UA Will Start A Revolution In Product Design.

In recent years

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Under Armour (UA) is a sport.

Kevin Planck, a group leader, has always flaunted that UA is a technology company.

If the company is in a fast developing situation, it will be active in investment and cross field cooperation, which is exactly the survival state of UA 2016 two years ago.

However, after entering the 2016, the development trend of UA showed a trend of slowing down.

According to the results of the second quarter of the first half of the group, the overall profit of UA has plummeted. Although the revenue of US $1 billion has met market expectations, many business revenue growth has slowed down.

Among them, clothing category is the most prominent, which is the largest business category of UA income. The growth rate of less than 20% has created the lowest value in the past seven years.

Even the shoe business with its guarantee is not immune, but the rate of slowdown is not too big.

There are some objective reasons for such a result, but the strong rise of Adidas still puts pressure on competitors like UA.

Investment in science and technology is usually costly and has a long effect cycle. Therefore, if we want to achieve some results in a short period of time, we must return to the essence of sports brand and produce more innovative products.

In fact, from the point of view of brand operation, there are few secrets inside the sporting goods industry, some are relatively open rules of survival, the difference lies in the final product molding.

What did Adidas rely on in 2016? It is actually the promotion of several fashionable explosive products to the overall performance.

UA naturally needs to learn some experience from competitors, so they also think of making changes from the product side, which is actually returning to their original role.

UA has always been famous for its professional sports, but this is not enough to attract users. So it also chose to go on the path of Adidas, Puma and other brands, and collaborate with fashion people to create more fashionable and popular product categories.

This practice has achieved good results in the competitors. Adidas's Pharrell Williams and Kanye West, Puma's Rihanna have become the key figures in their respective performance improvement.

In fact, for purely sports brands, the pressure is not only from the industry, but also more fashionable brands begin to cross the border sports, and strive to get a share in the sports and leisure market, among which the fast fashion industry is particularly active.

The threshold between industries began to become blurred. This is a normal thing in the shoe and clothing industry, so the sports brand also goes against the trend and plays the fashion card.

UA is slow in this regard, but the pressure of performance is forcing it to make changes.

In early June of this year, UA decided to hire young fashion designer Tim Coppens (Tim Coppens) to develop UAS (Under Armour Sportswear) of high-end fashion product line, and only gave the new product more than three months of design and production cycle, a fast cutting and tangled style of work, which is indeed in line with the mainstream trend of the former shoe and clothing market.

Happily, cobens completed the plan of action UA had made for him.

Last week's 2017 spring and summer fashion week in New York, cobens showed up with UAS series on time.

With the help of fashion week, the new fashion has become the usual tactic of sports brand, and it has produced a lot of repercussions. It is not difficult to understand that the occasion was originally the position of fashion people, and it is a very ideal stage for UAS, who aims to shoot the head.

In addition, Coppens himself is a little famous in the fashion circle. He also participated in the design work in Adidas and Ralph Lauren respectively.

In 2011, Coppens founded his own brand in New York. For the first time in New York fashion week, he won wide acclaim from retailers and media.

Over the next few years, he has won many design awards in the industry.

This year, the clothing of Tim Coppens brand has also been shown on fashion week in New York. New York fashion week can be said to be the natural home of colbens, where he has long been familiar with it. Now UAS also needs to use his influence to start her gun.

For the positioning of the UAS series, UA pointed out in the statement that the new product line maintains the comfort of leisure sportswear and takes into account both innovation and functionality.

Ben Preuss, senior vice president of group sportswear (Ben Pruess), also said that the new product will not limit people to sports grounds, and it will also capture more young consumers for UA.

More and more sports brands are starting to target their users in the millennial era. UA is also taking this step.

It is difficult to make a clear definition of the UAS series, which combines the inherent characteristics of UA brand and the fashionable label of Tim Coppens.

UA has the right way to establish brand influence for UAS. In the field beyond sports, UA also has a firm belief that it can enter the daily life of consumers.

The emergence of the UAS series will surely boost UA's revenue growth in clothing category, and at the same time attract the attention of female users to some extent. Another important point is that consumers will have some conceptual changes in the UA brand. Besides the functionality of products, UA is also following the trend and pursuing the design sense.

But it is also unrealistic for UAS to bring immediate results to the group. After all, market feedback will take some time.

The group has a long-term plan for the new series, and they firmly believe that the new product line will bring growth momentum to the group in the next few years.

UA has stepped up investment in retail channels at the product marketing level. The new series will be available in flagship stores in UA New York and Chicago, some high-end fashion retailers and online.

Not long ago, Adidas launched a new series of Adidas Athletics. In order to match the debut of the first product Z.N.E. Hoodie, Adidas almost allocated all its resources before and after Adidas. From Beckham to Baer, from harden to Jeremy Lin, and even the Chinese women's volleyball team, the theme ads were taken for new products.

It can be said that Adidas is using a carpet marketing strategy to promote new products.

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UA has the same effect as Adidas in marketing resource allocation.

Almost all the UA spokesmen published the content related to UAS through the social network in the days before and after the UAS was officially released. Celebrities such as Curie, spike, Phelps and Hastings were no exception.

Since the announcement of the UAS product plan in June, UA has launched official twitter for the series, and has been tracking the progress of the new product line for more than three months.

Not only is the sporting goods market, but the competitive pressure of the shoe and clothing market is increasing.

But the whole industry is making great efforts in sports and leisure fashion, and the new market order will soon be established.

The layout of UA is somewhat backward, but it has not lost the chance of competition.

According to the NPD group report of the market research company, the market share of sports and leisure products has increased by 16% last year, and the total sales volume has reached 43 billion 600 million dollars.

It is estimated that this figure will soar to 178 billion by 2019, which is a huge growth space.

UAS is more representative of UA's change in product concept.

UA attaches great importance to the development of women's market, but their female products are often criticized for being novel and fashionable, and thus lack competitiveness.

And this may have gradually developed into a common problem with UA products.