Kevin Plank was a former captain of the University of Maryland Football team. During his time there, he detested how his cotton shirts got wet and had terrible resistance to moisture. After he graduated, he wanted to see if he could take the type of technology from his compression shorts and see if the moisture wicking concept could be applied to a wider range of clothing. He started funding with some of his own credit and then ended up taking out multiple credit cards, slowly racking up debt. He went broke only a year after founding the company.
However, his luck would soon change. Georgia tech soon signed a small deal with Under Armour, and then multiple NFL companies soon followed suit. Under Armour took off, and soon Plank’s company had $2 billion in sales. Plank has discussed many times about how being a successful entrepreneur doesn’t happen by accident. He describes it as “You have to put your hands around the throat of your business, and you need to run it. There’s no other way.” Plank has used his success and mentors many groups of up and coming entrepreneurs.
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As a football player I can’t imagine sports without this brand. It is really cool to see how it came to be. I did not know the founder noticed this while actually playing football and was able to come up with a great solution to this long running issue at to that point.
This is a great article about someone who actively responded to a problem. He recognized the need to move on from the cotton shirts and found the solution. It also must have helped that he had played in college, this really helped him empathize with his audience. Now, Under Armor is worth 3.8 BILLION. wow.
It’s interesting to see how a business can fail before becoming practically a household name! A great example of using one’s own pain to find a problem, and then make a profit out of it!
Personal experience to a problem in need of a solution is one of the most important things in creating a product to fill as a solution to that problem. In context to this industry, Kevin Plank saw a problem with the material used in clothing at that time because his clothes would get so wet, so he came up with the idea to create clothing that could quick dry and wouldn’t hold water, meaning it wouldn’t be made with cotton. As one could see, he did a perfect job with this because Under Armor is a very popular clothing brand today.