Tag: under armour

UA Shop will provide consumers with a personalized mobile shopping experience.

Popular sports apparel maker Under Armour has announced the launch of its first mobile shopping app, which has been built on the Under Armour Connected Fitness platform and designed to improve and personalize the consumer shopping experience. Called UA Shop, the mobile commerce app will tie into the company’s digital fitness apps, integrating data from the brand’s fitness platform, which includes its own apps and websites that track diet, exercise, sleep and other activities related to health and fitness, reported The Baltimore Sun.

The UA Shop application will provide product recommendations based on fitness tracking data.

According to Under Armour, the digital fitness data will allow for UA Shop to create a personalized shopping experience for every consumer that is based on his or her previous purchase history, workout history and athlete inspiration.

The app will recommend products based on the individual user’s specific fitness tracking data. For instance, a consumer who lives in a cooler climate and who enjoys hiking may be recommended products such as an Armour outerwear or baselayer. On the other hand, a consumer in a warmer climate who has recorded several runs via the MapMyRun app may be provided with running footwear or UA CoolSwitch apparel options.

Under Armour’s mobile shopping app is one-of-a-kind.

According to the company, its UA Shop retail app is the only one on the market directly connected to the health and fitness data of over 170 million digital fitness members.

Under Armour’s senior vice president of revenue, Jason LaRose, said in a press release that “UA Shop is the next step in our connected fitness evolution as Under Armour becomes a true Math House.” LaRose added that “This app was created to maximize our digital platform and complement our existing in-store experiences by bringing consumers a way to find the products they want, when they want it.”

Presently, the mobile shopping app is available exclusively to iOS users and can be downloaded from the Apple App Store. That being said, the company has said that UA Shop will also become available to Android users and should be heading to the Google Play store soon.

The brand is creating a full lineup of wearables as well as digital apps as a part of their broader sports apparel strategy.

Under Armour is currently working on the creation of a full lineup of wearable technology products and complementary mobile apps that are to become a central component of their overall strategy to pass Nike Inc and to take the top global sports apparel spot.

This strategy was made more than clear last week at the Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES 2016).

At that event, Under Armour’s CEO and founder, Kevin Plank unveiled a number of new products that are headed into the brand’s series called “Connected Fitness.” Currently, Nike is holding the lead position in the global sportswear industry and that spot is considered to be quite a solid one. Last year, that brand reported over $30 billion in revenues, with $7.69 billion in sales having been generated exclusively within the most recent fiscal quarter.

However, when it comes to wearable technology, specifically, rivals such as Under Armour are stepping in.

With a growing range of wearables in the form of high quality apparel and footwear, Under Armour is taking aim and is hoping to become a force to reckon with. It could be that this strategy may one day shake Nike’s stance on the top platform in the market.

It doesn’t come a surprise that Under Armour feels that one of its top drivers in reaching its $7.5 billion sales target by 2018 is in the use of “Connected Fitness” and wearables. At the same time, many have found Under Armour’s speed of investment into this type of technology to be rather surprising. The reason is that it does leave the impression that the company has jumped from an idea in a business plan right into an actual series of products.

At the core of the brand’s wearable technology plan is the “UA HealthBox”, which includes a sports band upon which pretty much everything else is based. It tracks daily physical activity, heart rate and sleep. The HealthBox also includes a scale that is WiFi equipped and that reads both body weight and fat percentage.