So yeah, that title. I think it’s safe to say Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank won’t be sending UA care packages to any of our friends over in Portland anytime soon. When talking to Bloomberg TV (link to video) about their move into the wearable space (they just acquired fitness apps MyFitnessPal and Endomondo for nearly $600 million combined in the past week), host Stephanie Ruhle was wondering about this new direction for the brand and brought up adidas’ plan to sign around 500 athletes. Plank, who is no stranger to gamesmanship when talking about his rivals, had this to say:
Spending more money is no strategy, right? And we’re not going to compete with our dumbest competitor either.
Ok, then. But wait, there’s more.
[adidas] will chase the old… they will chase the old model. And we’ve got good competitors in our space, but we also see some things that are a bit irrational from the way we see. So chasing and bidding someone up is not the goal; the race to the bottom is not the goal that we have. So that we think that in order to spend our money you will still see us go after the right assets, the appropriate assets, and we’ll spend to get those assets. But you’ll also see us take a different approach, which we think [wearables] is. This is a different voice, a different communication, a different handshake with the Under Armour consumer.
Ruhle then finally just straight up asked if adidas was their “dumbest competitor”, to which Plank replied:
Specifically, I don’t when mind you quoting me. I didn’t say it. But I don’t like them. No, I like them. I don’t like the other guys [Nike?] either but that’s my job.
If we can get a diss track from adidas later today (maybe they can get Iman Shumpert and Damian Lillard to do it), that would be fantastic.
The post Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank On adidas: ‘We’re Not Going To Compete With Our Dumbest Competitor’ appeared first on KicksOnFire.com.
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