best performance
apparel, footwear and accessories for consumers to

(01:41:39):
just make them just a little bitbetter, a little bit faster.
Jump, jump a little higher, run a little faster.
When you hear some of the like industry analysts that came out,
when you came back saying how can this guy help fix the
problems he helped create, you think what?
I think work on the brand that is was created by a team of

(01:42:04):
people that I was lucky enough to be able to pull, pull
together and pull through. You know, you know, in at the
end of 2019, I stepped down fromthe CEO chair.
My son was starting high school,finished freshman year and my
daughter was beginning in like going into junior high.
Finally one of the chance to be able to actually speak to my

(01:42:26):
speak to my kids, watch my kids play, play sports.
And we were just getting a buncha lot of heat from a lot of
different places. There was no pressure.
This is totally voluntary in order to make a decision.
And I was like, I'm open. I want the best.
I'm a fiduciary for shareholders.
I want the best thing for the company.
If there's a better path that would work, I'd be more than in
favor of it. And so that's when I said, OK,

(01:42:47):
let's let somebody else do it. And I'll focus on I'll focus on
family. I'll focus on watching, watching
my kids grow up and I want to behelpful, I want to be added to
the company. But being the CEO is very
different from being a chairman and making sure that people have
the chance to be successful. That's incredibly important and
that may always be some, he said, she said.
But I the only intent I would ever have is what's the best

(01:43:09):
interests of the company? But by the way, we did a filming
with Howard Schultz, the Starbucks founder.
We're with him in Italy and Seattle.
Fascinating guys. Similarly Uber successful.
And he talked about how, you know, he famously left running
the company, then came back a few times and how it was just

(01:43:31):
challenging for him watching somebody else, you know, run it.
Governor Moore was telling me yesterday conversations with
you, you know, you didn't fully appreciate kind of that
challenge. Like, take me into that period

(01:43:52):
and just what's that like? It's it, it doesn't have a sense
of, Oh my gosh, how are they making this choice?
I really just want Under Armour to win.
Like, I guess I want to make sure that like that's clear now
people can question saying, well, that's not helpful for
that's not additive to it. You know, in my time off, we've,
you know, I was, I put myself inbasically a product role where

(01:44:13):
it was I stepped down at the endof 19 in March 16th of 2020, the
pandemic hit. And so first thing I did is went
to work on building the Under Armour sports mask.
We ended up selling close to 20 million of these things, you
know, which is one of the thingsthat allowed us to stay in
business, to keep our cash position high, to keep things
running. You know, getting engaged in

(01:44:35):
product is it's my love, it's mypassion.
But like someone else running the day-to-day administrative is
that I, I, I'm, I'm never opposed to someone else running
the I, I honestly, I'm not opposed to someone else running
the company. If we were doing really well
right now where we are, I'm the right person at the right time
to lead this company. How long is that a year, 2

(01:44:56):
years, three years? Like we're going to flip backs
like cornhole style. We're not trying to throw, you
know, mile long passes. We're going to keep everything
very reasonable of just making little tosses and just make sure
that every day is better than the one in front of it.
Who would? You like it to be?
I'd like it to be #1 on every kids Christmas list this
holiday. I'd, I'd love it to be the

(01:45:18):
earnings and the bottom line andthe, the pricing power that
would really come with this brand.
I think we have an innovation story that is just like one of
the best kept secrets in the world.
I don't think we've done a greatjob telling the story of this
brand. And there's so much good.
And so the ability for someone don't believe everything you
read, but there's, there's always truth within all of that.
And that's one thing is what I said is that I'll read and

(01:45:40):
evaluate everything that says like, is it true?
Is there something we can do better there?
Because I am a constant work in process.
Like all this is all we want to do is be the the best versions
of ourselves, but we're better than that.
You know, this is a brand that has broken through to play at
the highest levels of competition, competing with the
biggest brands in sports. Now it has smaller brands coming
after us as well. You know, we can argue and, and,

(01:46:02):
or someone could say or who's who's the best person for it.
Well, I'm in the chair and so I get the, I get the privilege to
run this company and I got a pretty good point of view with
30 years of experience in this industry and 15 of them as a
public company CEO. That's that's pretty unique and
something which I think will play to our benefit in years
come. What do you think the best

(01:46:23):
lesson is that you learned from kind of the tough period?
Forgive yourself, right? Stop trying to be perfect.
You're not going to make everybody happy.
Because at the time you you beatyourself up when.
Yeah, and you're saying what could we have done?
What would have happened better that way?

(01:46:44):
You know, the best thing that I think I can bring to this job
or, or what I the experience that I have, you know, is that
entrepreneur mindset of like it doesn't matter what you had.
Like this is every day you come to work and you're basically you
start over as old example, MacGyver, you know, I'll take
whatever, let's take all the toys we have lamb on the table

(01:47:05):
and say what are the ones that are best going to help us
accomplish the mission for the day and make sure we have those
pieces in place. Did I read correctly you use a
BlackBerry example in meetings on occasion?
Yeah, but it was more relevant when when BlackBerry was it in
2006 to 15 or 16 and saying likethey became complacent, they
stopped innovating. They thought that they had

(01:47:26):
everything fixed. And the one thing that is true
in our world, especially in sports and culture and athletes
in in trend and all these thingsthat matter, is that the world's
going to keep moving. It's going to move at a really
fast rate. And so the speed at which we can
never be satisfied, Complacency is one of the most dangerous
things. It's the, you know, you want to

(01:47:47):
be careful of internal fighting.You want to be careful of
complacency is that this organization needs to think
about what the next chapter looks like because we're not
where we want to be right now. And the team that we're putting
in place is one that understandsthat.
And the team that's existing there isn't like we're getting,
you know, get rid of the team. I don't know, let's inspire the
team. Let's empower the team.
Let's give them the tools they need to be successful.

(01:48:08):
That's what the next chapter forus looks like.
And in fairness, you're a competitive guy.
You're probably never going to be where you want to be because
you're always going to be looking towards how you, you
know, drive stuff forward, right?
Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll feel some of that.
But again, hopefully, you know, God forbid in this next chapter
I'm able to bring some wisdom into it.

(01:48:28):
You know, the, I'm not the 35 year old guy who's just charging
down the hill. And you know, it's a difficult
thing about whether it's criticism or anything else.
I've been in the same place ish for 30 years, right?
It's not like I moved from 7 different jobs and you're trying
to find other sources like, Oh yeah, the Under Armour guy.
So that's going to have its advantages and it's going to

(01:48:49):
have its disadvantages. And the advantages really
outweigh the disadvantages a lot.
And that doesn't mean that people aren't going to be able
to take pop shots or say things about you and some of which
which may be true in its own light, but it doesn't mean that
the intention or the the love orthe respect, more importantly,
just like the standard, the standard.
So we've been through it. So like I've been tested, like

(01:49:11):
I've been tested a lot. It doesn't mean like, oh, poor
Kevin, I'm not expecting that. I'm not asking for that, but
like, I don't know, I've earned the right to be in this chair
today. Well, and frankly, you've always
put your money where your mouth is and you've taken more risk
than anybody. Sure.
How challenging does the currenttariff environment make things?

(01:49:37):
It's just uncertainty. You know, rising tide raises all
boats and the lowering tide doesthe same.
And so we're in an industry withwhat we pay for.
A sneaker is going to be the exact same duty as somebody else
trying to compete with us in this country.
So that'll be a fair playing field.
We just want to know what the rules are.
And so that's something of givento give ourselves a time for for

(01:49:59):
that information to come out, but we don't know what it'll be.
How do you view tariffs? I mean, I just want to, we just
want to know where it is. I mean, I'm, I want to make sure
that we can lock in with the what the appropriate just for
pricing will be. That's the one thing for our
shareholders is that, you know, we had a great plan coming out
of last year and planning into the year.
And so tariffs is going to put alittle bit of a wrinkle into

(01:50:20):
that. And so let's find out what that
means. But as of today, nobody knows
anything. By the way, a great quote I
found that I think ties into therevitalization of Baltimore, but
I think connects kind of nicely to tariffs and actually give you
a lot of credit for it. This was from number of years
ago. You said we have 250,000 people

(01:50:40):
making Under Armour something atany given moment.
In the next three years, we'll add another 200,000 plus and
zero of them are pegged to come back to the US because we're all
chasing cheap labor all over Malaysia in the far corners of
the earth. It's a crime.
We couldn't find a way to get 1000 jobs back here or 5000 jobs
or 10,000 jobs. When you look at what's

(01:51:02):
happening in Ferguson, what's happening in Baltimore, it's
jobs. We need jobs, and we're shedding
all our jobs to other places. The ability for us to bring that
back, that's the big idea. Yeah, well, that was
interesting. Well, that was from a speech
opening our project Glory, whichis when we'd spent, as I said,
the first six years of the company manufacturing
exclusively in the United States.

(01:51:23):
And I, I, I, I mentioned the garment district that today
where 50% of our production in the US is like again today less
than one. It doesn't exist.
We've been working at this for along time.
It doesn't take the administration or anyone else to
say, wouldn't it be great if we had manufacturing here?
What's the practical solution you think to?

(01:51:43):
Well, we, we tried it. I, I, I guess that's where,
that's where I'd start from, is that we could take a new tack,
but we basically viewed like without government subsidy
actually making a, a profitable product.
Because you know, if, if you putthe way our, our business works,
if we're going to sell a, it's called a shoe for $100, it means
that the shoe costs $100 at retail, means we sell it to a
wholesaler at $50. We make the shoe for effectively

(01:52:06):
half of that price, $25. So basically new tariffs add any
amount of money. So if that's you, if that
tariff, if the dollar amount goes from 25 to costly is 35,
it's now a $35 cost shoe. That means we sell it to our
wholesale partner at 70 and they're reselling that product
for $140. That delta between the two of

(01:52:26):
them, that's what the consumer will be paying.
We've tried running this play inthe United States, not to say
it's impossible, but we couldn'tmake it work.
Because the consumer doesn't want to pay more.
Well, the consumer is not going to pay more made in the USA it
we, we haven't seen it have the net effect, but that's not an
absolute statement either. There's places for it and

(01:52:48):
there's pockets for it. There's places that we
absolutely can. And so this will be in
partnership with, with our, our,our state, local and federal
officials of finding out like what's the best way, because
everyone's jobs here, but these are, these are tough jobs that
it's, it's, it's a, it's a, a generational and a cultural
thing in order to get back in it.

(01:53:09):
And you really have to commit like towns have to commit to
we're going to be a manufacturing.
Town on that front, I want to just speak to your efforts in
terms of the revitalization of Baltimore and I thought be a
good kind of closing topic for the the sit down today like
what's been your motivation for doing all this?

(01:53:31):
God gave me a lot, you know, I'mincredibly grateful for that.
And, you know, sitting on a beach somewhere didn't feel like
the right way to sort of pay it forward.
And so my ambition was, you know, around 2006, 2007, we were
too big to move anywhere. We love this city.

(01:53:51):
I love the identity of grit thatit gave to this brand.
This ambition that I'd had is that I, I, I get it through
something that says, you know, if you make it in life, the cool
kids, I'll meet you in LA, I'll meet you in New York.
I think that's one thing. But what if instead we made them
all have to come to us? Like, what if we, we made and,
and helped build on a city standpoint, the next Portland,

(01:54:13):
the next Austin, the next Nashville.
And I look at this NE corridor, I look at this city 30 miles
from DC, 2 hours and 12 minutes on the cellar train to New York.
And I'm like, there's something awesome here.
There's a, there's a grit, there's a culture, but it's an
incredible place to live. The quality of life is
extraordinary. And I'm like, I think you can
tell that story and being able to anchor it with the, you know,

(01:54:35):
the coolest athletic brand in the world that would be based
here. And if it was visible from 95.
And that created this ambition called Baltimore Peninsula,
which is something that now anchors our our new headquarters
building we just moved into about six or seven months ago.
And it's been incredible. It is meant to be the living
physical manifestation of walking into a sports brand.

(01:54:56):
You know, we're unfortunately a city that is too often taxed by
the HBO miniseries that appearedmore than 20 years ago that
people like, Oh, yeah, I know that city.
That's not the vision that we have.
And I think there's something that's very much in place,
especially what's happening today, because the cool kids,
the new kids, the, the, the great ones, they're calling.

(01:55:16):
They're calling us. They want to be a part of this
brand. Governor Moore and I were
talking about this a bit too yesterday in that there seems to
be a level of cynicism when somebody of note steps forward
with the community idea, regardless of how amazing it
might be, almost puts a target on your back.

(01:55:36):
And I'm wondering like, what's that been like for you?
Well, one of the things I believe in is keeping the main
thing, the main thing. I'm going to clearing my my, my,
my, my light item list mode today because I've done a lot of
interesting things from horse racing to a whiskey business to
hotels where we're sitting rightnow to these really neat things.

(01:56:00):
But keeping the main thing, the main thing is what my #1 focus
and priority is right now. And it's not even like, is it
distracting to me or is this something else?
But the way it makes other people potentially.
Feel Jack, the former Notre Dameathletic director I was talking
to yesterday, said even if for no other reason than perception
is distraction. Like you wanted to, you're like,

(01:56:22):
screw that. I want these assets.
It just doesn't make sense. Yeah, the most important things
in my life for my family, my friends and, and in this brand
and making sure that there's no question on any of that.
And so putting all of my priority and energy, apparently
I got to beat some, some old headlines down.
It's not worth it. It's not worth the energy.
And so removing any of that fuelfrom other places and leaving

(01:56:44):
that, you know, with myself, I own it, you know, and that's it.
But ultimately, I'm responsible and I and I and I, I not only
accept that, like I thrive on that.
I want to bring it back to Baltimore.
You just get word that the sevenacre parcel that you'd been
eyeing for the new Under Armour headquarters isn't going to work

(01:57:06):
out. How much of your own money do
you spend over the course of thefollowing few years buying up
how much land? Yeah, I mean, it's 266 acres
that was assembled for the Baltimore Peninsula project and
it has been an endeavor. You know, I, I look at, you
know, some big visionaries, Disney had a massive vision like

(01:57:27):
Las Vegas was built on the on the shoulders of big vision,
which Sheikh Mohammed built in Dubai was an old fishing town.
You know, 40 years before that. He turned one day and said, what
if there's a skyline right there?
And I thought that kind of blindambition was the things that
would that's what leadership requires and something I took a
lot of pride and I felt like a responsibility.

(01:57:50):
What, because I've been given somuch, you know, it's it's it's
an endeavor where you do feel this obligation to give back to
participate with the community. And frankly, it's a worthy
cause. Don't you take away just this
love and affection for the city of Baltimore as much as maybe
like just relate with the, you know, your audience and saying

(01:58:10):
like it's a love and affection for wherever you're from.
You know, I mean, how much do you love Saint Louis?
And you meet somebody from SaintLouis, and you just finished
telling me, like, why your next interview is so important to you
because you guys share the same zip code when you grew up.
And there's something about thataffinity.
And there's something about, youknow, when you meet somebody
who's from Saint Louis, they tell you they're a Yankee fan.
And you're like, what? Are you kidding me?

(01:58:34):
Like, I love where I'm from. People typically love where
they're from. And I respect people that love
and appreciate, respect and do the best they can for where
they're from. And so I'm very proud of what
that means. I'm, I'm fortunate enough to be
the CEO of Under Armour because without UA being great, nothing
else works. It's a requirement for it.
And so that's why for me, I feelso blessed and, and, and honored

(01:58:56):
and appreciative to have this opportunity, you know, to run
the company that I founded. But I don't, I don't walk in
with an entitlement that says I have to be here.
We have a chance of doing this with the city, but I'm not going
to do it alone. I mean, the company's not going
to do it alone. It's going to take the entire
community. And so leaning on, you know,
the, the, the wings of, of this broader city is one of the, the

(01:59:18):
calls to action that I always have.
And if I could make this not just a Baltimore sentiment, but
to anyone out there, it's like the the public private
partnership, the ability for communities to work with
companies. Like there's, it's like reading
a a negative headline. There's no ambition that
someone's trying to dupe someoneover.
And I'm sure there's bad actors in life and we've seen it happen

(01:59:39):
before. And there's the Enron stories of
the world. But most people I believe, and
even getting in those small rooms are people always curious.
Like I'm not in the room when ithappens.
So I don't, I just don't trust. Trust is a very special thing.
It's something that's actually built in drops and lost in
buckets over the time over a course of 30 years in a career.
There's going to be times that you'll build on that trust,

(02:00:01):
building that trust be times when somebody says you know what
you might have cost me somethingthere.
I can accept that. So, but all I can do is I can
just go back to work and just show up again and just to start
depositing one drop at a time. Baltimore, I think is a bit of
the resume that I put for this company of don't just leave it
about this city, but anybody cities that wouldn't you love to
have someone who appreciates, respects and works as hard.

(02:00:24):
For their community, because I think that's one thing that
we'll find is that it's pretty much unimpeachable that this
brand loves, loves this town that I'm deeply committed to the
place where the brand was, you know, quote, UN quote founded,
although we moved from DC to gethere.
But what we're building is really special.

(02:00:45):
And I respect how unique that isand the opportunity we have for
this next chapter. So, you know, we've done a good
job of covering the past, but wegot a hell of a story to show
you what's coming in the future.How cool has it been for you to
see third party development now around the new campus?
I mean, it's a new it's a new energy that is gets people to

(02:01:09):
think differently and it was so important was the Co location to
95. You know, we live in a city who
unfortunately, a little more than a year ago, you know, we
watched the the bridge that's that's named after the author of
our national anthem crumble into, you know, the Baltimore
Harbor like a rector set. You know, what's pretty
interesting is that four months later, we opened our brand new

(02:01:29):
sparkling headquarters that's perfectly visible from 95, which
used to host about 60 million cars a year.
I haven't gotten the latest numbers yet, but I think it's
got to be closer to 80 or 90 million a year.
And when they drive through town, hopefully their thought is
and Oh yeah, I remember that show.
We're going through Baltimore. Not that HBO thing.
What was it called again? But they're just saying, oh,

(02:01:50):
look, there's the hottest, coolest sports brand in the
world. Look, their base right here must
be an awesome place to live. If we do that, we're doing our
job. In what ways has Dan Gilbert
been an example? He's been an inspiration.
He's a brilliant man. I think what he's done and
given, and I maybe could have used it in, in Detroit that, you

(02:02:10):
know, there's a, there's a greatslogan that Dan's team came up
with her to say nice things about Detroit.
And I'd encourage people as wellsay nice things about Dan
Gilbert. He's a very special man who
cares at a deep level. And he was, I think he had a
blueprint for imagine if you could take a company and based
on our growth and our success, Ican move that and I can base
that in a downtown that was blighted and basically forgotten

(02:02:31):
about. A lot of that ambition was the
same, but it's but it's different.
So I don't know how this whole thing turns out, but you know,
30 years in and hopefully have several more years or decades.
And I'm not declaring how long I'll be doing this, but we're
going to get it right, that's for sure.
And lastly, in, you know, independent of Under Armour, in

(02:02:56):
terms of what you're doing with the development here, you think
you're kind of building a neighborhood from scratch.
I know you said you don't know where it'll end up, but what's
your vision for that? It was again, when, when I drive
north on 95, you drive through those places in Philly and you
saw this old port industrial land off to the right hand side.

(02:03:17):
You're like, why is that just port industrial like, man, that
would make great living. And I looked in our own backyard
and as Under Armour was growing,I was like, we're expanding and
we need to do, we're going to need more room.
We need more space. We're we're landlocked in the
current in the old location where we were.
And it was like, imagine insteadof us just finding just the best
headquarters, Well, let's still do the best thing for

(02:03:37):
shareholders and always keep that in mind.
But imagine if we could tie thatto a bigger vision.
Imagine if we could, you know, help change the perception of
this town. Because I believe that any
brand, especially consumer facing brands, aren't you just
going to be judged on, you know,the, the, the consumer's going
to judge them on like not only what they sell, but what they do

(02:03:57):
for their community, you know, And so that's where us being
able to be a bit of this flag ofsaying, like, take another look
at this town. And again, there's, there's many
Baltimore's that are out there. But like, I don't think that the
world should live just somewherebetween, you know, New York, Los
Angeles, San Francisco and maybeMiami or Dallas.
Like I think that we should be bigger than a fiver.

(02:04:18):
I'm sorry, Chicago for a 5 or 6 city town.
Like I think that it's where ourstrength is.
And you know, look, this is where home is for us too.
And we've got an awesome place that we're bringing family.
So this is recruiting video as much as anything.
And whether you're zingers or not, you know, hit me.
But, you know, we're ready to invite the best of them.
You know, come join us on this mission.

(02:04:38):
We got some pretty good ones who've, you know, picked up that
challenge so far. Thanks for doing this.
Thanks Graham. Good to see you.
Thanks for listening to this week's podcast.
Don't forget to leave a rating and review and for more in depth
interviews visit grahambensinger.com.
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.