More importantly, that quarter saw the departure of MayMyFitness’ co-founder, Robin Thurston, who had served as CEO of Connected Fitness and whose vision was critical to the digital pivot. While Connected Fitness as a stand-alone business unit grew revenue to $23M in the quarter ending August 2016, they lost $7.5M. These three theses have not played out equally. Previously, customer insight ended at point of sale now, UA can see into how products are used after purchase and feed these insights into product design and marketing. Data on how athletes train, eat, and sleep provides important visibility into product usage and athlete needs.Eventually, Plank believes, athletes will record this data not with smartphones or plastic monitors, but with tracker-enabled clothing made, conveniently, by UA. In the last two years, UA has launched a wristband tracker, a wifi-enabled scale, and hear-rate-monitoring earbuds. Athletes need hardware to track metrics, and UA is well-positioned to provide the accessories.These sites are a viable business by themselves, and UA can capture some of that value through premium subscriptions and advertising revenue. Athletes find value in the social and analytical aspects of digital platforms.The logic is threefold, and represents evolution of both UA’s business and operating model: So how does all of this relate to a sportswear company? After all, founder and CEO Kevin Plank has a reminder written on his whiteboard: “Don’t forget to sell shirts and shoes” (see Exhibit 1).
All three were integrated into a “Connected Fitness” business unit. Spending $710M for the three acquisitions, UA got the largest digital fitness community with over 160M registered users, hundreds of engineers, and years of existing user data. UA then purchased MyFitnessPal (a nutrition-tracking and meal-logging site) and Endomondo (a European-based personal training program) in 2015. UA’s digital foray begun in 2013 when it acquired MapMyFitness, a route-mapping and workout-tracking site. Pathways to Just Digital Future Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activists
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