• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, September 15, 2010

By now, people are used to hearing Kevin Plank, Under Armour's CEO, boast about how the brand is going to continue to take market share away from behemoths like Nike and Adidas. But with the launch of its new basketball shoes--scheduled to debut in select stores in late October and early November--he's more believable than ever.

Plank told investors at the Goldman Sachs Seventeenth Annual Retail Conference that the basketball shoes have been in development for more than two-and-a-half years, and getting solid feedback from the athletes and teams that have been testing them. "When we do enter basketball, we will take share," he told the group, in a presentation that was also webcast.

Plank also discussed the timeline of the Baltimore-based company's plan for world footwear dominance. "People say we're not a footwear brand yet," he says. "And that is not true. We launched footwear with our football cleats in 2006 with just 14 people on the shoe team." Today, he says, there are 93 in Baltimore, more all over the globe, and 10 on the beach waiting for noncompetes to expire. "We believe we can be No. 1. It's not a question of if, but a question of when."