What Happened To Under Armour, And How Can It Rebound In 2020?
Under Armour CEO and founder Kevin Plank shocked the retail world when he announced he would step down from the position to focus on Executive Chairman duties, and the revelation arguably came at quite an inconvenient time for the athleticwear company. During a recent earnings call, Under Armour CFO David Bergman confirmed that the company has been the subject of a federal investigation into its accounting practices for more than two years — news that put its otherwise pedestrian quarterly numbers on the back burner.
The business currently expects 2% full-year sales growth for 2019, down from an earlier forecast of 3% to 4%, and a far cry from the era before 2017 when Under Armour had a streak of 26 straight quarters with 20% revenue increases.
The RTP editors discuss diagnoses Under Armour’s missteps over the past few years and shares opinions what the company must do to engineer a turnaround.
Adam Blair, Editor: Under Armour’s recent stock slide can be attributed to the revelations of an ongoing SEC probe into alleged accounting irregularities, but the retailer’s weaknesses — not all of which are of its own making — have been visible for a while. Job cuts announced in September 2018 as part of a $200 million restructuring plan probably deflated internal morale, and a data breach of its diet and exercise app affecting 150 million accounts that was revealed in March 2018 certainly didn’t help either. A deeper problem, however, may be that UA has allowed its brand identity to lose shape and definition, particularly compared with rivals like Nike and Lululemon. While UA is known for performance athletic wear, that’s about its products, not its image. People hear “Nike” and they think “cutting-edge, controversial, fearless.” They hear Lululemon and think “dedicated to community, in-store events, yoga pants.” Granted I’m not much of an athleticwear consumer (just call me Picked Last In Gym Class), but UA doesn’t transmit a clear, compelling message to me. Incoming CEO Patrik Frisk and his team should work on that in 2020.
Glenn Taylor, Senior Editor: When Sports Authority went bankrupt and liquidated its stores three years ago, I recall there being much discussion about what would happen to a lot of the brands that sold through there. While DICK’S Sporting Goods became the top player in the industry by default with this bankruptcy, top athleticwear/footwear brands had one (major) less option to sell through. I’m not attributing Under Armour’s fall just to this event, but I think there’s something to be said about a brand like Nike being able to sell through its own channels so effectively ($11.8 billion total in its 2019 fiscal year, up 16% year-over-year) as much as it does through others. Under Armour hasn’t been able to capitalize on its own stores or its own e-Commerce site to grow. It’s a major problem when there’s been no growth in these channels in any of the last five quarters. People aren’t buying their shoes either, with footwear revenue dropping 12%. I don’t think this is necessarily a product quality issue, but it does tell me that people just don’t associate shoes (and definitely not athleisure) with Under Armour. If the company can’t find a way to make people care about the products they offer, they certainly won’t be able to drag customers back into the store, especially given the in-store experiences provided at Nike and Lululemon.
Bryan Wassel, Associate Editor: I won’t claim to understand the reason for Under Armour’s current state, but I do have a starting point: February 2017, when the retailer’s sales slipped below 20% growth for the first time in 26 quarters. This could have been a fluke, since it still marks solid growth, but revenue continued to fall until it stagnated in mid-2018, and things haven’t improved since. Retail archaeologists need to look at the trends of 2017 to find out what happened: Did tastes change? Did Under Armour’s messaging fall apart? Did Lululemon or Nike unleash some secret weapon? Under Armour in particular needs to take a good, hard look at the company’s actions in 2017 and 2018, figure out where things went wrong, and work to rebuild the good will and relevance it lost before it’s too late.