Changing the game with Stephanie Linnartz, President & CEO of Under Armour
Willy Walker: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to another Walker Webcast. It is a real pleasure for me to have my friend Stephanie Linnartz join me once again. Almost three years, as Stephanie pointed out to me, as we were coming on almost three years to the day that the two of us did a Walker Webcast to talk about Marriott and how Marriott International was, if you will, fairing working through the pandemic and what was happening in the travel and leisure industry. And obviously, to all of you who have joined us today, you all know that Stephanie now has an incredible job. Not that her old job at Marriott wasn't an incredible job, but she has an incredible, incredible job at Under Armour – leading that great consumer brand. And I'm very excited to dive into, if you will, life between Marriott and Under Armour. What Stephanie is doing with Under Armour and where she is taking the company going forward.
Stephanie, let me do a quick bio on you, which is extensive. I'm going to try and move through it here, but you've got such incredible work in your background that I want people to understand that. And then we'll dive into where we are today.
Stephanie Linnartz is President and Chief Executive Officer of Under Armour, one of the world's leading athletic performance brands. Under Armour does business in more than 100 countries and has over 1,800 Under Armour-branded stores around the world. The brand has partnerships with over 3,000 schools, universities and clubs, and with some of the world's most influential athletes, which we will talk about later.
Stephanie is leading Under Armour through its next phase of growth, centered on driving global brand heat, delivering elevated design and products, and growing sales globally.
Prior to joining Under Armour, Stephanie was the president of Marriott International, Inc., the world's largest hospitality company with a portfolio of more than 8,500 properties across 138 countries and territories. 31 brands including Ritz-Carlton, Saint Regis, Marriott Hotels, W Hotels and Westin. In her role as president of Marriott International, she was responsible for developing and executing all aspects of the company's global consumer strategy, including brand, operations, marketing, sales, revenue management, customer engagement, technology, emerging businesses, and loyalty strategies, including the Bonvoy program, which you were very involved with.
She began her career at Marriott in 1997 as a financial analyst. Stephanie has been recognized for her industry leadership. She was named one of Fortune's 100 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2023. She was named to the Forbes CEO Next 2021 list of up-and-coming leaders set to revolutionize American business. She was honored by Brand Innovators as one of 2018’s Top 100 Women in Brand Marketing. She has been a speaker at the World Economic Forum and is a sought after conference panelist at global industry events.
She graduated from the College of Holy Cross with a degree in Political Science, holds an MBA from William and Mary, and has completed additional graduate studies at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Development. She's on the board of The Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement retailer. Sits on the board of trustees of the College of Holy Cross. She's also on the board of the Economic Club of Washington and is an advisory board member of both Fair Chance and Teach the World Foundation. Finally, she is passionate about fitness and wellness and resides in Washington, D.C. area with her husband and two children, all of whom I know. That's quite the bio, Stephanie.
Stephanie Linnartz: Well, thank you for having me. Willy, it's so nice to see you and again, it's been a little while, but happy new year!
Willy Walker: Happy New Year to you. And since the last time we spoke, although you and I have texted and emailed a lot – happy new role at Under Armour. And congratulations for all that you are doing and accomplishing there. I guess I'll start with kind of the transition from the past to the present. What was it that attracted you to leave Marriott in such a big role and doing such a great job at such an iconic global brand, and move over to Under Armour?
Stephanie Linnartz: Well, first of all, I had an absolutely spectacular career and time at Marriott International. You know, one of the best companies in the entire country, the entire world, as far as I'm concerned. And I loved every moment of it. That being said, when this opportunity presented itself to me to take the CEO role for a company I had long admired, it also started off in Washington, DC, similar to Marriott, which started off as the nine-stool root beer stand. Under Armour started out in Kevin Plank's grandma's basement in Georgetown, across the street from where I went to high school, Georgetown Visitation.
So I have known the company for a long time, and when this opportunity presented itself, I had to go for it. I really wanted to be a CEO. I love the idea of a new challenge. I love the idea of learning a new industry. I've always been passionate about sports. I think sports is something that unifies us and brings us together, just like travel. So something very similar at the core and heart of the business and the industry. So, I decided to take my own advice that I had given to myself and many other people over the years, particularly women, to bet on yourself, take a chance. And that's what led me to take on this new job. And it's been great. It's been about ten months.
Willy Walker: When you think about hospitality and the multiple brands inside of Marriott, and then you think about Under Armour and its global brand, but then, if you will, distinct SKUs shoes and apparel and all that goes inside of the Under Armour brand. Talk for a moment, Stephanie, about either the similarities or the differences between running a big global hospitality brand and running a big global consumer products brand?
Stephanie Linnartz: You know, I really think Willy that there's more similarities and differences I mean, at the heart of both Marriott International and Under Armour and Home Depot for that matter, it's all about building consumer love, brand loyalty, stickiness. They're all consumer-facing brands, and it's all about just really putting the consumer at the center and figuring out how you can build that loyalty.
In the case of Marriott and Under Armour specifically, there's many similarities in not only in the regards to the kind that focus on the consumer, but the whole concept of building out a loyalty program. One of the things I'm most proud of in my career at Marriott, was we built Marriott Bonvoy after the Starwood hotel acquisition, where we combined SPG, Marriott Rewards and Ritz-Carlton rewards into what is now the beloved Marriott Bonvoy program. And on a similar note, this past summer at Under Armour, my team and I launched UA Rewards, a loyalty program for Under Armour, and it's at the heart of the loyalty program. Just like at Marriott, at Under Armour – it's about consumer stickiness, and it's about experiences and brand love.
So it's not just about points for merchandise. Just like it wasn't just about points for hotel rooms at Marriott. So when we launched UA Rewards at Under Armour, I took the page out of my Marriott playbook, and we did it with a big sweepstakes for all the people who signed up. They could win a chance to spend the day with Steph Curry at Under Armour's headquarters in Baltimore. And it was a fabulous day. We had a lucky winner, got lots of signups for the loyalty program, but that's the kind of thing we're doing with UA Rewards, access to our athletes, early drop to new products. All about making it very special and unique. And that was very similar to what we were doing at Marriott over the many years I led that program.
So just one example. Another similar point is when you think about a hotel, it's all about service, right? That warm smile, that friendly knowledge that you get from an associate at a hotel. Same thing when you walk into an Under Armour store. You want to see a warm smile. You want to see a knowledgeable teammate is the word we use at Under Armour. So another similarity.
Willy Walker: So in the hospitality space, even though Marriott didn't own many of the physical hotels, you had a couple legacies that you held onto, but most of them were owned by real estate developers and you all were operating it. But when there's a decision to put a hotel in Shanghai or in Cleveland, it's a pretty long lasting investment decision. You've done the analysis to say the consumer wants to be in Cleveland, this is the brand we're going to put there. And then now let's go and try and drive usage of that asset and use the loyalty in the brand to get people to come to it.
The life cycle of the products you're building at Under Armour is, well, let's just put it this way, significantly shorter than a building that's going to sit in the ground for 50 to 100 years. How has that been related to just the overall decision making as CEO Stephanie? When you were at Marriott, where at the margin, you're trying to find that incremental customer. But the product for all practical purposes is pretty static. Whereas in Under Armour, consumer tastes and the products you're building change almost daily.
Stephanie Linnartz: Yeah. I mean you're right. That's a difference between my previous role in industry and in Under Armor. Although I will say what's similar is some of the real estate decisions. The leases aren't as long for an Under Armour store, but they're certainly a physical store. And you're doing the same type of feasibility analysis, catchment analysis to figure out where I should put that Under Armour store. Just like, where should I put that hotel? But the shoes, the shirts, the apparel, the footwear, the sneakers, the accessories, we have season after season, we come out with new items based on what the trends are and what our athletes are really needing to be the best at their particular sports. So there is a whole new world for me in that regard. And, you know, we're actually manufacturing shirts, shoes, and uniforms. So that is another thing that's quite different. I just got back from a fabulous trip to Asia, where I was meeting with dozens of our factory partners, both on the apparel side and the footwear side. And that's a whole new world. The lead time for apparel and footwear is quite long, anywhere from 12 to 18 months, depending on, what you're building. And so there is a real difference on that front.
But I think, again, I go back to the similarities. It's putting the consumer and in the case of Under Armour, the athlete at the center of the table and figuring out what are their needs, what do they want, how are we best going to serve them? And so that again, is quite similar to the previous approach. But there's plenty of differences, as you pointed out.
Willy Walker: How do you suspend your own personal taste? So for instance, when you were at Marriott, you traveled a lot and you got to experience the product. In consumer products, there are plenty of things that Under Armour makes that you may sit there and say, wow, I'd buy that in a heartbeat. There are plenty of other things I'm assuming they make that they don't fit your own personal likes or taste. How do you, if you will dispel your own personal taste as a team comes to you with a product saying we know exactly what target demographic we're going after here and we think this thing's going to sell. I mean, I would find that to be quite challenging.
Stephanie Linnartz: Again, I think it's about putting the consumer first, the athlete first and listening to what they want. Our target consumer at Under Armour is that 16 to 24 year old team sport athlete. Well I'm not 16 to 24 anymore. I happen to live with two people in that demographic, my children. It is similar. I didn't love all Marriott's brands equally in terms of my own personal taste and esthetic. And so it's similar, I suppose, in many ways to Under Armour, but it really is about figuring out what the consumer needs, the athlete needs. I mean, we are a performance based brand. We are designing solutions to meet athletes' needs. We outfit 26 sports at thousands of high schools and colleges. And so we really need to listen to our athletes. And we spend a lot of time with our athletes. I'll give you a few examples.
At the highest level, we'll spend a lot of time with the likes of Steph Curry and figuring out what he needs to excel. He's at the top of the list in terms of our partners and athletes. What does he need to be better at his sport? So we just launched the Curry 11 with a new technology that our innovation team design has taken seconds off Steph Curry's game and actually doesn't need to ice his knees nearly as much anymore at all because of these new Curry 11 shoes. So we spend time with him and his team and his trainers. And now, of course, I'm not a basketball player, so I'm not going to have a lot of input on that personally. But by listening to Steph, we're able to design something that's really making him better at his game.
I'll give you another example that's fun. We have a lot of designers who are former athletes, and as a matter of fact, we have a young woman who designs a lot of our uniforms, including for football teams. And one of the things our football players were saying at the big universities and high schools is they didn't like love handles hanging over their football pants. So she also designs yoga pants. So she does female and men’s apparel. So she took the technology from the yoga pants and put it on the football players uniform pants and got rid of the problem that our athletes were having with love handles, and they didn't want to admit it, but they loved it. So, from anything that's quite technical, like the flow technology and the Curry 11 basketball shoes to what we're doing with football uniforms. I mean, there's many examples where we're listening to an athlete's problem or challenge and then we're reacting.
The team of innovators we have at Under Armour is remarkable. We have hundreds of patents for all sorts of different technologies. We're doing a ton with sustainability. We should talk a little bit about that, but it's about listening to athletes. I'll share one more story because I love it and it relates to female athletes. Our female athletes were telling us, particularly basketball players. There's this mesh material in the shirts and the shorts. But some of the women were saying it made them uncomfortable that's quite see-through. So we came up with a new fabric called Airvent. And it's got micro mesh holes, same breathability and same capabilities as the old material that made the female athletes feel more comfortable. So we listened to them, and we reacted and we delivered a solution to them that met their performance needs - absorbs sweat, wicking capabilities. But it also solved the problem for them. So there's big examples and small examples. But what I'm just absolutely loving is spending time with athletes and hearing what their challenges are. And with the team coming up with creative solutions to solve them.
Willy Walker: You talked about football into yoga, which I find to be fantastic in that designer who was looking at an issue in football and taking it down to yoga. Somebody sent me a list, Stephanie of the top 200 broadcasts in America last year, and it was pretty much all football. I think the final round of the Masters was like 132nd position or something. And your athlete, Jordan Spieth was in there and that's great. But as you think about everything from R&D on products to sponsorship of athletes, how do you think about it in the sense that ‘all eyeballs are on football, we really need to just kind of focus on the major market and then add a little bit below it.’ Or the U.S. Olympic well, the World Olympic Committee has just allowed for lacrosse and skateboarding and a couple other emerging sports to come to the next Olympics.
How do you and the Under Armour team differentiate, if you will, between those what I would call bulge bracket sports, and then the more emerging ones where you might find either a product or a sponsor agreement that really gives Under Armour a unique positioning in the market?
Stephanie Linnartz: Great, great question. And something we talk a lot about. Well, first of all, we do business in many different countries. So the sports differ by country. American football is big here. But of course global football is big in our business in Latin America and Europe. So we do a lot with global football aka soccer teams in different parts of the world and in many cases, obviously, that blows American football out of the water in terms of viewership and passion for the sport.
But it's interesting you should bring up the point about emerging sports, because one of the biggest emerging sports is flag football, and it's actually going to be in the Olympics this year. About 6 million kids in this country play flag football, and soon to have more women playing flag football than men. So we just signed a new athlete, an amazing young woman named Diana Flores. She is a world famous flag footballer. She plays for the Mexican national team, and she is on fire and the viewership of flag football - I was at an event a couple months ago with Roger Goodell, and we were talking about this and the owner of the Ravens and his team. Roger is very focused on flag football because increasing eyeballs for NFL football and actually increasing viewership with women. So he is a big supporter of flag football. And he knows he was really excited when I told him that we had signed Diana Flores as one of our Under Armour athletes. So you're right, it's always thinking that there's so many sports, right? You think about emerging sports like flag football and pickleball is on fire. And then you think about the sports that basketball I mean, is absolutely critical because basketball's also tied to the zeitgeist and culture. And we're really leaning into designing out not only performance apparel, but it will always be performance-based but really leaning into sports style.
So we don't want to be the choice for athletes only when they're on the court, the pitch, the field. We want them to choose Under Armour when they are going out to Starbucks to have a coffee or to live their life outside of sports.
I just hired a new chief product officer, a gentleman named Yassine Saidi. He was with Puma and Adidas, and then he had his own company. But when he was with Puma, he really built out their lifestyle capabilities and a lot of cool collaborations he did when he was there. Just hired John Varvatos to be our head of design, he is a very well-known designer who worked with Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, had his own men's brand. So we have tons of amazing talent at Under Armour that really knows performance and sports. But we're bringing in some experts that really know design as we lean more into appealing to women and also building out our footwear and sneaker business.
Both women and sneakers and footwear, they're both less than 25% of our sales. So we know that that's an area where we need to grow. And we know really leaning into style is important. I like the saying that “without beauty there is no performance.” So it's really important for young people that we're not only meeting their needs, but that from an athletic and performance standpoint, we're stylish and cool too. So we've got a lot of cool things in the works on that front and a lot of new talent we're bringing in to work side by side with the great talent we already have within the company.
Willy Walker: I've heard you talk about the Taylor Swift effect on sports apparel brands. What's the Taylor Swift effect other than showing up to the Kansas City Chiefs games and watching her boyfriend play?
Stephanie Linnartz: She's done a lot for the NFL viewership, that's for sure.
Willy Walker: Yeah. Your friend Roger has got to be thrilled, that was an added shot in the arm to the NFL that quite honestly, the NFL didn't really need, but they've certainly gotten it.
Stephanie Linnartz: Yeah, certainly I'm sure it's helping. Interesting stat on Taylor Swift. She walks over ten miles every single concert that she does. So she's an athlete. I don’t know if you've been to a Taylor Swift concert but she's quite the athlete. But, you know, she is a real role model for young women. And I think that there's an inflection point in women's sports that is really important.
Last year you saw some of the highest viewership of women's sports ever record attendance, live attendance at a female sporting event was last year in Nebraska - 92,000 people at the women's volleyball tournament in Nebraska. Then the CWA women's final had record viewership. You're seeing a lot with women's soccer. I mentioned flag football. I am passionate about supporting female athletes in particular, because sports is so important to change people's lives. And this is another interesting statistic, one that's a little bit, I think, frightening. You know, 1 in 3 girls drop out of sports when they are in their teenage years, only 1 in 10 boys drop out. So young boys have millions of more opportunities every year to play sports. And it's not whether or not you become a professional athlete, but sports teaches you leadership, discipline, and community. Kids are so isolated these days because of social media and all this technology and sports brings people together and community and girls drop out at a much faster rate. They may play little league or peewee soccer, but then, a lot drop out in middle school and then even more drop out before college.
So one of the things I'm passionate about, and I'm working with our female athletes on, is encouraging more young girls to play sports. You don't even need to be a superstar. You don't need to be that great. And you're going to go on and get a scholarship. Maybe you will, but it's more about the life lessons it teaches you when you play sports. And I'm passionate about supporting female athletes. And yeah, I mean, Taylor Swift is, I think, the ultimate modern feminist and all that she's teaching young women.
Willy Walker: Talk for a moment Stephanie, if you would, about that as it relates to just the underlying culture at Under Armour. I know Kevin (Plank), I've spent time with Kevin. Kevin's a guy's guy. He is one of the most hard charging people I know, and I think really set a culture at Under Armour, which was it emanated from football as its sort of cornerstone in making the original Under Armour t-shirts that went underneath shoulder pads at the University of Maryland and has grown and expanded the brand globally into all sorts of other verticals. Oh, by the way, also sponsoring female athletes in building lots and lots of shoes and equipment for women. But now that you've stepped in over the last eight months, what have you done beyond sponsoring lots of female athletes in that view on the female? What else have you done as it relates to the underlying culture at Under Armour to keep that, if you will, broadening I think of the company that I'm seeing happen under your leadership?
Stephanie Linnartz: Well the culture at Under Armour is great. It really is. It’s a culture that is about winning, being scrappy and having grit. And it does have that athletes’ edge to it. There's a lot of former athletes that work at Under Armour, but it's a wonderful culture. Also, the values of the company are really deeply ingrained. We love athletes as you can imagine is one of our core values because that's our core consumer. Celebrating the wins, I love that. That's a very sports culture kind of value to have. But it's focused on the positive and celebrate the wins, you know, stand for quality, act sustainably. These are values that are deep in the company and that Kevin embodies.
You know, Kevin is an entrepreneur and a founder, and no one loves a company like the founder. I know that from my days at Marriott, no one has the passion, just the deep love like Kevin does for Under Armour. And I think Kevin and I make a good team because I'm bringing a different set of skills and experiences to the company and on top of that, I'm bringing in new leadership.
I mentioned a couple of new hires I've made on the product and design side, but I also brought over an executive who was one of my closest partners at Marriott, a gentleman named Jim Dausch, to be our chief consumer officer. I hired a new woman to run communications, hired a fabulous gentleman to run the supply chain who came over from the Gap. So I’m also bringing in new talent from the outside to bring in a new perspective, a fresh perspective that also honors what makes Under Armour so great and all the internal talent that we have.
So I think any company needs to grow and evolve. I think about Under Armour, you know the company well in three chapters. Chapter 1 was to get big fast. The days you're talking about when Kevin started Under Armour in his grandma's basement in Georgetown and it grew like crazy. And then Chapter 2, the company hit some harder times. I think there was a time to reset to get some good operational practices in place, things around the supply chain, etc. Some good work was done in that Chapter 2, which was about stabilizing. And then I'm leading Chapter 3, which is the pivot back to growth and to expand the business. And that's going to be done through building brand heat, getting the brand really even hotter here in the U.S. It's going to be a lot around building out our product. I mentioned women's sports style and sneakers being a big part of that. So expanding our products pyramid, getting more in that better and best part of the product pyramid. And then while we continue to grow internationally, I mean, again, we're in 100 countries around the world. We really need to supercharge growth here in the United States. So I'm very focused on that. So I'm lucky to lead Chapter 3 for Under Armour. And I couldn't be more lucky or proud.
Willy Walker: Something tells me Chapter 3 is going to be long and it's going to be really good. You mentioned supply chains a couple times, Stephanie, just given all the supply chain challenges that our country in many, many companies, such as Under Armour faced when the pandemic hit and then when the economy started to kick back. This may be a little bit too wonky a question, but how are you all as it relates to those supply chains freeing up? Are we still waiting for ships to arrive at the Baltimore port and unload and they're behind schedule? Or have you all gotten back online as it relates to the supply chain? And as you're answering that, if you would just for a moment, you said you were just over in Asia meeting a lot of your manufacturing facilities. Is the lion's share of your manufacturing is all still done in Asia? Have you brought any of that back to the United States, given what happened with supply chains during the pandemic?
Stephanie Linnartz: Yeah, no, actually, from a supply chain perspective, a very small percentage of our supply chain and manufacturing is in Asia, is in China. And we do a lot of our apparel manufacturing in the Middle East, actually. It's interesting because now we are more apparel heavy than footwear heavy. And so as we pivot to do more footwear, I'm sure that the mix of where we manufacture things will change.
But, I mean, we do manufacture throughout Southeast Asia and China, but we have a relatively small percentage of our supply chain coming from Asia. But I mentioned the gentleman I just hired from Gap. This is a new world to me, manufacturing, apparel, footwear, and sneakers. So just like I did at Marriott, I need to surround myself with people that know more than me and are experts in areas where I'm not. So the gentleman that I hired to run the supply chain, Shawn Curran, is his name is a great executive. He used to be the COO of Gap, actually, for all seven of the brands. But now he's heading supply chain management for us. So to the first part of your question, the supply chain things have normalized a bit back to normal. I think there were all sorts of challenges during Covid. I'd say we're having some slight challenges, nothing that we can't manage through. You see it in the news with what's happening in the Red Sea. You know, some of the shipping challenges there. But for the most part, I'd say our supply chain, our inventory, things are starting to normalize back to a level that's manageable. I mean, during Covid, no one could get inventory then after Covid, everyone was flush with way too much inventory. And you saw everybody discounting extensively, which has its own set of problems. So, I'm gaining an appreciation for the criticality of inventory management in this job, too. And of course, that's all inextricably linked to the supply chain.
Willy Walker: We talked at the top a little bit about your role in launching Bonvoy at Marriott, and how important the Marriott loyalty program was to not only the growth of the brand, but if you will repeat customers, which is key to any successful business. You mentioned that you've just launched Under Armour's loyalty program. What are sort of, if you will, early returns? How different is it? I mean, clearly all of us know I fly an airline, or I go to a hotel room, I get my points and I kind of go back because I'm going to get some free stuff there. Talk for a moment about the Under Armour loyalty program and what one would get if they become a member of it?
Stephanie Linnartz: Well, we're just getting started. But similar to what you experience with hotels and airlines, it's a point for merchandise program. So you spend money with us, and you get you UA Rewards points that you can use to either redeem to get money off a future purchase or for, depending on how many points you have - free stuff. But again, back to my earlier point. I think it's about and that's part of it. It's the points for merchandise, just like you see with other retailers. Sephora, Home Depot has a loyalty program for pro customers. This is not unheard of in retail either.
But I think what's going to be the magic sauce for us is how we link in the community and experiences with it. So it's about access to special products. It's access to games. Come to a Notre Dame football game, meet Steph Curry, spend time with Kelsey Plummer, our fabulous WNBA superstar. But it's about experiences. So we're at a couple million members and growing. But the early metrics on the financial side are very encouraging. Just like we saw, the whole point is to stay more, pay more. You know, we're seeing more repeat customers. The people are coming back at a much higher rate within 90 days if they sign up for our loyalty program. It also allows us to have data and information on our consumers that with their permission, we use for marketing purposes.
Data is oil in today's day and age. So part of what's very important about a loyalty program, and this was true at Marriott as well, it's about data and information on your consumers. So again with their permission you use to meet their needs and to make sure that you're sending them offers for things that are meaningful to them. So we're actually doing a lot with our college athletes to get them involved in the loyalty program. We've re-signed with Notre Dame last year, one of our top schools and part of the deal with Notre Dame, besides outfitting their teams and selling stuff in their bookstore, is access to their athletes so that they can help us with thoughts on style, trends and what they want to buy, but also help us with ideas on how we can make the loyalty program super cool and interesting and sticky for young people.
Willy Walker: You talking about Notre Dame just makes me think for a moment about name, image and likeness and how much that's changed. Well, the portal and then NILs, I mean, you used to have to go and if you will just negotiate with the athletic director at Notre Dame on a big contract that went over either all their teams or the football team. Now you have individual athletes who can do their name, image and likeness contracts directly. Has that from a people staffing standpoint, is there like a whole new group at Under Armour that's focused just on NILs?
Stephanie Linnartz: There's not a whole new group, but it's a function or a responsibility of our broader sports marketing group that does the team deal with I mentioned Notre Dame, but other great schools Yale, South Carolina, I won't name all our schools, but so it is it has added a whole level of complexity to the world of sports marketing. I think I'm lucky that I'm coming in with fresh eyes. At the end of the day, I look at it, whether it's a school or an athlete, a professional athlete or college athlete, it's about how do you engage with an athlete that is tied to your brand, shares the same core values of your brand, represent your brand well, and of course, helps you appeal to more consumers so that you can be financially more successful.
So I think when we're thinking about any of this stuff, whether it's an NIL deal with a college athlete or signing up a big university or a famous global football player in Germany, it's always kind of figuring out what makes the most sense for the time, people and money that we have to drive our business. And so it's quite interesting and it's quite complex. But, you know, it's interesting when I was at Marriott, we were the official hotel sponsor for the NFL and we had a big F1 partnership, and we did a lot depending on the year, with other sports leagues. And it's somewhat similar in a way, because it's how your brand and a leagues brand or a sports teams brand come together. So it's one plus one equals three.
Willy Walker: You mentioned a moment ago, Stephanie, community and that sense of community, by either being part of the Under Armour loyalty program or having an experience with one of the Under Armour athletes. You're very involved with both Project Rampart as well as Eat.Learn.Play, which is Steph Curry’s Foundation. Talk for a moment about how Under Armour is having those two partnerships really work into the client experience and the sense of community?
Stephanie Linnartz: Well, at the core of it is the concept that sports can change people's lives. That is a foundational point. That's part of the Under Armour culture and that our athletes believe in. You mentioned two fabulous examples, and there's a number of them, the Project Rampart and I give Kevin Plank so much credit for this. He's given so much back to the city of Baltimore over many, many years. He is deeply invested in the community.
Under Armour and Kevin, this was long before my time, started renovating every single public high school in Baltimore, in the city of Baltimore, and outfitting every single team and creating training for the coaches. And it's been a multi-year program to support the schools and athletes in Baltimore. And we just finished last year, an independent study was completed. The high school graduation rate in Baltimore is in the low 60s. So 1 in 3 kids don't graduate. When kids play four years of sports – it doesn't matter if it's football, badminton, girls, boys. The graduation rate goes up to 98% when you play for years of sports, that's impact. I'm proud to say Under Armour and Kevin Plank were an enormous part of that. So that's just one example. We are planning and hoping to expand Project Rampart to middle schools and to other cities if we can find partners to work with us, which we're on the lookout for.
But I just got back right before Christmas. I was out in Oakland, California with Steph and Ayesha Curry and spent the whole day with them in Oakland at a grade school and their Eat.Learn.Play Foundation, at Under Armour we gave out backpacks, lunch boxes and water bottles, and Steph and Ayesha Curry's foundation gave out all these books. And of course, we put it all together with the kids, and we spent the whole day out there with them. And, you know, Steph Curry's commitment to the kids in Oakland and Ayesha's commitment is pretty amazing. But it just made me feel really proud of my company, and it's an honor to work with someone like Steph Curry. He's not only the greatest shooter of all time and one of the greatest at the top of my list in terms of great basketball players. He's such an amazing human being and such an amazing entrepreneur. I mean, he's an incredible businessman, too. So those are just two great examples where the brand values are lining up, and the values with our athletes are lining up.
Willy Walker: Talk for a moment, Stephanie, about that. Spending a whole day with Steph and his wife out west. I mean, you've met plenty, plenty, plenty of influential people. You've met plenty of stars in your lifetime. And at the same time, at least in the United States, there's something a little bit distinct about these top public athletes. I mean, the professional athletes like Steph Curry, Jordan Spieth and many of the other people we've talked about. I mean, they kind of live in rarefied air, if you will. Again, you and I can hang out with some billionaire who's a perfectly nice billionaire that you and I know very, very well. And they're kind of, you know, go to dinner with them and 1 or 2 people might recognize them. You go anywhere with Steph Curry, and there's just the immediate sort of attraction and public element to it. What's it like being in your role as the CEO of their largest sponsor, to both engage with them on a personal level and at the same time, you also were there because you got a job to do?
Stephanie Linnartz: Yeah. I mean, you mentioned two of our top athletes. And Jordan Spieth, by the way, is an amazing young man. We just gave him his ten year Under Armour jersey, by the way he’s been with the brand for ten years and he's only 30 years old. That means we signed him when he was 20, which is crazy, but he's another one who was a very meaningful foundation.
But Steph Curry is special. I'll tell you why. We resigned our deal with Steph Curry last year. We had a deal with him before. But we reengaged with him in March of last year right as I was starting on a new deal. And he's actually the president of the Curry brand. So Curry is a separate brand under the Under Armour umbrella. And so he is the president of the Curry brand. We have quarterly business review reviews with him. He is deep into the facts, the figures. He's also the leader of our Athlete Advisory Council where athletes across all sports globally get together to give us insights. And I'll tell you, he is such a mentor to other athletes. So we have the Curry brand, which is, you know, similar to another brand you might know we're going to get it big like that. But we just signed De'Aaron Fox. He is the first active NBA player to sign with another active NBA players' brands. Think about that. We were the first ones to do it. And because De'Aaron Fox who's quite a young player looks up to Steph and I know thinks of him as a mentor, so Steph helps us not only with everything he brings but he helps us attract new athletes. And so it was super cool to have De'Aaron Fox join the Under Armour family, specifically the Curry brand because of Steph. But he's such an entrepreneur. He has many other businesses on his own. And he's just a remarkable human being in terms of giving back. But he's also a great businessman. And so when I talk to Steph, again, we have quarterly business reviews. I talk to him quite frequently. You know, I'm always up on his basketball stats, of course, but we really talk about besides the important work that I mentioned, things like Eat.Learn.Play., we talk about the business and how we can grow the business.
So Curry basketball is obviously a big part, but you're going to see a lot more from us in terms of Curry golf. He is a phenomenal golfer. I don't know if you saw his hole in one last year. And so we have a whole new super cool Curry golf line that we're working on. Curry women, we're leaning more into sports style, as I mentioned, like this, that not only stuff that's performance will always be performance based, but that's cool and hip. And we work, for example, with Steph's personal stylist to outfit Steph. But then we gain insights from his stylist about trends and the like. So he's one example, but he's, I think, a really special one and very important to our company.
Willy Walker: When I think, Stephanie, about identifying athletes early when you talked about Jordan Spieth celebrating his 10th anniversary at Under Armour and he's 30 years old, that's you know, you got there early and you got there exclusively. And what an incredible play for Under Armour that has been. And what a great partnership you've had. I sort of think about identifying young talent as sort of venture capital, because you and I both know venture capitalists, and they got to place a lot of bets and some hit and some don't hit.
How's venture capital of talent identification works in the sense I'm assuming there's a group of people, sport by sport, and they sit there and agents come to them and say, you really need to get in early with this young boy, young girl. And then they're the next wave of the best female basketball players in the world. How does that sort of venture capital process work? Because it's got to be fascinating.
Stephanie Linnartz: Yeah, it is. We do have a team that works on that. And we have a whole division called UA Next, which is focused on camps and activities for high school and college athletes. So we have a bunch of events around the country every year, a big football event, a big volleyball event, basketball event, etcetera. We have a Curry Camp, which is for the top basketball players in the country. But we have these focus on youth sports and particularly high school and really spending time with those athletes early on. So we just had our UA Next event in Florida in January where we had the top high school football players from around the country come together, and we sponsored the event. And we give them all sorts of training both on the field and life training and of course, Under Armour gear. And we have all sorts of things for them.
Football is just one example, but it gives us an inside look at the talent and get to know their families and their agents and that whole world. It is a new world to me Willy, I'm ten months into it. We have it in other countries, too. I'm happy to be mentioning the United States, but we have UA Next events, camps, and training for young athletes in Europe as well.
So I think that's a whole network of activities and access to young athletes. It's not just about signing them up someday to be an Under Armour athlete. It's also learning from them, supporting them. We talk to them. What do you need? What do you want? What's cool? What problems and challenges are you having? So it's the ultimate focus group. These multi-day UA Next camps are the ultimate focus group for getting insight from our core target consumer. So it's very cool.
But you're right. We've been very lucky with some fabulous athletes, Steph Curry too. We signed Steph Curry way before he was the amazing person that he is today. So similar story and female athletes too. Kelsey Plum, she was our athlete way before she was a two time back to back WNBA MVP and winner.
Willy Walker: So when I hear you talk about the camps and identifying that next breakout athlete, if you will, and the camps that Under Armour sponsors. It makes me think about your career and how you’ve move through your career as a woman in corporate America, being as successful as you have been.
For a moment, if there are women professionals on this who sit there and say, man, one day I would love to get to the perch that Stephanie sits at today. What would you look back on as it relates to your career? As a woman, because I think this question is specific to it, given that you are one of the very few female CEOs of a very large scale company. What is it in your career that you would give as some advice as it relates to some either do's or don'ts from a career standpoint for women listening?
Stephanie Linnartz: Well, I think the biggest thing that I focused on throughout my career and I'd share with other people and particularly women, is take risks and don't be afraid to bet on yourself. I mean, this is said in many conferences and webcasts that a woman will have 50% or 60% of what it takes for a job. And they're like, I'm not 100%. And a man will have 50% or 60% and they oh, I'll figure the rest out. And it's kind of funny but it's actually kind of true. And so I just say, bet on yourself.
I did that throughout my career at Marriott, I always took on the project that nobody else wanted, take on or the job nobody else wanted because I figured, first of all, if I am successful and I crush it, that's going to be great. And often I did. But even when I didn't, at least I was recognized for trying. You do get noticed for taking on the thorny, hard, difficult projects or jobs. And then I did take that ultimate piece of advice myself when this job at Under Armour came about. It is an amazing company I'm blessed to lead, but we have a lot of challenges and things to figure out and a lot of work to do.
And so I said, you know what? I may have never worked in this industry before, and I may be leaving an industry where I'm very comfortable and it's my home, but I'll figure it out. And I'll figure it out, because I'm going to bring skills that are transferable from my previous role. Most importantly, I'll figure it out because I'll build a team around me that complements where I'm not as strong and where I need to have people do things that I can't do because that's not my background. And so I was very confident that I'd be able to do that at Under Armour. And we're off to a great start.
Willy Walker: Unfortunately, we just lost your mom. And my condolences to you and the rest of your family for that loss. You have a lot of brothers, and you have a father with an incredible spirit and entrepreneurial spirit and one of the most amazing personalities of anyone I know. Stephanie, what did you learn from your mom that helped guide you not so much of the great mother that you are, but the leader that you are at Under Armour.
Stephanie Linnartz: Well, I have a sister, too. Don't forget my sister. I know you know my brothers well.
Willy Walker: I know, but I've interacted with your four brothers more frequently.
Stephanie Linnartz: I know, they work for you or have worked for you. So I'd say what I've learned from my mom is that tough times don't last, but tough people do. And she was a wonderful woman. And thank you for recognizing her passing. She was a wonderful woman and had six children and raised a family, did a lot in my family's business, too. She was a stay at home mom who also did a lot to support my dad and their small business on Capitol Hill and hotel and restaurant business. But the most important lesson she taught me was tough times don't last, but tough people do. And stay positive and optimistic about the future. And she was one of the most positive and optimistic people I have ever met. And I carry that lesson with me and I always will.
Willy Walker: As you look out for Under Armour's future, what's something that we're going to see emerge over Stephanie Linnartz's leadership and Under Armour that says that's going to be somewhat different. There's certain markets, certain products, is there something today that you'd show us is a little bit of tipping your cards as it relates to after eight months in the seat where you want to take the firm?
Stephanie Linnartz: I think you're going to see a lot more cool products coming out in that better and best part of the product pyramid and particularly sports style footwear sneakers and for women. So I'm bringing in a lot of talent that's focused on amazing products at Under Armour, but you're going to see some really cool stuff in footwear and sneakers in the years ahead. That's a critical growth area for us. It's probably the most critical growth area for us is getting into sports style footwear, sneaker culture, which is only going to help our apparel business and see more sports style stuff that our athletes wear not only when they're on the playing field. And then you'll see us focus more on women. Women, again, I think I mentioned this earlier, are only less than 25% of our business, so we're 50% of the population. So we can certainly do better than that at Under Armour. So I think you'll see a lot more on the product front. And I think you'll also see a change in our marketing. I mean, we'll always be an athletic brand, but we know as we appeal to more women, as an example, we need to also change our marketing approach to appeal to different consumers. And then lastly, I think you'll see Under Armour sold in new and different places. We have our own stores, we have amazing relationships with the likes of Dick's Sporting Goods. But as we lean more into sneakers and that better and best part of the product pyramid, you'll see us in more sneaker boutiques or department stores and other types of distribution outlets for Under Armour. So more products, great products. You'll see us sold in more places and you'll see a lot more sneakers, women, and sports styles.
Willy Walker: Stephanie, it's always a pleasure. I'm deeply, deeply thankful for our friendship and for you taking the time to talk to me about where you're taking Under Armour and all that you do every day. Thank you. You don't really need it, but great luck with everything that you're doing at Under Armour. I look forward to seeing you next time I'm back in the DC area.
Stephanie Linnartz: Thank you, Willy. Great to be with you, as always. Happy New Year.
Willy Walker: Thanks. Happy New Year to you.
