Under Armour's Attack on Nike | Signature Sneakers | 3

0:00Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Business Wars ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. From Audible Originals, I'm David Brown and this is Business Wars.

0:33Back in the 1980s, when Michael Jordan signed a lifetime deal with an upstart running shoe brand called Nike, choosing them over established footwear giants like Converse and Adidas, that revolutionized the signature sneaker landscape and catapulted Nike to the top of the marketplace. Well, Under Armour made a similar play signing Steph Curry in 2013 With, let's say, mixed results But one thing is clear nowadays Every star athlete needs a signature line From shoes to apparel and athleisure And with the rise of newer international brands like On and Anta Athletes have more choice than ever when it comes to finding The perfect fit for their shoe deal The jury's still out on whether the Nikes and Adidas of the world are feeling the heat.

1:25Here to unpack, or should I say unbox, all that is sneaker and sports tech industry reporter Tim Newcomb. Tim's work has appeared in Forbes, Times, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and more. He chronicled Kobe Bryant's signature kicks and tennis legend Roger Federer's split with Nike. We'll talk about the rise of the signature shoe, the new players in the sneaker game, and how Under Armour picks up the pieces of the Steph Curry fallout. So lace them up. That's all I had.

2:04Tim Newcomb, welcome to Business Wars. Thank you, David. I appreciate you taking the time to have me. Yeah, it's really great to have you. I gather you've covered the sneaker and sports apparel industry for Forbes, Sports Illustrated, lots of outlets over, what is it, at least a decade now, I guess. How did you get started on this beat? What was it that got you interested in this? I've always been interested in sports and enjoyed sports, but instead of covering the actual games and the actual on-field or on-court play, I've always gravitated towards some of those peripheral things, whether it's uniforms or technology or stadiums or anything that kind of makes sports happen.

2:43So what is it? Do you Are you interested more in the business side, the deals, or is it like the products themselves? I love the technology and the products. And when you have a product, there's a business aspect to it because there's marketing involved and all that. So I think they all kind of meld together. Even the technology and the business merge together, especially in sports when you're hiring these athletes to peddle the products. You know what I thought you were going to say, Tim? So many people are sneakerheads these days. I don't know about... Are you a sneakerhead or are you not? I would not classify myself as a sneakerhead.

3:19Those that know me maybe would disagree based on the number of shoes in my closet, but I am not one of these hardcore sneakerhead individuals, but I do enjoy the history of them, the process of creating them, the design, all that kind of stuff does intrigue me, but I'm not a collector. I'm fascinated by the whole culture around the collecting of sneakers. It's, you know, some people are into particular brands. Some people are into the retro stuff, you know, or the whole thing just absolutely blows me away. But this is a great entree for us to begin talking about Under Armour because in our series, we've been hearing about how this really important athletic brand and the partnerships that they created with star athletes can really help build that brand and the reputation and the public eye.

4:09And I know you covered Steph Curry's rocky tenure with Under Armour for Forbes. But I have to ask you about the origins of the signature sneaker. Nowadays, it seems like every athlete has one. How did this all get started? Chuck Taylors by Converse or does it go back further? Yeah, actually, that goes pretty far. You're over 100 years back there with Chuck Taylor for Converse. So those days, sneaker companies were rubber companies. Converse was a rubber company to start. and then they started making sneakers. And the Chuck Taylor, as you say, is considered the first signature sneaker. Chuck Taylor was a former professional basketball player, and he turned salesman for Converse, and he was a coach at the same time.

4:56And it just turned out that they could sell more sneakers if they put this gentleman's very recognizable name in the world of basketball. If they could put his name on the side of the sneaker, then it helped sales. So that's how you got your first signature sneaker, the Chuck Taylor from Converse. Seems to me like Chuck might have had a bit of an entrepreneurial or marketing bent himself, no? Well, I didn't know Chuck personally. I'm not quite that old, David. But definitely, there's a business side to how all this started. So yes, there's definitely the entrepreneurial salesman aspect and finding ways to make your product sell better.

5:36And, you know, this was the first foray into that. And it all comes from a business world. Yeah, for sure. Converse, now owned by Nike, they seem to have a stranglehold on the basketball market for decades. But I know tennis played a big role in the popularization of signature sneakers, too. I'm thinking Adidas, Stan Smith, right? You've written about that one, too, huh? Oh, yeah, for sure. the signature sneaker market really did take off with tennis. You had the Chuck Taylors back in the 1920s, but then in the 60s and 70s, when sneaker culture became a thing with signature sneakers, it was the tennis world.

6:18Adidas led the way. You have the Stan Smith that we all know about. The Rod Laver was actually a huge shoe at that time for Adidas as well. You had a handful of athletes, actually. You had John Newcomb from Australia. He had a signature sneaker with Adidas and then Lotto. And even today we talk about, you know, female athletes with signature sneakers that actually started in tennis as well with a Billie Jean King from Adidas or a Chris Everett. You know, so the signature sneaker concept really was behind the individual athlete in tennis because in those days, the individual athlete was marketed differently than a team athlete.

6:56Yeah, that classic white and green design of the Stan Smith seemed to be sort of especially iconic. Do you have any personal favorites? Personally, I like tennis. That's my favorite sport. So when I was growing up, the Rod Laver was my favorite because it was a little bit counterculture, I guess, to the Stan Smith. It had the suede toe on there. It was a little bit more robust. So the Rod Laver is my favorite kind of classic signature sneaker. Now, let me ask you something. Was it the style of the sneaker? that drove your affection for the Rod Laver? Or was it Rod Laver? How much of that was a part of, you know, the celebrity versus say the style?

7:39Yeah, I think for me, it was definitely the style because I grew up in the late 80s and 90s, you know, just to date myself here for all your listeners. And Rod Laver, he was, you know, he was the 60s. So I didn't know Rod Laver or Stan Smith, the athlete, really, you know, high school kid. I'm looking at the style of the sneakers and what's popular. Although when they were being sold, it was about, you know, players on tour in their name. This sort of goes to a distinction that's easy to overlook. And that is you've got the signature sneaker and then you've got these big dollar endorsement deals.

8:17How is a signature deal different from an endorsement? A signature deal is bigger all the way around. And when I say all the way around, that means it's going to be bigger for the athlete in terms of dollars, but it's also a major investment for the brand. And whether it be basketball or tennis, you're asking a brand to sink a lot of money into creating a specific silhouette designed around a specific player. So there's a lot of R &D money involved in that. And then your marketing money is tied directly to one individual player. And so that's a different way to do marketing than if you're just marketing the entire brand, obviously.

8:59And so then what happens is if that goes well, then it can go really well. As we all know from Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, if it doesn't go well, then you've sunk a lot of money into a shoe that maybe isn't selling very well, but there's really no recourse to turn that around if the athlete doesn't have the cachet to bring in the dollars. In a way, sometimes it seems like the athlete or the athlete's mark on the item somehow transcends sports and becomes part of casual wear in a larger sense. Air Jordans, the Chuck Taylors with Converse, a similar kind of thing. And that seems to be where a lot of sneaker makers want to want to push things.

9:46Or am I wrong about that? Oh, that's obviously where everybody wants to be. If you can get your product to transcend the niche that it was created in. I mean, you think of that from really any product, whether it's athletic wear or anything, if you have a product that goes beyond the niche it was created for, then you have now obviously broadened your consumer base exponentially. And so you brought up Air Jordan. The Jordan brand did that so well because Jordan was so popular and basketball culture and sneaker culture was booming at the time. So now you're transcending. You have people buying it for more than just performance wear.

10:30And if you can open up that consumer option beyond that one little niche, then you've created a lot of opportunity. You know, when you think about how these deals are set up and how they work, who really benefits more? Is it the athlete or the brand? Does the athlete see this as a paycheck primarily, or does the athlete see this as a jumping off point for their own brand in a sense? Yeah, that's a good question. I think a little bit depends on the athlete and how they view it can help determine their success. Take somebody like Kobe, for example. He saw this as an opportunity to partner with Nike and really create a product that was very much his, even though it was with Nike.

11:14But then that helped him build his personal brand, which includes additional sponsorships beyond Nike while growing the Kobe line within the Nike brand and just being willing to do whatever was needed to do to promote his signature sneaker helped it grow. Granted, he was one of the best players at the time, so that helps things as well. But then you also have other athletes that maybe don't get that business side as well. They just see it as a paycheck. And if they're not willing to put in extra time to make things better, to do promotion, things of that nature, it's going to struggle for that shoe to take off.

11:58Well, let's go back to Steph Curry and Under Armour, which obviously is the focus of our most recent series here. I was fascinated by how Under Armour sort of tried to lure in Steph Curry by sort of appealing to his, shall we say, ego just a bit. You know, the idea that they were going to make him a bit of a star within their own realm in a way. Do you see that Under Armour partnership with Steph Curry as benefiting Curry more or benefiting Under Armour more? Or how do you see that playing out? Or did it just did it ultimately fall flat over the course of time? Ultimately, it didn't work the way either of them wanted it to.

12:41obviously, since they're no longer together. But the blueprint was, let's help each other help each other, where it gives rise to Curry himself as a brand. It puts him on a superstar pedestal, allows him to build his personal portfolio, allows him to be the face of an entire brand, Under Armour in this case. It gives Under Armour a star athlete that was at the superstar level to give them credibility in the performance game of basketball, which they maybe didn't have at that time. And that cool factor, too. You can't skip that, right? Well, and I think you bring up the cool factor. And a lot of folks would say that's what the downfall was with the Under Armour-Curry partnership, was that just never got the cultural cachet that some other brands had.

13:36whether it was Under Armour coming in without having a history of cool design or a history of kind of connecting to basketball culture, you have people feel like they're forcing the issue and it never really caught on. So yeah, if it had caught on and culture is cool, well then great, that helps you even more. But being that it didn't, that was maybe ultimately the downfall of it. So I'm wondering, is there not a larger lesson that you can extract or one could extract from that experience? Was Under Armour unique because they needed some of that authentication that they were hoping Steph Curry could bring to it?

14:17But it's so difficult to bring in the cool factor if you're a company when you haven't established yourself as cool. It's always that sort of first hump if you haven't established your sort of cultural bona fides, if you will. Yeah. I mean, I think that hits it exactly on. It's like every brand is out there searching for how do we become the it factor? How do we push ourselves beyond all the competition? And there's really no way to manufacture it. Otherwise, everybody would be doing it all the time. everybody's just hoping for that one hit i mean i'm gonna go way off stream here but think of oh water bottles you know we had hydro flask was huge and then stanley and then all wallet you know it's just like yeah you know there's cultural trends and how do you know how do you know which one's gonna hit and so yes under armor was trying to set themselves up to hit the next cultural trend by aligning themselves with a mega superstar who was exceedingly popular at the time steph curry, but it never hit from a cultural cool standpoint.

15:24That's just something they weren't able to figure out. Hey, we need to check our laces real fast. Our guest is Tim Newcomb. He's a freelance journalist specializing in the sneaker industry and sports retail. And when we come back, we're going to take a look at how Nike paved the way for the disruptors in the sneaker space today. Stay with us.

15:47Tim Newcomb:I'm Indra Varma, and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Larry Chin, the spy who outplayed Nixon. For decades, Chin was embedded deep inside US intelligence. Then comes an opportunity. Richard Nixon's secret plan to reopen relations with China. Information Chin can place directly into Mao's hands. But the CIA has a weapon of their own. A Chinese mole ready to defect. How long until Chin's gig is up? Follow the Spy Who now wherever you listen to podcasts.

16:24Hey there, welcome back to Business Wars. Our guest is Tim Newcomb. He's covered the sports tech industry for Sports Illustrated, Time, and Esquire, among others. You know, today, Tim, we think of Nike as probably king of the hill when it comes to sports brands. But the origins of the Air Jordan, which were featured in that film Air, show how Nike revolutionized the sneaker industry when the company was still just a startup. And there's a great scene in that movie where Sonny Vaccaro, played by Matt Damon, pitches Michael Jordan and his family at Nike headquarters in Oregon. Now, I'm sure there are some dramatic liberties taken in the film, but what do you think Nike could offer Jordan in 84 that the converses of the world couldn't?

17:07They offered Michael Jordan something that nobody else was really able to offer at the time, and that was being the face of a brand. In fact, that's one of the more famous reasons he didn't sign with Converse at that time, which was the leader, so to speak, in basketball shoes was they had Magic and Bird and Dr. J and all these superstar athletes. athletes they told them we can't put you in front of them they're they're big legendary all-stars where nike they were the challenger brand at the time and so they had the opportunity to make jordan the face of the brand yeah at other companies i guess he would be a big fish but there'd be a lot of big fish swimming around at nike he's the main event exactly they put all their eggs in that basket and it only grew for them.

17:59Talk about risky though. How much of a risk do you think it was for Nike to go out on a limb there and put it all on Jordan? Well, they have to start somewhere. At that point, they really need to make a mark. So yeah, they have the risk of signing him to the contract and I don't have the figures in front of me, but whatever that first dollar sign was, that was really their only risk at the time because they have to do something. They have to really make a name for themselves. But at the same time, if Jordan doesn't pan out the way Jordan panned out, there's no way we're talking about it right now.

18:35Do you think that maybe that was a kind of watershed moment? Because, you know, you think about some of the later sneakers that came along, Reebok with Allen Iverson, right? Kobe Bryant's Adidas's and later Nike's. And as with the Jordans, it's not just one shoe, but each version becomes its own release, its own major event. That's got to be a great business strategy for the shoe companies and for the athletes too. But when did the whole sneakerhead thing kick off? Because I have a sense that that sort of also revolutionized the business in a way because you You ended up with people who had to be sort of, what do they call them?

19:15It's not absolutists, but completists. That's what I'm looking for. As soon as you had the release of another Jordan, you had people already in line for it, you know, days, if not weeks ahead of time. And then you had a whole business on the side with bidding wars over, you know, getting those shoes. And there was the whole limited edition factor too, right? I think there were just so many different aspects of business and marketing that merged together at the perfect time for Nike with the athlete that nobody would have guessed would have transcended the sport in the way he did. There's no way to replicate what happened in that situation.

19:55Yes, you have fans that now are clamoring for shoes. We didn't have lineups for shoes before. We have these signature releases on an annual basis with special editions coming out later on. So there's a whole consumerism there that didn't exist. We have a culture around shoes that didn't exist before. Yeah. And in a way, the brand itself is sort of telling a story about the player and about itself. You had a really fascinating Sports Illustrated story about Kobe Bryant's career and how each subsequent sneaker sort of signified that next step. And it seems like from the outside, he was, he was very intentional and aware of a kind of narrative that he was telling through his sneakers, right?

20:45Oh, for sure. Kobe was very locked in to the story he was telling and the persona that he was presenting. And it all worked into building his brand, the whole, the Mamba idea, the, after the Achilles tear, you have one shoe that has these stitches, these red marks on the back of the shoe, basically the stitches where the Achilles tendon would be. Every colorway, brands are trying to tell stories behind each colorway that are personal and connect and really trying to connect an athlete that most people are never even going to see live, let alone meet, trying to connect that athlete to these consumers so that they'll be more interested in the product.

21:32You know, it almost seems like in the mind of many consumers for these sneakers that these sports legends represent superheroes, each with a little aspect of their personality that you, when you buy that shoe, you're sort of buying into that storyline. You know what I mean? Oh, for sure. There's definitely a correlation there, a connection of I want to be part of this athlete's journey of their success, of their career, and be a part of that. And on the flip side, there's a little bit of risk to that if I'm a brand, because in order for me to want to lock in and be part of this journey with this athlete, then you're going to have to want to like this athlete and they're going to have to want to be performing and playing.

22:21Otherwise, you're not going to see them. Yeah, exactly. There's, but you know, there's an element too, where, you know, how much bad behavior that that brings a different kind of consumer. You know, if, if you think back to tennis again, you have the nineties, you had the Pete Sampras versus Andre Agassi. Nike played that up like nobody's business. Sampras, the straight laced, you know, by the book rule follower and Agassi, you know, the rebel without a cause, if we're going to borrow the Canon camera line, and the long hair and the bright colors. I mean, so much of this is manufactured marketing.

23:00But now if I'm a consumer who's more of a straight lace type person that really enjoys somebody that follows every rule, well, I'm probably going to gravitate toward the Sampras shoes and gear. And if I'm the other person, anti-country club and all that kind of stuff, hey, I like the Agassiz stuff. So now Nike has created an avenue for both types of consumers to have a way into their brand. Sort of reminds me a little bit of that Beatles versus Stones thing back in the 60s. If you could have worn those on your feet, that would have been pretty cool. There's a little bit of that going on, it sounds like.

23:33Oh, for sure. Yeah. Every way to connect with a consumer, brands are going to look for it. Yeah. Now, I'm curious, when you look at the Kobe line, since you really focused in on that for that Sports Illustrated article. Did you have any particular favorites? My favorite, I think, was the Kobe X, the Kobe 10, because that was the one where I sat down with Kobe in LA and really had a deep conversation about that and what he was thinking. The first colorway was this blue color because he remembered getting up crazy early when he was rehabbing from the Achilles tear and swimming because that was really kind of the first thing you can do with an Achilles tear to kind of get back into shape.

24:17And so there's a blue colorway to tie to the swimming that he would do really early every morning. And it really did tell a story. And for somebody who was a fan of Kobe, you can really see how that can resonate with them if they're pulling for him to succeed. And it has this tie to something that's real in his life. Yeah. Now, a little sort of breaking down the fourth wall, if you will, here. When you were doing that interview, were you thinking, okay, Kobe's been really well trained on this storyline? Or did you get a sense it was coming from the heart from him? That's a great question because I've interviewed dozens, hundreds of athletes, and a lot of them are tied to products and brand appearances and things of that nature.

25:06And you can tell the ones that they don't want to be there. Well, they don't last with that brand very long. You can tell the ones that are just completely coached and rehearsed. And it's like, oh, they don't come across super, you know, super well. And then you have the ones like Kobe and Roger Federer, who they really care. Like Kobe, this was something he actually worked on and partnered with. And this was really important to him because it represented him. His shoe represented him, and he wanted it to look and feel and be a certain way, and he really cared. So to answer your question specifically about Kobe, I could tell that, yes, he lived and died each detail of his signature shoe, which is not the case for every athlete.

25:54Steph Curry signed with Under Armour in 2013, three decades after Jordan signed with Nike. Let's talk a little bit about the echoes there. You have this emerging star athlete signing with a less established sportswear brand. What about similar versus different when you're looking at Jordan and Nike versus Steph and Under Armour? From the outside, from the first glance, you do have that, oh, wow, this is similar. You have a rising superstar in the sport of basketball signing with what would be considered a challenger brand at the time. So yes, Jordan with Nike, Curry with Under Armour, similar in that way.

26:39The differences are what we talk about with the establishment of a culture. In the 80s, basketball culture wasn't what it is now. It wasn't an established culture the way that it has grown. And so fast forward, like you said, 30 years, and it does make it difficult for a challenger brand that already had basically a vision in the public eye of what they were to then break in and be relevant. Let's fast forward a bit. What do you make of what Steph's doing now, wearing different classic signature sneakers from other athletes and brands at every game? I think there's even a Curry Watch website that chronicles every sneaker he's worn since the split, right?

27:28Yeah, it's definitely interesting, you know, since he split with Under Armour in late 2025 to really run the gamut and wear basically any shoe you can imagine from retro to his own, to other brands, to popular, to not popular. He's obviously working toward a deal for next year at this point. And so it's keeping his decision at front of mind to sneaker fans. And then when he does make that announcement of who he's signing with, probably will come with a little bit more intrigue. Yeah, a little oomph. And yeah, there's a lot of anticipation over where this is all headed. Looks like he's up to 63 and counting right now in terms of the number of different sneakers he's worn since that split.

28:14There's been a lot of speculation about where he'd land, as you were talking about. And one contender, kind of interesting, Anta. It's a Chinese brand that certainly doesn't have the name recognition in the U.S., but it seems to have emerged as this real big player on the international sportswear scene. And I'm wondering what you think, if anything, that says about where we are with Signature sneakers today. Yeah, Anta is one of the biggest sportswear brands in the world. Based in China, like you said, has a huge following and there's professional NBA players with Anta deals. And so I think it shows how the proliferation of athletic brands has only grown.