About Kevin Plank: Kevin A. Plank is an American businessman, CEO and founder of Under Armour, a manufacturer of sports performance apparel, footwear and accessories, based in Baltimore.
I've always been a hustler.
I'm usually a pretty intense person. Give me an inch, and I'm going to go.
I've got a pretty addictive personality.
When you see most companies get big, they want to shout about all they've done. But the consumer wants to know: 'What have you done for me lately?'
We need to stop making wide-body seats on airplanes, stop accommodating that, because it's not healthy.
Motivation, passion, and focus have to come from the top.
Before Under Armour, the only choices you had were to wear a short-sleeved cotton T-shirt in the summer or a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt in the winter. Why not make a better piece of equipment for underneath the shoulder pads?
I was a general business major, which meant that in any business school and particularly at Smith School, which is a very good school, you do a lot of team projects. Well I was the guy who gave the presentations for the team projects.
It's a fire, it's a passion to get out and to create and to innovate. And that I've always enjoyed and I've always been very proud of is that the people I've done business with, the people around me have always made money.
My first real business was bootlegging T-shirts - I was just a dumb kid. You go to a concert and pay $25 for a cotton T-shirt that says 'Rolling Stones,' 'Lollapalooza,' or whatever. On the outside they're 10 or 15 bucks. We were the guys selling the...
You need to put your hands around the throat of your business, and you need to run it. There's no other way.
Randy Edsall is a good, strong, decent man who is working his tail off on behalf of the University of Maryland. And there are more people that want to spend their days burning things down than building it up. At least just stop rooting against him. Y...
All we're trying to do is change how people think about fitness. And build Under Armour into the biggest brand in the entire land.
I was always telling people I was doing great, even if I wasn't.
I realized early on that I was pretty good at organizing. A lot of it was about control. While my friends were out getting hammered at concerts, I was making money. I am a control freak.
Brand is not a product, that's for sure; it's not one item. It's an idea, it's a theory, it's a meaning, it's how you carry yourself. It's aspirational, it's inspirational.
My love of horses began in College Park, with me and 10 friends on two couches and a keg of beer in the back of a truck, heading to Pimlico at 6 A.M. to mark our place in the middle of the Preakness infield, where we never saw a horse run.
Any self-respecting entrepreneur has borrowed money from their mother at some point.
I wanted to make the world's greatest football undershirt. But I realized that no team sport had equipment for apparel. Apparel was an afterthought.
The sports apparel industry was dominated by the big shoe companies. But there was a void in apparel and I decided to fill it.
