Under Armour Restructure: Driving Efficiency Through Supply Chain Modernization and Streamlined Marketing
Under Armour is progressing with its restructuring strategy, focusing on three core areas of business: supply chain modernization, consumer-centric marketing, and operations optimization.
On the supply chain side, the company is modernizing operations across end-to-end planning and cross-channel capabilities, led by chief supply chain officer Shawn Curran.
“Our end-to-end planning work spans multiple disciplines, aiming to enhance our ability to plan better and protect our consumers' needs to optimize our assortments and manage inventory across regions, channels, and retail doors,” said president and CEO Kevin Plank during the recent call with investors.
As part of this, Under Armour has initiated a multi-year distribution logistics modernization project to optimize costs, speed up operations, and increase inventory availability through cross-channel capabilities across its DTC and wholesale businesses.
Marketing and Operations
Within marketing, the company consolidated its global and North American marketing teams, hiring Eric Liedtke as EVP of brand strategy to oversee the marketing, loyalty, and consumer insights functions. He will be helping to build out Under Armour’s marketing team.
Operationally, the company will look to achieve a 25% SKU reduction over the next 18 months as part of a refocused strategy. Plank said Under Armour will be analyzing all systems, structures, and processes to clean up unnecessary complexity and streamline the organization. To do this, it is using AI tools to unlock data-driven insights while advancing software and automating tasks to expedite decision-making.
