Under Armour may be under Nike for now when it comes to sales of athletic apparel, but it's the mouse that roared, according to the students and staff members of Morningside College who are gobbling up the Under Armour itemsat the campus Bookstore.
"That's probably the hottest item that we sell," said Duane Benson, director of the Morningside College Bookstore, located in the lower level of the Olsen Student Center. "They have a huge line of apparel: mouthguards, socks, shoes, shorts, sweatshirts, hats, backpacks. We carry a pretty wide array of them."
The bookstore has been selling Under Armour athletic wear, many bearing the Morningside logo, for three or four years and they are clearly outselling the duds that were hanging on the racks before that, Benson said.
"Under Armour was developed as performance gear for athletes," he said. "But everybody wears it any more ... faculty, staff. I've got a few hanging in my closet. It's really taken off."
One of the brand's more adament supporters is Amanda Bryan, a work study student from Denison, Iowa, who works at the bookstore. And for her, it is all about comfort.
"I'm cold-blooded, basically. So I wear sweatshirts all the time, and it keeps me cooler and I can wear a lighter jacket and still have Under Armour on and still be warm at the same time," Bryan said. "It's just comfortable. You don't get too hot and you don't get too cold. it just depends on what the season is outside. I can work outside and still be comfortable without a jacket on with Under Armour on."
All of her friends have a variety of Under Armour items in their clothing selection. she noted.
Made of polyester, not cotton, the Under Armour garments help you avoid that clammy feeling, Benson said.
The company was founded in 1996 by Kevin Plank, a former University of Maryland special teams captain for the university football team. Plank and co-founder Jordan Lindgren, another former University of Maryland football player, began their business from Plank's grandmother's basement in Washington, D.C.
Plank, who go tired of having to change out of the sweat-soaked cotton T-shirts he wore under his jersey, noticed that his compression shorts stayed dry. This was the inspiration to make a T-shirt using moisture-wicking fabric for athletic performance.
The company built up slowly through word of mouth. Then a newspaper photo of Oakland Raiders quarterback Jeff George wearing an Under Armour mock turtleneck brought the company to the attention of Georgia Tech which bought some shirts, and the word spread.
Under Armour made its first profit in 1998 and got its first big break the following year when Jamie Foxx, featured as quarterback Willie Beamen in the Oliver Stone movie, "Any Given Sunday," wore an Under Armour jockstrap. That attention, followed by an ad in ESPN The Magazine, generated close to $750,000 in sales.
Under Armour opened its first retail location in 2007 in Annapolis, Maryland."I think it's more popular than Nike and a lot of the other name-brand stuff that's out there," Bryan said, a testament to the brand's burgeoning popularity. But it still has a way to go to catch Nike.
Nike remains Under Armour's greatest rival with 7 percent of the U.S. sports apparel market, compared with less than 3 percent for Under Armour, according to Sporting Goods Intelligence. And Under Armour has an even longer way to go to match Nike's global reach. Just 6 percent of its revenue comes from abroad, compared with over 60 percent fof Nike.
But the company had definitely made inroads into the Sioux City market.
And just last month, the company updated its net revenue expectation for 2011 to range from $1.46 billion to $1.47 billion, up 37 to 38 percent over 2010. Estimates of operating income for this year range from $159 to $162 million up 42-44 percent over last year and higher than earlier predictions.
