Under Armour

Under Armour was founded in 1996 in Baltimore, Maryland by Kevin Plank, a former University of Maryland football player who developed the iconic Under Armour HeatGear performance compression-shirt as a deliberately-engineered moisture-wicking alternative to traditional cotton athletic apparel. The brand has been one of the defining post-1996 American-anchored 'performance-athletic-apparel' brands and is widely credited with founding the entire modern moisture-wicking-performance-athletic-apparel category. The Under Armour vocabulary settled around several specific products: the iconic Under Armour HeatGear performance compression-shirt (the brand's defining 1996-pattern product, still in production with the original moisture-wicking polyester-blend construction), the Under Armour ColdGear performance cold-weather base-layer programme, the Under Armour Curry signature-basketball-shoe programme (Steph Curry signature shoes — the brand's defining post-2013 basketball-footwear product), the Under Armour HOVR running-shoe programme, various technical-fabric performance-athletic apparel and footwear variations, and a colour palette anchored to washed-black, washed-navy, military-olive, oxblood, ecru, plus the brand's recurring use of saturated red, electric-blue, butter-yellow, and the iconic American-performance-athletic-aesthetic accent combinations. Under Armour Inc. is publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: UAA). The brand operates approximately 1,000 retail flagship stores globally — anchored to Baltimore (the brand's home), the broader US, Europe, Japan, China, and the broader Asian athletic-performance customer network. The brand has been one of the defining post-1996 American-anchored 'performance-athletic-apparel' brands.