Shoe Maker Anta: Competition On The Freeway

How good can Chinese companies do in the Chinese market?

This seemingly absurd issue has been raised repeatedly in the sporting goods market.

Lining has worked hard. The Chinese brand once surpassed Nike and Adidas in the local market, and still maintains the top three market share in China.

Now, it's Anta's turn.

The company, started by entrepreneurs, has just announced that its net profit in 2009 has increased by nearly 4 to 1 billion 250 million yuan.

In addition to its brilliant performance, the company's leaders are trying to make a fundamental change in the company through a series of efforts such as listing, mass digging, crazy sponsorship, signing stars, etc.: in three years to four years in their dedicated field, they become the first Chinese brand.

Change is calculated by day.

A Anta employee said proudly, "what is our situation now?"

It is suddenly found that the five year strategy established by the professional consulting company has not been able to follow. The strategy of second years is now used, and the strategy of five years will be used for second years.

He has just entered Anta for a year and a half. The number of new staff in the Department is more than a dozen, and the number has doubled.

Most of these new entrants began to gather in Anta after they were listed in 2008. Most of them had brilliant resumes, or came from rivals, or from other commendable companies in management and marketing.

A middle-level Nike District in China has complained on an unofficial occasion that the whole team responsible for a marketing campaign was being taken away by Anta, even including several newly recruited college students.

It is tempting to let a college student who has passed through interviews and eventually enter Nike to abandon a first-class multinational company and enter a private enterprise.

For Zheng Jie, temptation is far more profound than material.

After the 2008 Olympic Games, he officially joined Anta as the executive vice president of the company.

Before, he spent his career in large foreign companies, including marketing chiefs like Procter & Gamble and Adidas. Joining Anta a year ago, he has just been promoted to general manager of Reebok China.

When he came to Anta, he had an unprecedented power -- the overall situation of the trader's brand.

Ding Shizhong hopes that the change brought by Anta to Anta is to pform the business management mode with the advanced international experience that he is good at, improve the quality and working ability of the whole team, and establish a marketing system that can compete with world-class sports goods companies.

In 2009, after the first year of relocation, the biggest change of Anta was from Jinjiang to Xiamen. The marketing system was completely separated from the factories, and the marketing system of the whole company was established.

The original situation is relatively bad: brand, commodity, and sales are basically three partitioned, and merchandise is closed with eyes designed. Brand promotion can not control the production line and store display.

In the past year, this situation has been greatly changed.

Take the present as an example, Anta has designed the brand marketing direction in the second quarter of 2011. Under this framework, production links have begun to make some products on this theme, and the sales side has begun to consider how to display it.

Such foresight cycles remain between 12 months and 16 months.

Before that, only two months ahead of each link will be able to know what to do.

In this series of changes, Zheng Jie gave Ding Shizhong such an evaluation: he is a leader, if he does not change himself, others can not change the enterprise.

It is said that at a meeting, Ding Shizhong put forward a point of view. Someone stood up without hesitation and retorted: "Ding, I don't think so.

The reason is...

Two...

Three... "

Ding Shizhong listened quietly and finally agreed with the objection.

At present, the number of professional managers in the Anta management team has occupied 70% - 80%, while the turnover rate is only about 2%.

How fast can it be?

At the just concluded Winter Olympics in Vancouver, women's short track speed skating results were outstanding.

Zhou Yang and Wang were excited to stand on the podium of the Winter Olympic Games, the left chest flag and the right chest "Anta".

The Olympic equipment, including this award dress, has also been displayed in most of Anta's stores.

Before, this situation is hard to happen. In Zheng Jie's words, "often advertise in the air, not on the ground".

Now, how much linkage has taken place.

But when Zhou Yang and Wang first rushed to the end and lifted the flag over their heads, the position of the right chest was clearly left to Nike.

The Winter Olympic Games decided to separate the award from the competition.

This has been criticized by some sports circles. It is considered that Anta's Olympic marketing lacks the core product of the product system - people want to do sports and competitions like these athletes rather than accept awards.

However, Zheng Jie believes in a sports marketing principle: the height of sports brand is directly proportional to the location of its sports resources.

This principle is proved by Lining and Nike.

In 1992, Lining began to provide equipment for the Chinese Olympic delegation, and became the first Chinese sporting goods company to sponsor the Chinese Olympic delegation, ending the embarrassing history of Chinese athletes wearing foreign sports brand clothes at the Olympics.

At the 2008 Olympic Games, Lining succeeded in lighting a fire.

Therefore, Anta believes that the first win of the Winter Olympic Games has achieved initial success.

The whole board of directors of Anta also thought that this is a very correct thing, closely combined with national honor and five rings, so that Anta's reputation reached unprecedented heights.

For Anta, a more specific goal is to become the first place in the local sports brand in 2013, whether in terms of market share or reputation.

Anta has even calculated the sales that might have been achieved at that time, and began to invest in the expansion of the required production and management.

The data from these assessments also determine the high number that Ding Shizhong had filled in the bid price of the Chinese Olympic Committee's partners in September 10, 2008.

This figure and previous efforts to help Anta finally get the wish to become a partner of the 2009-2012 Olympic Committee of China.

It is publicly stated that the sponsorship fee will not be lower than the sponsorship threshold of the 2008 TOP Olympic Games.

Lenovo became the TOP sponsor of the 2008 Olympic Games at a cost of $65 million.

Some people reckon that Anta will pay more for this target.

Later, in public, Ding Shizhong also said he would give more money to support marketing.

Because of a series of downward trend of Nike and Adi, the voice of "retreating from abroad" has become more and more popular.

But Anta never regards ADI and Nike as direct rivals.

At present, the distribution of Anta stores is still dominated by two or three line cities, and the prices of products are mostly concentrated in the mid-range.

"This brand positioning will have more market competition, but more space."

Zheng Jie said, "if you go up, do you think the competition will be small?"

In the domestic market, Lining and Anta are still in the leading position. Although there are military pursuers, it is difficult for them to pose a threat to the overall situation.

The question is, what if ADI and Nike want to go down?

In the sales shop of new Dongan in Beijing, some of Adidas's old sports shoes, however, are only two hundred or three hundred yuan.

Adidas global CEO Herbert Heiner claimed to have invested a considerable amount of investment in China, that is, sending Du Bairui, the veteran minister who has more than 20 years of experience in Asia Pacific distribution management, to set up a target in China before Du Bairui solved the inventory problem before June 2010.

This huge scale "clear inventory" action will occupy a certain market share. If ADI decides this clearing inventory sink into normal channel, how will Chinese companies respond?

But Anta, who is moving forward at a faster pace, thinks more about improving itself.

In 2010, Zheng Jie thought that what Anta had to do was to maximize the quality of the sports resources that had already been obtained.

The follow-up marketing of Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, the first Summer Youth Olympic Games in August, the Asian Beach Games in November and the Asian Games in Guangzhou at the end of the year are all important.

In this rare sports year, there is still a threat. A group of pursuers have been listed and financing after Anta. There are plenty of money in their hands. Even some companies claim to spend 60% of their financing on marketing.

In addition, 2011 is the sports year, "even if money wants to use, there is no place to use it."

Therefore, if you pay no attention to it, you may be left behind.

Sports brands in the two tier teams are growing at a crazy speed, that is, the annual growth of 30% is probably the last.

It's like racing on the high speed road. It's exciting and dangerous.

Shop must not slow down.

In 2010, Anta plans to add 609, 72 and 257 stores to Anta stores, children's shops and sports life stores respectively.

The expansion of the production line will cost 270 million yuan to cope with the pressure on production expected to increase sales.

3% of sales will also be invested in Anta's science laboratory.

In sponsoring CBA, Anta used the grotesque devices to study the characteristics of Asian feet in this laboratory.

Now, there are 300 busy employees in the lab, with more than 30 independent patents, with an average of dozens of patent applications per year.