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Under Armour taps 170M fitness users for new shopping app

Under Armour is bulking up on mobile by adding a shopping application to the brand’s array of fitness titles, providing more than 170 million users with a personalized experience based on their workout history.

The new UA Shop app leverages data from Under Armour’s digital fitness platform, which includes apps such as UA Record, MapMyFitness, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal, to provide users with a personalized shopping experience. UA Shop was developed to leverage data to provide in-app recommendations that connect consumers to the right gear.

“UA Shop is incorporating what we call personalization to contextualization,” said Sid Jatia, vice president of direct-to-consumer digital at Under Armour. “We are creating experiences that are not just about who you are but where you are.

“We’ve integrated layers of custom content, your physical environment, and behaviors in other channels – including in -store experiences, purchase history and activity data – to create a single view perspective on how you are engaging with UA as a brand,” he said.

Bridging fitness, shopping
The UA Shop app leverages data from the brand’s connected fitness platform, such as athlete inspiration, workout history and previous purchase history, to create a personalized shopping experience for its core product categories – performance apparel, footwear and equipment.

Using in-app recommendations, the app will direct users to the right products. For example, a consumer living in a warmer climate who has logged several runs through MapMyRun might be exposed to UA CoolSwitch apparel and running footwear.

Members of the UA Record and MapMyFitness app-based communities can sync their existing account information to UA Shop. MyFitnessPal and Endomondo integration will be added soon.

A single profile
UA Shop is the first app to launch with the new Under Armour Account – a single profile for all Under Armour apps.

The UA Shop app also includes one-touch purchasing with Apple Pay, expanded product content and customer reviews and apparel tag scanners for in-store use.

“We have created a beautiful on-boarding experience that includes video content from the brand’s athlete family upon opening the app,” Mr. Jatia said. “From there, consumers can choose who they are shopping for, specific sports and activities they are interested in and select athlete inspiration.

“From these three simple steps, recommended products are provided from the complete Under Armour collection,” he said.

The app is currently available in the Apple App Store and will be available soon in the Google Play store. It was designed to maximize the brand’s digital platform while complementing its existing in-store experience by enabling consumers to find the products they want when they want them.

“As an industry standard and for Under Armour specifically, traffic is trending dramatically towards mobile,” Mr. Jatia said. “Consumers are shifting from shopping on their desktops to their mobile phones today more than ever.

“Our Connected Fitness communities have millions of consumers who are already on mobile and UA Shop is the next step in bridging these communities with our core products,” he said.