Under Armour Cuts SKUs Another 25% as Q2 Revenue Falls 7%

Under Armour will cut its number of SKUs (stock-keeping units, the individual product variants a retailer sells) by another 25%, having just completed a reduction of that size in May, as revenue fell 7% to $1.2 billion in its second quarter.

The company posted a net loss of $425,000, with sales declining across direct-to-consumer and wholesale channels and in every region except Latin America. All three product categories — apparel, accessories and footwear — shrank. CEO Kevin Plank laid out the turnaround on an earnings call Friday.

What changes in stores and product?

The retail plan has three prongs: showrooms in major cities to display Under Armour's strongest products, a refined performance assortment in full-price stores, and more full-price product placed inside outlet locations. The strategy is to sell fewer products but sell more of them at full price.

Under Armour is also testing what Plank called a more "asset-light" model by transitioning its youth sports category into a licensed business. Centric Brands will run that segment by fall of 2027. The move is designed to cut costs and free resources for brand development and marketing, including a new global brand platform, "this is your armour."

The company has not said how many stores the showroom strategy will reach, nor what the licensing deal's financial terms are. What is clear: Plank is consolidating marketing spend into fewer, larger campaigns, with one major product story released each month.

"We have what we need — we've got leadership, we've got budget and we absolutely have desire — but frankly, as we've found, just putting things out there and putting an Under Armour logo don't do it," Plank said. "A shirt or a shoe without a story is just a shirt or a shoe. The riches we have from innovation — I don't think there's another brand that is close — we just need to make sure that people actually see that."

Has the storytelling already started?

Partly. This year Under Armour has run a campaign featuring "Heated Rivalry" star François Arnaud and another debuting its Bouncy Tee with K-pop band BoyNextDoor. Plank called marketing the brand's largest opportunity.

The caveat is scale: two celebrity-led campaigns do not yet equal the monthly cadence he promised. Under Armour executives did not quantify the marketing budget behind the new platform.

How do analysts read the numbers?

Telsey Advisory Group, in emailed comments, credited Under Armour with good cost management but said "we have yet to see meaningful signs that Under Armour's products are resonating and the company's revenues can inflect back to growth."

GlobalData Managing Director Neil Saunders was harsher. He called the results "another chronic underperformance" and noted Under Armour has lost more than one-fifth of its quarterly revenue over three years. Some of that decline is deliberate — cutting promotions and SKUs — but Saunders argued it signals a deeper problem.

"The fact here is that Under Armour is not simply going through a temporary period of softness, but has a much more fundamental problem with its relevance to consumers," Saunders wrote in emailed comments. "This issue shows up in third-party stores. Even strong retailers, like Dick's, really struggle to make Under Armour sections look compelling. Assortments come across as fairly random and disconnected, and too many products unsuccessfully straddle the line between being fashionable and being technically functional."

For B2B marketers, the test case is whether a monthly product-story discipline and a leaner assortment can convert cost discipline into revenue growth — and whether the fall 2027 licensing handoff to Centric Brands marks the start of a broader asset-light shift Plank has not yet ruled in or out.