CEO and Founder of Under Armour Kevin Plank was interviewed by Fast Company Editor-in-Chief Robert Safian for the panel “How a Sports Giant is Now Tackling Your Health.”
When we think about wearable tech, a FitBit or Garmin might come to mind. Even other brands of step-tracking watches and bands meant to guide us to better living and better health.
But what we don’t think of in tech is the development of a single athletic T-shirt. That’s what Plank created – a solution to the sweaty cotton tee under all the other sports gear.
Plank started Under Armour in his grandma’s basement. The company is self-made and he says no one seemed to notice them for the first 10 years until their name took off. Nobody notices the first 10 years he said to the entrepreneurs in the room.
He had the original idea of creating the world’s greatest T-shirt for football players, but soon, athletes of other sports loved them too, he said.

“The consumers pulled me to all these different places,” Plank said.
Though the company has become quite large, Plank prefers to act like a small company as much as possible.
Safian addressed the way that Under Armour starts their meetings with a brand video to remember the “voice of the brand.” They also have a white board in the office full of inspirational quotes, and in the middle, “Don’t forget to sell shirts and shoes.”
“It begins with the founders. There’s this attitude on the white boards…it’s this attitude of, ‘We’re going to find a way.’ It’s incredibly important at Under Armour,” he said.
But most recently, they have been creating what we typically think of as “wearable technology.” Under Armour’s HealthBox includes heart rate monitors, a wristband, a scale and free fitness and health tracking applications.

It’s not the sleep monitoring or step counting that makes the HealthBox worth buying, but the health tracking features that can record how you’re feeling on a day-to-day basis. Then, the user will be able to track when they’ve been sick, what time of year they tend to get sick and, in advance, take preventative measures.
With this comes the availability of a lot of data that is much more immense than any current study, Plank said.
“I think the most important thing a company can do is to curate and find data to help them make the decisions that they’re making,” he said. “Data is the new oil.”

The more people use the app, Under Armour will be able to have a database for their customers to consult. They can see what health problems most plague their age group in accordance with other data, like age, gender, history of disease and more.
Plank said our personal information at the doctor’s office is outdated when you consider that the bank knows every transaction you’ve made for months, but the doctor just looks at some notes from your last visit. There’s no system for recording this sort of information, he said.
“The data that we’re collecting today, we’re in the first inning of this game. We’re just getting going,” he said.