Stephanie Pugliese has been President of the Americas with Under Armour since June 2020. Prior to that, she served as President of North America from September 2019 to May 2020. Prior to joining Under Armour, Ms. Pugliese served as Chief Executive Officer and President of Duluth Trading Company from February 2015 to August 2019, and as President from February 2012 to August 2019.
Prior thereto, she served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Duluth Trading Company from February 2014 to February 2015, Senior Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer from July 2010 to February 2012, and as Vice President of Product Development from November 2008 to July 2010.
Ms. Pugliese also served in various leadership roles with Lands’ End, Inc. from 2005 to 2008 and at Ann Inc. from 2000 to 2003.
About Under Armour
Under Armour was founded by Kevin Plank. As a 23 year old former captain of the University of Maryland Football team, Kevin had noticed that compression shorts stayed dry during practice. He decided to take that same material to create moisture wicking gear. Under Armour’s original funding came from Planks personal savings and credit card debt. During college, Plank had saved about $20,000 by selling t-shirts at concerts. He ended up going about $40,000 in credit card debt spread across five cards. By 1997 (one year after founding the company), he was broke.
Then, he made his first sale to Georgia Tech for about $17,000. Two dozen NFL teams soon followed suit. At the end of his second year, he had sold $100,000 in product. Then, the product took off and major teams and retailers began carrying the product, creating a multi-million dollar business that now does nearly $2BB in sales and has over 5,900 employees.”
For more about Under Armour and the company’s story, head here.