Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Interview with Under Armour’s Paul Pugh at CES 2016”.
Everyone, I’m Lauren good senior technology, editor with the verge, and I’m here today with Paul Pugh. He is the vice president of connected fitness products for Under Armour, and if you happen to miss Under Armour’s announcements earlier this week at CES, then you might have missed the healthbox which we’re going to talk about as well as some other stuff. That’S going on with. Under Armour right now, Paul thanks so much for being here urghhh.
How are you feeling so far? How’S your si es going well. Somebody said it was day one, but it’s definitely not day one. It’S been a busy week and months in preparation for being here. So it’s super exciting but exhausting too yeah. It’S definitely exhausting all right.
Well, let’s get into it. So, a couple days ago, Under Armour and HTC put out the healthbox for people that maybe didn’t see the healthbox, it’s a bunch of connected fitness devices all put in the same box, they’re also sold individually. Tell us a little bit about what’s inside the box yeah. I think I mean it, it is a bundle, but it’s it’s a point of view about really what it takes as an athlete to have Total Performance, and so we very carefully curated what was going to be in the package.
So it’s a risk-based wearable a connected scale and a heartrate monitor and the the real goal here is that we move the conversation just beyond workouts, which is, I think, on Dharma as a sort of traditionally operated and brought products the workout space. But we’re really looking at the total total lifestyle of the athletes so that it is their sleep, their fitness level. There are general activity and nutrition, and so the health box really brings that together.
So you can track all those things and get a greater awareness of how you’re doing and then being able to improve your performance mm- and I’m actually wearing the the new UA bands, which is in the box. I’Ve been wearing it for a little while now you’ve got one on two well, you have to be. You have to be on on point right, so I mean in a lot of ways to me as I’ve been using this I’ve been thinking. It’S a lot like some other activity, trackers that we’ve seen it tracks your daily steps, your sleep. It has optical heart rate sensors, which may be some other wristbands, don’t have and attracts a variety of different exercises.
So when I look at something like this, I’m saying to myself, it’s not really the band you’re necessarily trying to sell as the valuable thing here I mean, you’re really seems like you’re really trying to get people more into Under Armour suite of apps yeah. I think so apps now I’ve also been using the scale, so there’s a connected scale. That now is in the health box. It’S 180 dollars scale on its own health box is 400 and it’s kind of fun, because when you step on it it says your name.
Like for me, it says hi Lauren, it recognizes my weight and it tells me like how much more my don’t have to lose or whatever it is. But we’ve seen a few of these this year at the show. Polar has one now a connected scale and Fitbit has one whippings has one I like to say with the with the connected scale like you, can truly never escape your weights. Yes, if you step on it and you’re and you’re, maybe you’re appalled and you just you, don’t want it, you don’t want to remember what it is and it’s it just gets sent to the app and it’s there and the next time I open the you a Record app, it’s my weights there yeah, I mean, I think it’s you have to decide that that’s okay, I mean, I think, whether you’re you know like whether you’re logging, food or logging, your workouts or logging, your weight you’re.
Just the general awareness of that process. Forces improvement so, like there’s behavior modifications that come with the awareness of that data. It may not always be the number that you want to see, but it does sit in your brain and may encourage you to make a better decision or in any number of directions. In order to get you know so the next time you see that number, it’s the number that you want it to be right and you know I could think we try to be worse, a serious company about performance, and so you know like we don’t want to Sugarcoat it it’s not, we don’t do sort of the you know. Good job like we’re want to be very transparent about the information and, let’s you you know like, come to terms with it and then but we’re going to give you those actionable insights. On top of that, in order to you know achieve a good result, and the idea is that when you send your weight or your activity levels from these different hardware products into the you a record app, it’s also going to your other apps. It’S going to MyFitnessPal stuff from that might run your goes into you. A record right, so you’ve got you’ve. Now have this family of apps that Under Armour’s been building up over the past few years that you want people to sort of live in yeah I mean, I think, um the roots of the company to some degree. It’S been a very organic growth in itself and and Kevin the CEO. He realized that community, in the same way, was helping to help propagate some of his agenda with getting people to be more aware of their fitness. So he an armor made some major acquisitions in this space at bought MapMyFitness a couple years ago, and then this year excuse me in 2015.
They purchased My Fitness Pal and endomondo, and we’ve just built an entirely an enormous community of users of around 160 million. Now on the platform, and we really believe that community is a central element to you know like understanding like you know, I got ta, be motivated and then also having the data to extract really good insights about athletes that are very much made up like you. Then you can learn from one of the products that’s outside of the health box. You guys also announced our Under Armour’s first pair of connected sneakers they’re called the speedform Gemini and they have a sensor in them right so to track your runs.
So this to me says more than anything that it really gets back to Under Armour’s core. You are an apparel company, you make a barrel, and so, if you look at the health box, you say: okay, well, there’s a wristband there’s a scale! There’S a heart! Strap right, but all of that I mean at the end of the day you guys are just driving people back to buy more clothes right. You know I mean it’s. We do believe that it’s all connected, like you know like the it is I mean, that is the business, that’s driven the company’s growth and and around you know, making great apparel making great running shoes, but we really understand that, like it’s not just like that, can Only get us so far.
We really want to be an experienced company where we’re able to help people at every level of an increase in performance. So, like the company mission originally was you know to change the way athletes dressed and and make them down to the very bottom layer of their clothing, and so now the transmissions really shifting to change the way that athletes live so that they have a total awareness Of everything it takes – and you know it’s all additive, it’s not just what you wear, but all the preparation that you went into your sleep previous night and what you’re eating as well. But then the next obvious question would be: when does this tech actually just go into Under Armour clothing, like I’ve been using a sports bra yeah? I talked about this on the verge cast last night. I think the li-like didn’t know what to do about it. I was like I’ve been wearing this bra, but I have been wearing a sports bra that is connected sports bra from a company called ohm signal. When I first liked that it looked at it, I thought.
Well, this is really just a heart rate. Strap attached to the sports bra, but the more I’ve been wearing it. The more that I realize it’s actually providing information like respiration rate and heart rate variability, and things like that, while I’m working out it seems to me like that’s the kind of stuff like you know, the hardware that you’re working on the connected fitness products, you’re working On, when are those just going to end up in Under Armour, you know, I think, of all those things like. I think the shoes a good example we, like I like to say we want to be opportunistic about where we can put sensors and get good economy of scale. To make difference, I mean Under Armour II operates in you, know, millions of units volumes and like we want to be able to deliver that functionality to everybody all of our customers, and the shoe was a really good place to start, and with that you know, we Also had some requirements around usability like with the shoe the the sensors in there, the batteries in there the customer does nothing, there’s nothing to attach, there’s nothing to replace they just connect it to their phone and boom. They can get their workouts instantly.
Well, we’ve got to wrap this up, but I do have one more question for you: what is the coolest or weirdest thing you’ve seen so far at CES, the coolest, the weirdest thing you know like I’ve had so little time to be out. On the show floor, I’m super. I want to check out the VW bus because I used to have a 78 VW bus and it’s always held a special place in my heart and always the wish that they would bring that product back. So I hear that there’s an electric prototype on the floor: someplace, oh cool Paul! Thank you so much for joining me.
I’M really fun talking and good luck with the rest of CES hope to catch up with you soon. Okay, thank you. Write for The Verge, I’m Lauren good, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube. /The Virg, .