Word: planked
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Headquartered in renovated offices on the rundown waterfront of Baltimore, Md., Under Armour is privately held by Plank, 30, his mother, five brothers and two partners. Under Armour manufactures about half its gear in Honduras, Mexico and other countries in the Caribbean basin. Wages are higher in Baltimore, but the company makes about half its goods there and in other U.S. cities to ensure rapid turnaround for key products. Under Armour ships 175,000 items a week, mostly shirts selling for $25 to $50 but also shorts, socks and headgear. All are made of various blends of polyester and Lycra...
...graduation neared, Plank, then 23, decided to explore the product niche he had identified. In March 1996, he bought some stretchy lingerie material at a fabric store and had a tailor make up samples of athletic undershirts. He handed them out to fellow members of the Maryland football squad, who found them comfortable and edgy looking--and clamored for more. That told Plank he was onto something. His older brother Bill, an architect, contributed the macho name Under Armour, and an artist friend designed a sleekly minimalist logo. Working out of the basement of a house in Georgetown...
...rest is marketing history. After booking sales of $17,000 in 1996, Under Armour boosted that number to $55 million in 2002. And on the basis of orders in hand from pro and amateur teams and select retail chains, Plank expects sales to roughly double in 2003. Special-forces troops buy the stuff, as do middle-school kids who wear it to class. Marty Hanaka, CEO of the Sports Authority, the nation's largest sporting-goods retailer, says demand for Under Armour has risen "exponentially" in most of its 204 stores. "There's a surge in participation in active sports...
...lost a game when I wore this shirt,' so I put this shirt on." Washington Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington, Chicago Cubs first baseman Eric Karros and other big names appear in Under Armour ads for free--or for a donation to their favorite charity. Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens met Plank in a bar during a Yankees-Orioles series and likes Under Armour so much that he, his wife and four sons decked themselves in the shirts for a family Christmas card photo. Clemens stocks Under Armour shirts of varying weights and sometimes phones in design suggestions. "Someone in that company...
When he started Under Armour, says Plank, "I decided to bypass athletic directors and go straight to equipment managers. They control what's on that field." After his initial sale at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, he maxed out his credit cards and hit up his mom and brothers for cash to set up a small production plant in Baltimore. That fall, Dave Campo, then equipment manager for the Atlanta Falcons, admired Georgia Tech's shirts and ordered 100--with long sleeves to protect his players' arms against burns from artificial turf. These were dubbed Turf Gear. Later, Plank...