Stephanie Linnartz got even less time than expected to fix Under Armour’s many problems.
Linnartz, an experienced manager who was previously number 2 at Marriott Internationalleft the global hotel chain last year to become CEO Under Armour. On February 27, 2023, she took over the ailing sportswear chain – and with it the company said today, she will leave the CEO position at the end of this month after just over a year in the job. She had said that implementing their turnaround strategy for the company would take three years.
Kevin Plank, the controversial founder and majority shareholder of Under Armour, will become CEO again from April 1st. The latest “boomerang” CEO to return to his former job (a group that includes Disney’s Bob Iger and Starbucks’ Howard Schultz) will become the company’s fourth CEO in four years. He first “resigned” He resigned his position in January 2020 to become CEO, and he continues to own 65% of the company’s voting shares.
Under Armor did not provide a reason for the abrupt CEO change and a spokesman declined to comment. In one LinkedIn postPlank thanked Linnartz for her contributions to Under Armour: “She has helped advance the company in many important ways, including advancing our leadership in product, design, supply chain, customer engagement and regional management,” he wrote. “There is still a lot of work to be done, but their leadership helped us find the right path to victory.”
Running Under Armor was always a turnaround job – and Linnartz approached it with his eyes wide open. “I believe in taking calculated risks,” she told me last summer when I profiled her for Assets.
“She has made a breakthrough and launched a clearly articulated three-year strategy that prepares us for strategic growth,” said Plank Assets, in an email comment at the time. “I couldn’t be more excited to have her at Under Armor and work with her every day.”
But the challenges Linnartz faced were great: Under Armor had struggled to grow sales and profits since its early heyday. The company’s stock price has plummeted since its peak in 2015, and retail experts call its brand identity a mess at best.
Meanwhile, Plank’s politics and personal life have continued to put his company in a sometimes unflattering state Headlines. And Plank had remained an unavoidable presence in the company even after he left the CEO position, as I saw when I visited the company’s headquarters in August – where I was told several times the story of how Plank founded the company in his grandmother’s basement 1996:
“Buildings and clothing lines are numbered either 96 (for the year he founded Under Armor) or 37 (for the number of KP’s college football jersey),” I wrote at the time. “A hallway at headquarters is decorated with a giant photo of that jersey, next to it are enlarged versions of Plank’s early Under Armor business cards, and next to it are #inspo phrases like ‘HUMBLE & HUNGRY BEGINNINGS’.”
Patrick T. Fallon – Bloomberg via Getty Images
The visible continued presence of a charismatic founder can be a problem for a new CEO, says Neil Saunders, a GlobalData retail analyst who covers Under Armour. “Despite the fact that someone else is CEO, Kevin Plank is still there,” he says. “It’s still very much a founder-led company … and most CEOs don’t want drivers in the back seat.”
Although Linnartz had hired several new senior executives and launched a rewards program to increase customer loyalty, her strategy had not produced immediate results: Under Armour’s most recent quarterly sales fell by 6 percent from a year earlier.
“She inherited a brand that always had a lot of problems,” says Saunders. “And a year really isn’t enough time to make a difference.”
Investors initially cheered Plank’s return: The company’s shares rose in after-hours trading, before it slides back down. Under Armor also announced that Mohamed A. El-Erian, the former CEO of PIMCO, will become non-executive chairman of the board with Plank’s appointment as CEO.
“As I reflect on my past year at Under Armour, I am particularly proud of the outstanding talent we have brought into the organization,” said Linnartz wrote in an email to Under Armor employees. She added that she wished Plank, “the leadership team and all of you, much success in the coming years.”