ACTIVITY TRACKING
The message from Under Armour is: ‘Data is the place to be’
What are the synergies between all the elements of your business? Over time you will see changes, especially in the area of wearables. Connectivity will find its way into apparel and footwear and there will be a tighter integration between these two sides of our business.
Are you looking to buy any more apps? No comment!
How about developing more platforms or apps yourself? Right now, we’re really focused on taking what we have and creating the concept of the single view of the user.
What are the immediate opportunities, and in the future? The opportunities are endless. Ultimately the biggest opportunity is to move the Under Armour brand forward: having a digital platform to tell our brand story and serve our core business is the most immediate one. We’re really excited to be in this
space and the growth potential is really exciting: we have the largest health and fi tness network in the world.
Do you have plans to move into bricks and mortar fitness facilities? We’re always looking at partnerships in the gym space. We think that’s an important part of the ecosystem and we know our users are in the gym. Gym is a fragmented space, so we’ll look at identifying best-in-class partners and continue to grow our experience.
We’ve made a big bet and believe we can be the brand that owns health and fitness
How could health club operators work with Under Armour? Our message is ‘data is the place to be’, and we can lead with connected fitness. We really think of ourselves as an operating system – the central depository for fitness and activity. Our message to operators is to
embrace the opportunity to refer us and bring their clients on board, so we can help them meet their fi tness goals. We have the opportunity to collect data regardless of the wearable, and one in four consumers owns a wearable.
How do you think things will look in this field in five years? I honestly don’t know, but connectivity will be everywhere. When MapMyFitness launched in 2007, it allowed users to track their runs in real time for the fi rst time. When I think about the progress that’s been made between then and now, it’s shocking. I’m really excited about data being
used more predictively and the use of artifi cial intelligence. There are really exciting things to come for sure.
Will it help get people more active? That’s the perfect sentiment to end with, because that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. We’re just trying to get people to
60 Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
work out more, and I think there’s an opportunity to do this. In the United Kingdom and the United
States, 30 per cent of the population are regularly active, but more than half have a smartphone. If we can get participation levels up to somewhere in between those figures, we’ll have accomplished something. ●
NEWS UPDATE
Since this interview was conducted, Under Armour has continued its charge into the fitness technology sector with the acquisition of workout-focused search engine Gritness, which helps people find and join workouts. The fi nancial aspects of the deal have not been revealed. The acquisition of Gritness marks
another step in Under Armour’s progress towards building a platform and developer network whereby it supplies the apparel, hardware and tracking apps used in a workout, as well as owning the resultant data. Gritness is a signifi cant piece of the puzzle, both in terms of its advertising possibilities, as well as its insight into how users approach a workout.
August 2015 © Cybertrek 2015
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