In 2003, private equity firm Rosewood Capital invested $12 million into the company. The following year, Under Armour became the outfitter of the new XFL football league. Leveraging the release of Any Given Sunday, Plank purchased an ad in ESPN The Magazine, which generated close to $750,000 in sales. Under Armour received its first big break in 1999 when Warner Brothers used Under Armour in two of its feature films, Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday and The Replacements. In 1997, Plank had $100,000 in orders to fill and found a factory in Ohio to make the shirts. By the end of 1996, Under Armour had sold 500 Under Armour HeatGear shirts, generating $17,000 for the company. That year, Under Armour launched several new apparel lines including ColdGear, TurfGear, AllseasonGear, and StreetGear. Contracts with NC State, Arizona State, and other Division I football teams followed. Under Armour's first major sale came when an equipment manager from Georgia Tech requested 10 shirts from Plank. People began to take notice of the brand when a front-page photo of USA Today featured Oakland Raiders quarterback Jeff George wearing an Under Armour mock turtleneck. Plank opted to use the British spelling " armour" in the company name because the toll-free vanity number was still available for that version. Major competing brands including Nike, Adidas and Reebok would soon follow with their own moisture-wicking apparel. Plank soon improved the design, creating a new T-shirt built from microfibers that wicked moisture away. After graduating from the University of Maryland, Plank developed his first prototype of the shirt, which he gave to his Maryland teammates and friends who had gone on to play in the NFL. This inspired him to make a T-shirt using moisture-wicking synthetic fabric. Īs a fullback at the University of Maryland, Plank got tired of having to change out of the sweat-soaked T-shirts worn under his jersey however, he noticed that his compression shorts worn during practice stayed dry.
From his grandmother's Washington, D.C.-area rowhouse, Plank moved to Baltimore. His first team sale came at the end of 1996 with a $17,000 sale. He spent his time traveling along the East Coast with nothing but apparel in the trunk of his car. Plank initially began the business from his grandmother's basement in Washington, D.C. Under Armour was founded on September 25, 1996, by Kevin Plank, a then-24 year old former special teams captain of the University of Maryland football team. Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour, pictured in 2018
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