Stephanie Linnartz has had even less time than expected to resolve Under Armour’s numerous problems.
Linnartz, a veteran executive who was previously No. 2 at Marriott International, left the global hotel chain last year to become CEO of Under Armour. He took over the struggling sportswear chain on Feb. 27, 2023 and, the company said today, will step down as CEO at the end of this month after just over a year on the job. He had said his turnaround strategy for the company would take three years to implement.
Kevin Plank, controversial founder and controlling shareholder of Under Armour, will become CEO again starting 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” from the role in January 2020 to become executive chairman and continues to own 65% of the company’s voting shares.
Under Armor gave no reason for the abrupt CEO change, and a spokesperson declined to comment. In a post on LinkedIn, Plank thanked Linnartz for his contributions to Under Armour: “He has helped advance the company in many important ways, including elevating our leadership talent in product, design, supply chain supply, consumer loyalty and regional management,” he wrote . “There is still a lot of work to do, but his leadership has helped put us on the right path to victory.”
Running Under Armor was always going to be a breakthrough job, something Linnartz approached with his eyes wide open. “I believe in taking calculated risks,” he told me last summer, when I profiled her Fortune.
“He started with momentum, launching a clearly articulated three-year strategy that prepares us for strategic growth,” Plank said Fortune, in an emailed 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 steep: Under Armor has struggled to grow revenue or profits since its early heyday. Its stock price has fallen since its 2015 peak, and retail experts call its brand identity confusing at best.
Meanwhile, Plank’s politics and personal life continued to put his company in sometimes unflattering headlines. And Plank remained an inescapable presence at the company well after his departure from the CEO role, as I saw when I visited the company’s headquarters in August, where I was told several times the story of how Plank started the business in his grandmother’s basement. in 1996:
“The buildings and clothing lines are numbered 96 (for the year he founded Under Armour) or 37 (for KP’s college football jersey number),” I wrote at the time. “A hallway at headquarters is decorated with a huge photo of that shirt, alongside enlarged versions of Plank’s first Under Armor business cards, alongside #inspo phrases like ‘HUMBLE & HUNGRY BEGINNINGS.’”
Patrick T. Fallon—Bloomberg via Getty Images
The visible and ongoing 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 a founder-driven company … and most CEOs don’t want drivers in the backseat.”
Although Linnartz had hired several new senior executives and launched a rewards program to increase customer loyalty, his strategy had not produced immediate results: Under Armour’s most recent quarterly revenue fell 6% from the previous year.
“He inherited a brand that always had a lot of problems,” Saunders says. “And one year is really not enough time to make a change.”
Investors initially welcomed Plank’s return: The company’s shares rose in after-hours trading, before falling again. Under Armor also announced that when Plank becomes CEO, Mohamed A. El-Erian, former CEO of PIMCO, will become the non-executive chairman of its board of directors.
“As I look back on my last year at Under Armour, one of the things I am most proud of is the excellent talent we have brought into the organization,” Linnartz wrote in an email to Under Armor employees. He added that he wishes Plank, “the executive leadership team and all of you much success in the years ahead.”