You wouldn’t expect Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank and Nike CEO Phil Knight to be friends, considering they’re both major competitors in the sporting goods industry. But Plank enjoys taking the competitive spirit to an extra level during the winter holiday season.
In an interview with NBC, Plank revealed he sends a Christmas card to Knight every year that reads: “You will know our name.”
Plank went on to explain that he didn’t intend for the Christmas cards to be mean-spirited:
“It wasn’t spiteful. It was just, the people I was trying to recruit and trying to get to come join the company, I was pitting this as us versus them. Everybody else had this — are you crazy? You’re in this row house in Georgetown. You’re not even on the radar. And to me we were always on the radar. To me we were always in that game. To me we were always in that fight.”
It might not be mean-spirited, but at the same time, it is a bit weird.
Credit where it’s due for Plank, though, as while Under Armour still isn’t quite at Nike’s level, everyone certainly knows their name by now.
[NBC]
