How India became US Polo’s growth engine in a $2.6 billion global play

United States Polo Association (USPA), the iconic American brand has doubled its global retail sales to $2.6 billion in 2024 from $1.3 billion in 2018, marking four consecutive record-breaking years despite macroeconomic headwinds. India has emerged as one of USPA's top three markets globally, driven by its partnership with Arvind Fashions and rapid strides in digital innovation. As the brand eyes further growth in the coming years, J. Michael Prince, president and CEO of USPA is leaning on emerging markets, e-commerce, and sustainability initiatives to fuel its next phase of growth.

Here’s an excerpt from an exclusive interaction with Fortune India:

Q: We've had many macro ups and downs in the industry in the last five years, how do you think the brand has evolved and how has it become more resilient?

A: From a global perspective, the brand's done extremely well worldwide. In 2018, I came in as CEO and we were at $1.3 billion in global retail sales. And as of 2024, we had another record year – so that’s four record years in a row since COVID – we had $2.6 billion in global sales. We doubled the business in six years. And what's been important about that is the brand really resonates with the consumers around the world.

It's an aspirational brand, but it's accessible. Great price to value proposition, authentic to sports, but a connection to fashion as well. And India has been one of our fastest growing markets and one of our top three markets, but the brand's performed well all over the world. These are very exciting times and the future's never been brighter.

Q: Apart from India, what other emerging markets are doing really well for you?

A: The US is our biggest market. It's done just an exceptional year this past year. Turkey in the Middle East is our second largest market. India is our third largest market. But even Western Europe, where it's a more mature, competitive market from a brand perspective, has quadrupled in size the last four years. We've seen even tremendous growth in Western Europe as well.

Q: Is e-commerce as a concept working out majorly only in India or other markets as well?

A: Global e-commerce for us around the world is about 10% of our $2.6 billion sales. It's become an important part of the business. But we have 1,200 stores around the world. We just signed off on another 100 for 2025. We'll have roughly 1,500 over the next three to four years.

Arvind Fashions with US Polo is leading the trend though with this digitalisation of interaction between the consumer and stores, pickup and store, and e-commerce. We're learning from them. And what we'll do is after we figure some things out, export excellence around the world.

It's happening here and there, but not at the level we want. But I think here they're the trendsetters for the brand with that.

Q: US Polo is an old-time legacy brand with a niche consumer base. How are Gen Z and millennial consumers responding to your brand?

A: In 2018, the vision was to target young millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha. And half our business worldwide is that demographic now, whether it's India, the United States, Turkey, the Middle East, Western Europe. And we said, how do we do that as a brand as well?

Let's bring in young ambassadors. Pacho (His Highness Sawai Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur) is the perfect example who is a 26 years old, professional polo player from India, and plays all around the world. He is very well respected within the polo community.

On the women's side, we signed a young lady at 14 years old. She's now 20, and she's the number one female player in the world. She is our ambassador; that connects with that younger consumer. They're living their life outside of polo and they're really global ambassadors for us and that strategy has worked really well.

Q: You spoke about rapid digitisation. How important has it become for legacy brands to incorporate digital tools like AI, ML to remain relevant?

A: The digital presence is so important. When I started in 2018, we had two functional websites in the world and maybe a half a million social media followers. As of today, we have 50 websites globally in 20 different languages and 11 million social media followers. We've really taken the opportunity to take e-commerce and digital opportunities to benefit the brand all over the world and share those learnings. The great thing about the brand, Arvind's such a world-class partner, as we talked about earlier, they're doing things with digitisation stores that are going to give me ideas to export excellence around the world.

I got to see that the last few days by doing my store visits. From an AI perspective, as a brand globally, we're just on the beginning cusp of what's the opportunity. One thing we're doing is that we're having AI create product copy, generate product names, making sure they're authentic and we can support that.

Always reviewed by a human, but there's tremendous opportunity around AI technology. It's just learning as you go and where it makes the most impact and is the most efficient opportunity for your brand at any given point in time.

Q: How would you describe the current state of the global fashion and lifestyle retail sector? What are the biggest shifts shaping the industry today?

A: I see it's a challenging marketplace for many brands. We've been very successful and we'll continue to be successful.

2025 has started off even better than 2024, and 2024 was a record year. Our brand in particular, sport and fashion, focussing on authenticity, having great global partners, being diversified around the world, investing in the brand, makes growth tremendous. The future has never been brighter.

We've got to stick with our strategy of opening stores in the right locations, e-commerce and digitisation, supporting the brand and staying true to who we are, and being really focused on where you win and where you lose and focusing on the winners. And a lot of brands have not done that since the pandemic, as there's been a lot of challenges. It'll be a challenging marketplace but I feel really good about where we're at.

Q: How is personalisation and customisation reshaping fashion retail, especially in the premium segment?

A: It's challenging – the customisation space, especially when you're almost at a $3 billion size. I have seen a lot of brands try it, and they spend a lot of time and effort, and then they stopped. It's harder for bigger brands, but it can be done.

Certain times it makes sense, but globally, it's not a focus for me right now. We just have so many opportunities from India, to launching Brazil, Poland, to new categories, and media. I have to think in $100 million increments.

There might be times and places where you do it for events and such, but is it going to be a long-term strategy globally - probably not.

Q: Globally, brands are pushing harder on sustainability narratives. Do you feel Indian consumers are genuinely warming up to the idea of conscious fashion, or is it still largely a Western-driven conversation?

Well, let me talk about globally. We've got our ecosystems called USPA Life, Play Your Part. We executed a new timeline called Born to Play – birthright to play polo, play on the field, play your life off the field. Play Your Part ties into that as well. I'm really proud from a sustainability perspective, all the things that we've started executing over the last three or four years.

And we call it People, Product, Planet. We see that impact in the world.  I see the younger consumer that's also thoughtful about authenticity and philanthropy, resonating with our sustainability costs.

Whether it's from pulling plastics in the oceans to our relationship with canopy and protecting the forest, that's been an important part of our ecosystem. And you'll hear more about that in 2025 as we make some big announcements in the back half of the year.

Q: What are some tangible steps brands in the premium lifestyle segment can take to make sustainability more mainstream and affordable from beginning to end?

A: Well, you have to focus where you can get the biggest ones. For instance, for us, we make polo shirts, a lot of cotton goes into polo. How do we make that a more efficient, sustainable process? We partner with a group called Better Cotton Initiative. And we think over the years it will be 50 million pounds of cotton that we can impact from how it's grown, how it's shipped, and how it's put into a polo shirt.

Another place is denim, we're a sizable denim brand. A lot of water is used when washing denim. How can you wash it one last time, or three last times? And now all of a sudden, we're talking about hundreds of millions of gallons of water that you can save annually. It's such a big concept, sustainability. If you can impact one button on a polo shirt, and you sell 30 million polo shirts in a year, it may just be one button on one shirt, but over 30 million times, that's a sizable impact.

That's how we're thinking about our carbon footprint and how we're addressing sustainability and really protecting the environment for the next generation. It's incremental, you cannot really get sustainable overnight.