Plank, upon graduating from Maryland in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in Business administration, searched for synthetic materials to test his hypothesis. He tried several prototypes before deciding on the one he wanted to use. He asked his former teammates to try on the shirts, claiming that his alternative to a cotton T-shirt would enhance their performance on the field. As his friends moved on to play professionally, he would send them T-shirts, requesting that they pass them out to other players in their locker rooms. A turning point for him and his start-up, Under Armour, which was based out of a Georgetown row house owned by his grandmother, came late in 1999. A $25,000 advertisement in ESPN The Magazine resulted in $1 million in direct sales for the following year and athletes and teams began buying the product.