[Music] thank you for sending over these my shoes I got it and thank you for this you can come you're not wearing any of I'm a bit embarrassed I'll be honest with you okay and you know they're available on the website as well - really okay yeah all right all right well thank you very much you're very comfortable these are gonna make me run faster is that right they could jump a little higher run a little faster and be a lot more secure in your all right well thank you very much Kevin for coming you obviously have a big fan club and we've had you know a lot of people wanted to come to this because obviously people admire a local boy who's made good and let's talk about your company that you started Under Armor but first before we talk about the company let me ask you about some of the videos we just saw you had some of the great athletes that you sponsored take Stefan curry great basketball player you pay him a fair amount of money I guess to wear your shoes and he likes them but if thing comes over your house and what's the play horse does he let you win because you're paying him a lot of money every year IV i v-i be troubled if he let if he if I want to game a horse again Stefan curry that'd be a problem what about like you want to swim with Michael Phelps does he let you win or no I don't know if I try that what about Tom Brady is he throw you the ball soft I think these guys have only one speed I actually had a I had the privilege of playing golf with it was one of those forces that he can only dream about and I got to play golf with with jordan Spieth who's one of our golfers Stefan curry and President Obama Wow and in that foursome so this is the way that I sort of approach to sports and in that foursome I was lucky enough to be able to pair with Jordan because Stefan is a scratch golfer and President Obama doesn't have a job so he has a lot of time on his hands and unfortunately Jordan would have needed possibly close to a hole-in-one on every hole for us to be able to take the match so we gave that match back that someday we'll get our golf game no were you the best of the for golfers there or by handicap perhaps but not even close okay so you haven't how come you haven't signed up Tom Brady's wife Giselle she's not an athlete or she fits about every bill but yeah I think we've had a great relationship with Giselle and Tom so they're there they're a super couple and wonderful people and proud to have them wearing our gear when whenever so the exes are if you could be a great athlete like the ones you just mentioned Michael Jordan or Stefan curry or Michael Phelps or Tom Brady or you could be the CEO of a athletic apparel company what would you rather do be a great athlete or be the CEO I take the CEO every day of the week I mean but but I mean they're not every day of the week but you have yeah I don't know that's actually that's probably better question that I David credit for okay I mean like Stewart's you still get hit like in sports they still write about it afterwards what happens but you really have four games a year with earnings calls and and all the work has done long before the press release that's for sure so what year did you start Under Armour 1996 from about a mile from where we're sitting right now in a little row house in Georgetown on 35th Street when you started the company do you ever think you'd build one of the biggest athletic apparel companies in the world I never had our I never believed we couldn't do that like when I started I never I never thought I don't know people begin with this massive vision at you know 22 or 23 years old but my belief when I started was I was going to build the world's greatest t-shirt for football players to wear their pads it was very much a distance of how far we could see and from there that said we only make the best shirt for football players and what if we made up long-sleeve shirts and what if we made something for cold weather in addition to warm weather and it was really there is it was one one product at a time one ask from the consumer at a time to satisfy a need so let's talk about how you actually came up with the idea of starting a company you grew up in Kensington Maryland suburb of Washington yeah and you went to high school at Georgetown Prep yeah which is a place where a lot of Supreme Court justices have come out of recently right yeah so did you ever aspire to be as in the Supreme Court well I was we came to a mutual agreement to leave Georgetown Prep after my sophomore year not fully knowing about always happened with the Supreme Court justice process but I then made the decision to go to the Christian Brothers at st. John's my junior year of high so you must decided you weren't gonna be an academic star but you might be an athletic star III believe that could do both but it was all right I would you know what I could get at the time you were a good football player I was good I was good high school football player okay what positions did you play I played fullback and linebacker okay and so you get a cop let exposure at the college to play or not everybody not so I would go ahead so where did you initially after you graduate from high school you then went to where a place called Fork Union military academy okay and is that well known for ow there's a so where there are a lot of other good football players there so it actually it's it's 14 and actually became really the impetus for starting Under Armour because between my high school team at st. John's we had a really good team we won the city championship that year we had about nine guys in our team that went on to play Division one football at Fork Union at University of Maryland there were 25 guys playing the NFL at any given time at at Fork Union I went to this class and it's a one-year of prep school class down about 40 miles outside of Charlottesville Virginia and in the class we start with 135 guys on a football team which was a one-year prep team that had 11 starting spots on each side of the ball by the end of three days in August there were 65 roughly people left on that team of that 65 23 signed Division one aid scholarships 13 wound up getting drafted into the NFL and four of them became first-round draft picks and one guy won the Heisman Trophy and somebody named Eddie George so the ability to start Under Armour was more of oh my gosh I've got this massive Network between high school and prep school in college of 4050 you know friends of mine that were playing the NFL that had a shelf life about three to four years of the time that they'd last in the NFL so what can I do to not be the obnoxious third cousin to call and ask for a thousand dollar loan but just simply to say I got a product I'm gonna send you three shirts I've got this idea if you like it wear it if you really I could give one each guy in the locker next to you all right so you have somebody who won the Heisman Trophy on your high school team Eddie George he was pretty good I assumed he could play that's right okay thank you could you tackle him or did you ever tackle him her I tackled him with help before yeah all right all right so you were ready to get a division one football scholarship but the Division one was not ready to give you one it's correct so you went to University of Maryland but you walked onto the team yeah I disagreed with that assessment but yeah so I waited we we sort of marched and cut our own course and I went on the team and I chief played all four years I did and so how many people walk on and actually play all four years is that uncommon it's probably unusual but I think they made a mistake I think I should have the scholarship long before well I thought the same thing at Duke I thought I should have gotten a football scholarship but that then worked out so I should have walked on now you can qualify we hear that ok so let's talk about this all right so while you're there you need to make or you want to make some money on the side you set up a program that seems pretty creative to me to send out roses to people on Valentine's Day what was the essence of that business I my freshman year this guy I knew told me to start a rose business and I went he asked me if I Drive and I knew the area and I was local to Maryland so I wouldn't drove for him and I realized this business was a disaster I showed up you didn't get there till 2 o'clock in the afternoon it was a Friday was rush hour and I thought I could build this business much better than he did so my redshirt freshman year at the University of Maryland I started a rose business sought out to sell 100 dozen flowers $25 each plus a $5 delivery charge $3,000 gross the flowers cost about 15 cents a stem so it was a nice way to make a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars my sophomore year we sold 250 thousand three my junior year 600 dozen my senior year eleven hundred and eighty six thousand flowers and I remember that number because I was trying to sell fifteen hundred dozen flowers and nothing like watching three hundred and fourteen dozen of opportunity died on you so but why did you only do it one day a year you need to think of other days you could have sold roses or other things or just that was enough well I was an athlete so I football to get into it so most kids were down at Mardi Gras and I actually stayed in and all right so you could have you graduated and when you graduated nobody the NFL didn't draft you I assume right no I've had to make other plans all right they made a mistake they didn't draft you so although all right so what did you decide to do you wanted to build a company but where was the idea that came to your head about having a let's say a t-shirt that would be better for football players where was the idea jeanna genesis of that probably the the the superpowers that I was looking for from gear is that as an athlete I I never understood why we'd wear a short sleeve cotton t-shirt in the summer a long sleeved cotton t-shirt in the winter and the way that everyone had viewed apparel in the past had been it's just another t-shirt versus viewing it like a piece of equipment so a cotton t-shirt dry would waste six ounces when it got wet it could weigh up to three pounds so as an athlete playing 7080 plays in a game or god forbid going both ways I thought there was this way to create apparel to make it truly a piece of equipment that could help enhance your performance and make you better and I sweat like a pig so I needed okay all right so how did you go about the idea designing something or getting somebody to help you design something that would do what you wanted to do where did you go the first place is I went to a local fabric store and I brought in a really a piece of for lack of a better word as women's lingerie and I said you make anything like this of the synthetic stretchy material because it was like their girdles that we were on the lower half of our body and said what if he made that for the upper body and the woman at the store at Minnesota fabrics in College Park she handed me a bolt of fabric and I bought what she had I then took this stretchy synthetic fabric to a local tailor in Beltsville Maryland and I brought in a tight little white Hanes t-shirt and I said sir can you make me as many t-shirts that look like this but out of this fabric and seven prototypes later I took them back to my teammates of where some real in the spring of 96 and they tried and they liked them and all right so they made the equipment for you the t-shirt so how do you how did you sell it where did you go to sell it I started with the guys and found out will this idea hold and the players at Maryland said that they love them where could they get more and I then knew I needed to learn how to manufacture so I'd read about this place called the garment district in New York City I got my 92 Ford Explorer and drove up to 34th and fifth avenue parked my car and found a place that could buy fabric I found a place that can manufacture and I made my first run of 500 shirts and then sent three t-shirts out to everybody that I knew and ever played with and your car was still there when you came back right no it was actually tough okay all right so you you have the garment it's being manufactured and then your job is to go on the road and basically sell it to athletes more or lesser teams so was that hard I put 48 and 51,000 miles on my car in 97 and 98 respectively and then I started working my way up to airplane tickets and things like that to move around but yeah I did do these great tours but that's a lot of miles now you are the youngest of five brothers yeah so did your older brothers say you're crazy go get a job or what did they say about this a little bit of that and not really that nice but they said it no I mean I had a tremendous amount of support from my family was great and but everybody had their own thing and so I was doing my thing and Under Armour was you know wasn't obvious you know people start it and they call and they trip over the name as you know what's that thing you're doing armor-all you know underarm you know they would know by the way what did the name come from it wasn't intuitive until about seven years in there's actually one of my brothers when I was going to actually name the company and call it I want to call the company body armor and this is from I'd been through I wanted to call the company heart I thought that'd be a great name you know you keep heart here you were hard on your sleeve like I thought it was a good name I had a friend it worked the patent trademark office guy named Patrick Carson and he ran all of my searches for me this is before the Internet and that name came back full and then I had to name the company body armor and I was not good with a secret and I started telling people to call the company body armor there was about two-week hold between telling people or announcing the name and actually finding out if I could get it and in that time I came back and I found out there's two ballistic vest manufacturers called body armor there's a body shop in New Jersey called body armor you'll never get it through and I went to go see my oldest brother and he was an architect and he was at his desk and he said you ready to go to lunch he said yes and how's that thing you're working on I said well what's that he said what'd he call it Under Armour and I said Under Armour I said I can't do lunch I gotta go I went home my paperwork bought the 8,800 number and the website and but they tell you that armor is spelled AR mor yes but for an 800 number because I didn't know if this internet thing was gonna stick in 96 eight eight eight four ar mo you are or eight eight eight four four AR mor so I opted for the Old English - all right so you started you got the name of the company weird to get the money initially from the ROS business or if you get investors weird you get your initial money investors yeah I had this before private equity but I had seventeen thousand dollars startup capital that I used and then it was just friends and family and there were moments of selling you know a percent in the company or five percent of the company for five thousand dollars it was whatever we could do just to get the company started just some way somehow we're starting this company does Phil Knight of Nike call you up and say hey by the way there's too competitive in this business you shouldn't get into this business or did he ever pay attention to you I don't know he wasn't paying attention to you I mean we have you always have interests and so I thought about the number of times that we've been talked about buying acquisitions things like that and I've always had a very simple philosophy is that if anyone ever offered us an amount of money as I'm a fiduciary of first and foremost as a to my shareholders if anyone ever offered the amount of money greater than what I believed I could get the company to I wouldn't be my choice would be my obligation to do make the right decision but I have yet to see that happen so okay so we go back to work every day all right so you're growing the company what other products did you line extensions they would call and what other products did you build we left the consumer lead us it was you know we have a saying a ton armors that you know we've yet to build they're defining products as a brand and so that's something that challenges everyone in our product teams our marketing teams is making sure that they're working toward the next great innovation and it's a consumer who tells us you know our first product began as a tight-fitting t-shirt for for for for the summer and all of a sudden it was can you make something from warm weather can you make long sleeves could you make shorts and then you have this ethos or essence that becomes the brand that needs to translate through every product that we build and it comes the essence and that consistency that continuity was makes that's what brand is and so whether it is a shirt or short or a shoe it must all feel Under Armour that should feel you know that should feel is great next to skin without a sock on it because it's Under Armour and it should keep you cool when it should breathe and it should have balance in recovery and everything about it should be making you better which is the nice should we have fun can an athletic shoe really make me run faster it's all relative so ok but I mean I guess it makes a little difference right heel it takes a little difference to make yes especially when you get to that elite level and the shoe you're wearing I mean it's a connected shoe which is one of the first connected or the only connective running shoe ever built which means it has a chip in it that you don't have to take your phone for a run to track where you're going and so that shoe actually has an app that comes with it you download the app you can leave your phone at home you can walk outside it could tell you your distance your split your cadence and your gait and so the distance is how far and it can make recommendations you could run faster if you shortened your gait lengthened your gait and gives real-time coaching and so it's really and it ties into our connected fitness platform which today has over 250 million people as a part of it well I'm sure I get run faster if I eat less or whatever else but probably that's not the major factor well it won't create it it'll just encourage you so what about great athletes now when you try to just sign up these athletes everybody knows since Michael Jordan well I guess Stan Smith had a famous team tennis shoe that was made by adidas I guess still does and still it's still out there and then Michael Jordan's shoe became famous so everybody realized if you have an athlete endorse a show a shoe it can help sell the shoe but to get these athletes to do this you have to basically pay the money right they don't do it for free they for its it's nice when they start because they love the brand because they love the product and so you know a Jordan speith is a great example of an athlete who you know he wore he's an athlete he played football and baseball in basketball growing up and he loved Under Armour and that's why he wanted to sign with our brand you know Stefan curry was you know an athlete who came to us who was he'd already signed one kind NBA contract with Nike and then he made the decision to switch to Under Armour and so there's a certain type of athlete that decides to be an under out how did he decide to pick Under Armour over the others truth be told who's actually his his three-year-old daughter Riley at the time who made the decision so this is actually a pretty cool story so Stefan when making the decision he had offers from all three brands and Stefan was you know the seventh pick in the in the draft and his three years had gone by and he didn't feel he was getting the love really from the brandies with the time so to make the decision he put all three shoe boxes with a shoe on top each shoe that we had projected for him and he said you know Riley I need to help make this choice tell me what you think and he sent his but maybe she was one or two actually and she got up and sort of hobbled over there and she picked up the first shoe which is the Adidas shoe she picked it up looked at it threw it over her shoulder she sort of waddled over to the the the second Nike shoe and picked it up and threw it over her shoulder then she pick up the underwear she walked Pat said this one daddy Wow so and you have to pay her two or honey we might it's not bad idea oh I wish you were that easy today yeah yeah so all right so the athlete has to like this the product but obviously they like to be compensated for it but in the end you know when children or young adults are buying athletic equipment or apparel they might be induced to do so by Michael Jordan endorsing it but for somebody my age or older people are they really going to be induced to buy something because Michael Jordan endorses it or really it does work that people like me are we targeting you you like you are saying we are we would not but our mission statement says to make athletes better and our ambition for doing that is when you can outfit the best and people that really care about every every ounce every nuance of a product that comes in I think that trust is something that builds credibility that allows the inspiration because do you care enough but it's nice to know that the very best this is what they choose to wear without performing at the highest level now the products where the products made and there's a perception that all these athletic products they're in apparel are made let's say in Asia they're all made at the same kind of places and these people are paid very low wages and in the end the same factory makes things for you Nike and Adidas is that true or not I think that the the global manufacturing process is something that is it's it's it's critical to I think growing and creating you know second world and first world economies you watch what's happened in China of the elevation of the minimum wage when I've made my first trip to China in 1999 you know Guangzhou was a hot manufacturing bed today Guangzhou is the number three Tier one city in all of China and it's been that transition that it got there through manufacturing so I think it's something it's it's all relative but you know this is something we take great pains that we do when we're evaluating making sure that shops are meet the standards and deliver things the way that we want them to be able to sometimes your products are made the United States or not of course it's a very small percentage today we gave up on that a long time ago so let's talk about Baltimore you're from the Washington suburbs Kensington initially and you went to University of Maryland which is College Barca more or less a suburb of Washington why did you decide to locate the headquarters here of your company in Baltimore which is my hometown it's a great city but wasn't a natural place for you to locate a headquarters or was it I think two things number one there was the there was something about the grid of the city that was appealing to me of remember I moved there in August of 1998 made the decision to move from from Georgetown with my partner Kipp Falks and when we moved it it felt like it was sort of a fresh breath it felt like it was the grid of Baltimore was sort of this this this lunch-pail work food you know chip on your shoulder and that's really what I wanted the brand to be and so there's a reflection there the second thing was being the youngest of five boys you know growing up here I had a lot of history in this town it was nice just to get a fresh start in Baltimore the places close enough to mom but far enough away to really start with the clean sheet of paper no skeletons in your closet and Baltimore might know is it was starting over and starting over a Shintoism so today how many employees do you have in and around the world a little more than 14,000 14,000 how many are in Baltimore area so well Kip and I moved it was Kip and I were we went there with two employees and then today there's probably 3,500 4000 between corporate and one of our main warehouses that we have there as well you've been very involved in philanthropy are many different areas but one is in Baltimore and now you outfit at your own cost the athletes of all the Baltimore City public schools is that right more or less you know what I think is neat is the unique thing about an Under Armour is that we have the ability to connect with kids in a way that other brands don't so you know a bank or an insurance company it's it's nice but kids want to be around our brands through the ability to take advantage of that and so the things that we do to activate is you know we have things that every one of our teammates as we call them contributes 32 hours a year and we have something we called armor days which we did one this year we put 12,000 hours of man and woman power together to actually transform three middle schools in Baltimore City we've built a rec center called you a house on Fayette Street outfitting all of the high schools is critical and then for me personally the ability to touch you know up to 500 kids through summer programming tuition assistance college graduate education in college and other things as well as there's somebody here named Joe Jones from the Center for Urban families that works with formerly incarcerated individuals that get brought out to the ability to actually affect both lives before in lives that need another opportunity are some of the things I think that we're taking on and really trying to make a difference of in Baltimore City all right so you start your company in 1997 right six six and you took the company public in 2005 five at the IPO when you price an IPO the theory is you want the investors to make some money so they buy it at a price a and it goes up by ten or fifteen percent yeah so they feel good that the first day they are up ten or fifteen percent so the underwriters job is to price it so it goes up a little bit yeah your underwriters priced it in a way where your stock went up on the first day one hundred percent so did you leave a lot of money on the table or potentially but what the bankers will tell you is that going public and what I'll tell other entrepreneurs going public it is a starting line but I'll tell you leaving that much money on the table certainly wasn't ideal and it was an email that I got from a certain private equity if somebody that you know well I don't know if I'll use their name but he sent me an email because we had this great meeting when he said oh my gosh I love the company on the IPO is our second or third or last meeting after 77 one-hour one-on-one meetings on the on the roadshow and I said I really liked this guy I told the bankers I said he need a bigger allocation give him a bigger allocation he's a smaller fund you shouldn't give him the big allocation I said no I'm mandating you do it at this point they're saying okay fine we'll give me a gravitation I then get off email two days after the IPO it just said you know dear Kevin loved meeting you thanks so much congratulations on your brand unfortunately you blew through all of our investment parameters so I had to sell everything and he doubled this price basically and sold out of the stock the next day which was a great lesson of sort of going public is that a trade is a trade so the market is it doesn't see that potential it sees here's my investment parameters and here's your PE and here's how we're gonna works he didn't love you he just wanted to get a little money and we he did what hedge funds did is he made money all right so the first day the stock goes up a hundred percent that's I guess makes you feel good on the other hand you left a lot of money on the table but in your companies a good shape and then for I think it's roughly twenty six consecutive quarters here's your revenue went up twenty percent a quarter yeah so that's very unusual to keep going up that way and what point did you realize you just couldn't keep doing that I you know we had a great run from 2010 through 2016 roughly you know with that kind of growth was something that we'd never really been seen in in consumer retail before we were you know we we achieved crossing 500 million or billion or you know faster than any other brands had done in our space and in our industry there's only two now three or four companies that have crossed the five billion dollar threshold and when the other companies didn't they didn't have a you know 25 or 35 billion dollar juggernaut sort of above them that run was one where you know I think we had a lot of a lot of ideas of how how large we could be and doing that it never took away from how great that we knew the company could be either and that's always the focus you want to build a great brand but in doing it when you have that opportunity as grabing we call the the era for us was called get big fast and get big fast was in 2013 we were 2.3 billion dollar company and we effectively from 13 to 16 we went from two point three to four point eight billion dollars so we more than doubled the size of our company in less than three years and that puts all kinds of strain because this isn't software that just leverages out the back side this is infrastructure and facilities in boxes and buildings and a lot of things that we you know I think we've made a great run and I think we allowed to put ourselves in a position of scale that's allowed us to really live through the last two years in a place that's stronger than we could have ever been had we not grown at that rate your company was growing quite nicely the stock price was going up in fact today your market values about nine a half billion dollars more or less but it was almost double that at one point yeah so did you when it started going this way did you think you had to reinvent your company or what did you decide to do I think every company every great company every great brand will come to a crossroads where they have to decide how are you going to attack it and I believe that that's something that we've taken on we call it a transformation and as we've said publicly is that we're roughly two years through we'll call it a three-year transformation and that then a lot of restructuring charges a lot of real organizations we had to unfortunately do some rifts in our company and in going through all that process it's made us a better and stronger company and I think about the three things that we've leaned on which has been people process and products in people it begins with my new partner I brought in a new CEO and president named Patrick frisk he's coming up on 18 months and has been excellent helping us transform implement a go-to-market process deliver a new operating model really just getting our structure and getting I think our costs in line so that we can be as excellent and profitable in the bottom line is we've been able to demonstrate we can do for growth in the top line and then process has been implementing new systems getting our people aligned to that and then whoever makes the best product is going to win and so that's one thing we know that regardless of everything else if we make great product like we recently did with this footwear called hover that we've launched into the world the consumer is going to choose it and and and we'll we'll be there and we have it we have a real chance so you are not in the athletic equipment business unlike some of your competitors like I think let's say Nike they make some athletic equipment why are you not in that business you're in the apparel business that's the equipment's a tough business and there's lower margins it's not as not as compelling or attractive and I think that we effectively believe that we bring equipment our Footwear is not just another shoe it's a shoe that comes with an app it's a shoe that actually will help coach you to make you better our apparel isn't just apparel that wears because it's stylish are cool it should be stylish you're cool but makes it great that Jackie you're wearing is lined with cell Ian's which actually helps increase your blood flow and helps your muscles recover faster to put you in better shape for tomorrow okay all right I'm feeling the blood flowing already yes so now a number of years ago one of your competitors Nike they began to have their own stores Nike stores now you have your own stores right so you have a number in the washing area and I guess around the country so do you sell more products there than you do what the regular retailers are you sell your products through it's a combination in the United States we have a really good wholesale system so partners like Dick's Sporting Goods or Hibbett Sports or Foot Locker and finish line people like that in around the world you don't have that so you go to different markets in China there is no sporting goods channel there is no way to get your product out there so this past spring we opened store number 1,000 around the world actually a Mexico City by the end of next year will open another two to three hundred stores in 2019 moving forward the majority of which will be in China but we have that balance and the ability frankly to control your destiny because dealing through a wholesaler is difficult unless you really have the ability to articulate clearly how you want to show up and how you want to present the brand we have to go to do that around our own stores now in China very often if I'm when I'm there I sometimes see knockoffs of American goods and so forth are there knockoffs there you have to worry about or that's not a problem there we've had several lawsuits and it's ads I don't know if I'm the lawyers were like but it's you you're striving for that moment where people want to knock you off and then all you want to do is protect yourself obviously when you can but we've had some crazy lawsuits that have gone back and forth and they resolving the Chinese courts have been great to us too so so let's talk about for a moment how your your culture of your company you were in the news recently for the nature of your inclusion and not including certain people in your company and you would address the culture issue so we've the hard thing with building a business is that the first thing that I wanted to do is I wanted to build a house I want to build a great house and as you grow you realize that house has become a building and it's gotten a tall building and the first thing is that for any entrepreneur is that as the CEO I am fully responsible for everything that happens in my company but what I'm required to do and where I'm accountable for does the actions we take when bad things happen and I think we've been incredibly proactive when it comes to issues that that arise and this is something that's going to happen in any organization the size of 14,000 plus and so we'll continue to make that we need to be proactive will continue invest into our culture to make sure it is inclusive it is diverse it is something that is it is it is an equal opportunity for anyone who wants to join our brand and we encourage that and again that's not just simply a statement to statement because it's the best thing for our business so and diversity in your materials you indicate I think and materials I read it roughly almost 40 almost 50 percent of your workforce is the burst in one way is that yes and you go out of your way to look for a diverse employee base yeah of course I mean when you look at the sp500 I I believe there's a systematic there's a global inequity that that's that's that's prevalent right now and I think you're seeing a lot of this come up and I think there's a massive opportunity for organizations to use this moment of time to really enhance and again this isn't requirement this isn't to be legislated this is something that can actually I think be a generator for us we have a 1.2 billion dollar women's business I don't feel like we get anywhere near enough credit for it and I do believe if it were if we had larger numbers as we continue to increase the number of diversity or especially women in leadership I think you'll watch that number you know double and triple and years to come hey so talk about the athletes that you when you sign up an athlete is it a very arduous process let's suppose you want to get a new basketball player that's coming out of college and he's a let's say a superstar you and to others or three others are trying to get them how do you do that you have to go meet with them you have to tell them how much money you're gonna pay them you have to show them the equipment how long does that process take it's it's you have to work I mean to have the best but athletes are different today you know and again trying to you know relate with a 20-something year old you want to make sure that you're speaking to them because today's athlete is incredibly sophisticated as well as they understand they are brand they understand what they're bringing to the table and they have a really good understanding of what their market value is and they'll test that but the way to win these athletes it's not always through the front door if you're showing up with the a you know it's it's it's it's sunsoo is the you know the victorious army attacks the defeated enemy if you're waiting the negotiation table for that to be done you're gonna lose when we signed Stephan curry for instance it wasn't waiting to get be one of those three shoes with Riley there was a guy named Ken Bazemore who was an unsigned free agent who happened to just have his locker right next to Stefan so we signed Ken Bazemore and then we loaded Ken with product like on a daily basis and it was this thing where his job was to help us sign Stefan and then eventually Stefan just said man if they take care of you this well imagine what they're gonna do for me and he like helped him with the understanding and that was you know you have to play you know chess with these things and certainly not checkers so what are you looking at high school and college athletes all the time and see who's the best one with best personality and so forth are you scouting these kind of people and getting them primed for your approach we're always looking to find who is next you know I think we've been incredibly proud of that in 2015 we had all four major US sports leagues MVPs plus the number one golf for the number one tennis player in the world you know that's the kind of thing where you look at a year like that and saying can you replicate that remember we're big enough as a company now that we can do anything we're just not big enough that we can do everything and so we have to be thoughtful we have to be strategic is that we have to take sniper shots and so we and our competitors have much greater resources and we do but that is not an excuse and we that's why we still compete and why we believe that we're going to be number one now one of your products is new is pajamas now is that an athletic kind of thing or what is that so it actually it's what led to the top that you're wearing now is where what makes thunder I'm a unique is of course the styling the fit and moisture management all those things that people have always taken for granted about our brand but the consumer actually wants or deserves more and so Tom Brady actually brought to us this idea of the selling it lining wear because the way that he's played well into his forties is because he actually when he recovers and he what I've seen bruised knees elbows he uses this wrap and he believed in and you've seen things from those copper bands and other things out there but this is a first it's actually FDA proven that it increases blood flow which helps increase the speed at which you can recover have your muscles back faster so you're playing from one day to the next you can actually come back that much better and he asked if we could do a pajama line and we introduced that and it was something where people actively recovering at night we said why they just actively recovering at night what if we actually put it into their activewear too so one of the things we'll be launching in the spring of nineteen is something called rush and something called recover which actually includes this recovery material into what you do but here you should have that sort of science project with everyone you're married to Giselle you might need recovery right that's right I'm not going there okay so you're very well known for having a white chalk board in your office and you write sayings there is that a way that you teach people where you encourage people or motivate people what is what is the theory behind that I've kept it since I started in as an athlete this is where coaches would keep everything from death charts to slogans or sayings and for me it's a place we've always captured the real spirit and essence of the brand and it would say things like over promise and deliver or dictate the tempo it says things like trust you know it's it's built and drops and it's lost in buckets it has sort of the the things that make and really require that the DNA of what is Under Armour okay so today you've built a great company and you've made a great deal money by any normal human standards so what do you do with rest and relaxation with when you're not working right now you have money you can travel anywhere you can buy anything what is the outside pleasures that you really enjoy other than interviews like this yeah I love I love driving home parking my car walking next door to where my kids go to school and watching my daughter play field hockey or watch my son play football or play hockey you know I think I've got a terrific family and I'm very fortunate for that and and to have I think the ability now where you get to watch it's sort of play out through the eyes of kids and you know it's it's it's not easy baby being being our kids is because of course like my kids are required to only wear Under Armour all the time and so today suppose they were a Nike thing what would happen I'd be bad but they wouldn't do that but they wouldn't perform as well either that's good I mean I've been running their little legs telling him like don't ever wear them well I'm probably like love love the brand it's important so you have any interest in owning a sports team and you obviously are involved with a lot of sports teams but you would like to own one team itself or not I think one of the best things about my job is that Under Armor get a number is undefeated you know we go to a game and watch two teams play and you know when it's nothing like watching I was at the the northwestern Wisconsin game and you know you walk in one room and it's you know ultimate you know empathy and I'm sorry and welcome another room and it's you know high-fives and so that balance is something which is a lot better than living with the highs or lows I think of a team so 32 good owners and there's 30 good owners and so the sports leaves I think they're okay you're very very young to be in this position you're 46 years old yeah so you can do this for another thirty plus years if you want to but would you have any interest in going into something more important private equity or or would you like to run for office ever or go into appointed position in government or this is what you want to do what I love is there's an old story that I've told before which is there's nothing like this one time I was in a sporting goods store out in Washington and I'm sitting there and and it's four o'clock in the afternoon and I'm watching I'm watching this this this mom walk in with two little with two little kids maybe eight and ten years old and she's got him go through the hands and all of a sudden little eight-year-old it just goes mom mom look Under Armour Under Armour and she starts pointing and pushing and the kids like the moms like don't go over there other stuffs expensive don't buy that and the kids from watching them might go get away kid breaks away and he runs over he grabs an Under Armor shirt and he pulls it over his head and he's still wearing his school shirt and he pulls it down over side sticks his arm out and his mom's distracted with the other one and she's trying something on with the other side with the other boy and I watch this little kid as the necks all jammed up under his collar and he just walks over he just goes he stands in the middle there he goes hey mom he goes look at me I'm wearing under armor I can't do anything like this oh and I'm sitting there and I'm watching this happen and I just think to myself that's brand you know brand is that little boy or that little girl that puts our gear on believes that they can be a little more they can run a little faster jump a little higher it may be the belief that they can make varsity and maybe they'd be the belief that you know they were anxious at the cafeteria and they were you know careful of where they were gonna sit down but today they're wearing under our when they had that superpower so hopefully if I think about what I'd love to do is I love being able to hopefully be able to get that superpower to anybody in the anybody in the world that gets to embrace and engage our brand when you weren't an athlete you were not a superstar athlete but now the people who are in your team who were better athletes they come to you for jobs or that happens sometimes but no I if we're if we're in the position it's if sports the sports is is I think one of the most important training grounds I know that I wouldn't be doing Under Armour it had it not been for you know having played a sport and been in football and for the obvious reasons but also for more is that you learn team you learn understanding I think you know football is a game that is you know has great pressure on it right now but the lessons learned in America without football would concern me a lot more than America with football so a final question I'd like to ask you is let's suppose I'm going to an athletic store to buy apparel and I have adidas I see Nike and I see Under Armour why should I or anybody watching by Under Armour is it better is it less expensive is it going to make you a better athlete what's what's your presentation about why your equipment or apparel is better than your competitors so number one I could March a dozen scientists in here and tell you why we've had 16 phd's work on developing the fiber or fabric or construction of that product and and the the the hundreds of hours of wear tests that we pour into everything that we do the amount of focus that we have into making sure that every product is truly an advantage that's making someone better and I want that to be trust and I want them to be known but at the end of the day I want the consumer to know that this is a brand with the sole you know I want to know that this is a brand that is focused on innovation that if it's Under Armour it's got to be something making you better that if I see you have an Under Armour logo the first question I should ask is is that Under Armour what's it do and the third thing is is I I'm really proud of our story and I want people to be able to embrace and feel that to when they engage with our brand that they feel like they're a part of this I think amazing one example of one of the amazing American Americans story it's a great story and I wonder if you ever thought of signing up private equity people whereas endorsers because you know I mean today right we're athletes too and we can endorse so there might be people who might follow my endorsement so you might think about that that's that's a small market with rice take the opportunity for a high average order value though we will thank you very much for good thank you very much Lucy [Applause]
