The Good news…UnderArmour created the position of Chief Innovation Officer.
The Bad news: Plank filled it with someone from GM.
- Clay Dean spent over 20 years at GM, where he was chief designer that produced the Hummer H2, H2 SUT, and H3.
- Very cool, by GM standards, but I’m not quite sure that’s relevant. Why?
- Hmmm…let’s dial the clock back 16 years. Remember when Adidas launched the Kobe 2? It had the audacity to ‘German Engineer’ a shoe after an Audi TT. A decade and a half later, you can find them on Wal-Mart’s jet.com for $70 – or a package deal of 3-pairs for $65 each (seriously, who buys sneakers in a package deal?).
- NEWSFLASH: You can't German-engineer fashion (sorry Blum).
- Am I being sensationalistic about this? Maybe. About the facts? No. But the reality is that innovation at UA has always been about tech, cool fabrics, temperature control and performance, and not enough about comfort, fashion, and style. I’ll go out on a limb here and say there’s an 80% chance that this gent won’t fix a ‘comfort and fit’ problem.
- Remember, over a decade UA has put press releases out on 22 new hires (by my math). Only 2 still work at UA.
And for the record, I think Plank will do the right things to fix this company. He did not build the brand he did by being completely reckless. This is probably his an effort to do so. Though I don’t think the person is right, I like the effort. But making the right long term moves always has near term consequences. And UA’s consequence for fixing the company will likely be levering up/raising capital at a lower stock price.
--McGough
Source: jet.com