How Can China'S Sports Shoe Enterprises Get Out Of The Deadlock?

Win 2008!

The big brands can hardly wait to start cooking the sports brand feast: Adidas limited launch NBASuperstar30, big sailing wear Lining shoes, Anta CCTV figures emerge, XTEP sponsors Chinese women's Basketball League A...

With the approaching of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, both Lining and Anta, or 361 degrees, Voight, PEAK, XTEP, Hongxing Erke and so on, have ushered in an opportunity to embark on the international stage. The 2008 Olympic Games decided their destiny.

For them, Olympic business opportunities not only mean the most significant battle in the first ten years of twenty-first Century, but also may be the key to decide the outcome of the next few decades, and for some small brands, they may disappear.

Although the Olympic spirit advocates "focusing on participation", the cultural nature of sports brand is "the champion takes everything and the loser has nothing."

The Olympic economy is not only Chinese.

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games also aroused the enthusiasm of sporting goods manufacturers all over the world for the Chinese market.

How to make good use of Olympic marketing is a top priority for every brand manager to think about.

Sports brands fall into a stalemate of competition

Along with the strong rise of Chinese sports in the world, sports equipment industry, one of China's sports industry, has grown rapidly and become one of China's economic pillars.

But at the same time, the Chinese sports equipment industry has fallen into a brutal competition stalemate. The stalemate, the stalemate, the deadlock, the stalemate and the deadlock have become the five deadlocks that restrict the growth of the Chinese sports equipment industry.

Situation deadlock

If the current sports brand market status is divided into high, medium and low end three parts.

So, Nike and Adidas firmly occupy the high-end market, while Lining is still wandering in the middle end. The Jinjiang sports brand group headed by Anta is entrenched in the vast majority of China and the world's low-end market.

Therefore, "going to the high end" and "internationalization" are the two major challenges for China's local sports brands to overcome.

In June 2000, Lining beat Adidas to win the equipment sponsorship of the French gymnastics team. In 2001, Lining sponsored the twenty-seventh Summer Olympic Games Chinese sports delegation and set up the first overseas image shop in Santander, Spain. In May 2004, Lining successfully signed the Spanish Basketball Association, and the men's basketball became the new world champion in 2006 World Championships. In January 2007, Lining joined hands with another champion team, the Argentina men's basketball team.

Lining's brand has won some popularity internationally, but Li Ning Co's sales in overseas markets have been hovering around 700 million yuan.

Not only that, Lining encountered a strong block from Nike and Adidas in the "high-end development". "Not being China's Nike, only being the world's Lining" is still the dream of Lining people.

With the popularity of Anta, sports brand has sprung up in Fujian, and has become a bottleneck of serious homogenization.

Whether Anta is the first to start, or the crazy clamor of XTEP, the 361 degree, or the rising star Hongxing Erke, PEAK and so on, not only has not yet completed the "high-end development" historical feat, but in the middle and low end market, more fierce.

As for internationalization, although there is a large number of products exported, it is not OEM that exports to some underdeveloped countries at low prices. Can such "exports" be called "internationalization"?

Communication deadlock

"Big hand advertising" and "keen celebrity endorsement" are the true portrayal of local sports brand marketing communication.

In 2000, Anta bet on Kong Linghui and took the lead in CCTV's huge advertising campaign, and quickly opened up the domestic market and achieved good results.

This immediately caused the imitation of Jinjiang sports brand. They often produced tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of TV advertisements.

A lot of advertising brands have chosen stars as their brand spokesmen.

Lining invited the five NBA champion ring owner O'neal, PEAK arrived at the Rockets home and invited to defend Battier as the image spokesperson. Voight acted quickly to win Wang Zhizhi from NBA, XTEP played the endorsement combination, and invited Nicholas Tse and TWINS, Del Hui moved the most popular singer.

Before we can see whether the spark between stars and brands can be wiped out, we should not use that combination to spread. The way of promotion of this celebrity endorsement + CCTV advertising, though it can enhance brand exposure in a short time, can also quickly occupy a certain market share.

But when the campaign of brand war turned into a star wars, the result was that consumers remembered the faces of the stars, but they could not remember the brand of the products.

Positioning deadlock

"Swinging up basketball" and "swinging between professional and fashion" are the two major weird situations of Chinese local sports brands.

Perhaps, when basketball becomes the first sport in China, the Chinese basketball equipment market is bound to be the largest market.

However, when Nike and Adidas took the NBA pop stars to attack the Chinese basketball equipment market in large numbers, the Chinese local sports brands collectively were not to be outdone, and they resorted to murderer.

Lining not only sat on the Olympic Games and the world championships two champions, but also invited the five NBA champion ring owner O'neal to help; Anta has been named CBA League for three consecutive years, and last year invited Battelle to help; XTEP sponsored the Chinese women's Basketball League A; 361 degrees title "entertainment basketball"; PEAK put the billboard in Houston; Wang Zhizhi endorsed Voight......

Many sports brands are positioning their fist products as basketball equipment.

As a result, the limited consumption group of Chinese basketball equipment is being split by increasing base.

As a "flower of fashion movement", XTEP and del Hui are typical representatives of fashion sports brands.

Because of the high popularity of Nicholas Tse and Jay Chou, XTEP and del Hui have been the targets of countless fashionable young people and have gained a high reputation in the market.

But you can't have both fish and bear's paw. Fashion positioning has won the favor of fashionable young people, but it also lost the share of professional sports market. This is obviously a place XTEP and del Hui do not want to see.

So far, XTEP and del Hui are still wandering between fashion and professional sports.

Channel deadlock

The so-called "Cheng ye Xiao He, defeated Xiao He", China's local sports brand, especially the rise of the Jinjiang system, is dependent on the agent system.

Most of them take the form of provincial general agent to expand to cities and counties, and offer various preferential measures to encourage distributors to open stores.

So all over the country brand image shop, monopoly store four cigarettes.

According to this model, many sports shoe companies have taken the banner of the brand and turned to the domestic market under the help of "celebrity endorsement + CCTV advertising", and achieved good results.

But this mode of agency also puts many sports brands into a deadlock.

A street with limited consumption capacity, with dozens of sports brand shops, has become a true portrayal of pedestrian streets and commercial streets in major cities.

In addition, because of the disadvantages of the agent mode itself, such as uneven level, complex relationship, confusion in management, demanding and changeable (low loyalty) and so on, how to manage and arouse the enthusiasm of agents becomes a headache for many brand marketing directors.

This also makes many sports brands fall into the bottleneck of marketing, and sales can reach a certain height.

Create deadlock

According to the latest report of the World Federation of sporting goods, China already has more than 65% of the world's sporting goods production share.

However, behind the "big producing country" of sports goods, the lack of international brands has "quantity" and "no quality", making the prospect of Chinese sporting goods not optimistic.

What is even worse is that for the more and more mature sporting goods industry, China's labor force advantage is gradually vanishing, and its competitiveness is "swallowed up" by Southeast Asian countries and Pakistan.

The labor force advantage of China's sporting goods industry has no longer played a decisive role.

In recent years, some developing countries have been eyeing the new economic field of "sports economy" and have been competing fiercely with China.

For many years, the "three big ball" export market has always been occupied by China. However, at present, 60% of the world's football has been produced in Pakistan, and there are as many as 200 manufacturers there.

These companies are subcontractors of companies like Nike and Adidas. They sell their football overseas and integrate into global economic activities, forming a link in the international value chain.

The profits of the football manufacturing industry make Pakistan become the "golden area" of the city of Pakistan. The annual salary of the local people is about 1000 dollars, which is two times the national average wage level in the country.

In addition, China's sporting goods manufacturing enterprises are still small and medium-sized, and the same is true in the ball making industry.

The production facilities and management level of these enterprises are backward, the quality of personnel is not high, the quality of products is low, and even individual enterprises are shoddy and raw materials, and use unqualified raw materials.

A variety of factors restrict the improvement of the overall level of the industry, and at the same time make our sporting goods exports encounter resistance.