Lining "Continue To Win" Is To Enhance The Brand Added Value.

　　三年前，當這位1984年洛杉磯奧運會六枚獎牌獲得者升到高空，沿著鳥巢屋頂開始“翱翔”時，在這舉世矚目的三分鐘里，他似乎帶領所有中國人重新憶起初次讓世界驚異的驕傲感;三年后，當他所締造的公司告別夾縫生存，一度超越國際大鱷阿迪達斯甚至逼近耐克時，這個名字再次驚艷世界。

In China, few athletes' names like Lining can arouse people's complex emotions which are so huge but unspeakable. The Olympic Games have undoubtedly lifted the air to the Li Ning Co to realize their ambition.

In 2009,

Successful companies are fortunate, but success is no accident. One of their commonalities is that they can overcome obstacles through the "tough battle" in the face of unpredictable setbacks and finally carry out the clear strategic goals. This is also the key to Lining's young company's "lost in return" in the local market.

Once brilliant

In March 18, 2010, blue sky and white clouds rarely appeared in Hongkong.

At the Li Ning Co Annual Report 2009, CEO Zhang Zhiyong said that the company's annual sales revenue was 8 billion 387 million yuan, of which the core brand "Lining" sales amounted to 7 billion 690 million yuan.

And because of the overly optimistic Olympic market and heavy cargo, Adidas, which once declared that it will surpass Nike in China, has been seriously declining. The industry estimates that there are only about 7 billion yuan in the Chinese market.

So far, Li Ning Co has changed the situation of China's sporting goods market for many years, and staged a story of Jedi counterattack.

All this is hard won, especially for Zhang Zhiyong. It has added an important footnote to Adidas's strategic plan for its company, which has been promoting "surpassing Nike for 15 years in the Chinese market and reclaiming the throne".

Founded in 1990, the early development of the Li Ning Co, with its reputation as the founder and the opportunity of the Asian Games in Beijing at that time, started rapidly in the market and became the largest local sporting goods brand in China. In the past ten years, the local sports product manufacturer has been leading the Chinese sports product consumer market, regardless of its market size or strength.

Over the past 1997-2002 years, it has occupied the first place in China's sports products market for a long time.

In 1999, Li Ning Co

However, with the development of China's economy, in the late 90s, Nike and Adidas gradually began to covet the potential of the Chinese market and began to actively expand the mainland market.

The increasingly complex external business environment has brought enormous pressure and hardship to Li Ning Co. From 1997 to 2001, Li Ning Co's annual sales growth was less than 10%, while Nike's growth rate in China was over 30%.

In contrast, in 2003, China

Brand pain

Six years later, Li Ning Co, a spokesman for the Li Ning Co group, said that "this kind of pcendence seems to be normal now," Zhang Xiaoyan, a former Li Ning Co with brilliant achievements.

He explained, "Nike and Adidas are global giants, and their brand operation is very deep."

Freezing is not a cold day.

Since 1996, Li Ning Co's performance has stagnated, and sales have been hovering around seven hundred million yuan.

In terms of company operation, Li Ning Co began to diversify its business soon after its foundation, including cooperation with other companies, selling non sports products in the name of Lining.

Business diversification may not be a bad thing for the enterprise itself, but for a newly established sports brand, it will reduce the professionalism of the product and affect the development of the brand.

Blind diversification has once become a common disease that most Chinese enterprises can hardly avoid.

In 1999, Li Ning Co realized that it was the "designated action" of the sporting goods industry to hire product spokesmen to publicize the company's products.

So the company hired the then movie star Qu Ying as product spokesperson.

Obviously, this strategy did not achieve the desired purpose.

Movie stars can really help enterprises improve their popularity, but for sports goods industry, movie stars are obviously unable to embody their essence of sports spirit.

For a long time, what has made Li Ning Co more painful is that they will continue to catch up with Anta and Hongxing Erke, who are also good at local operations while bearing the pressure from Nike and Adidas, which occupy a larger market share in China.

As the competition is further intensifying, the brand effect that the Li Ning Co has been proud of has no longer been able to be supported as a pillar.

The earliest success of the Li Ning Co, to a large extent, was due to the strong contact with the creator, Lining, as a sports hero, as well as the sponsorship of the event.

Lining's brilliant achievements in gymnastics have made the Li Ning Co a symbol of national pride and gained more recognition from the Chinese people.

But with the passage of time, the gymnastic Prince of the day became the chairman of the listed company. In the face of other brands' huge marketing, the younger generation of China has gradually started to forget the glory of the gymnastic prince on that day, and the brand aging has made the Li Ning Co lose its advantage.

Zhang Xiaoyan also said: "the threshold for entering the industry is very low, and there are many entrants in this field, but there are few companies that have their own brand assets, and we think this is a very bad thing."

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The most fatal thing is that in the aspect of product development, the main product development of Li Ning Co is still in appearance and style. Compared with Nike and Adidas, these international brands lack products with high technology concept and main products.

As for Li Ning Co, there are different priorities in different stages of development. Initially, distribution is good, but bottlenecks soon appear, and there is no way to distribute them. Brand must be driven.

Obviously, before the big adjustment in 2002, Li Ning Co's strategy in brand building was not very successful.

The lack of brand awareness and the lack of brand operation are not only Li Ning Co, but the "soft rib" of domestic enterprises at that time.

Zhang Xiaoyan said, "for domestic enterprises at that time can also be called a popular, all of a sudden, all areas are multinational companies most active, not only in the sporting goods industry."

Lining's reconstruction

In response to changes in the external business environment, in 2001, Li Ning Co veteran Zhang Zhiyong became CEO and began to try to reform.

The company commissioned a IBM consultant to do a detailed research report and concluded that Lining must follow the specialized line.

After deciding the future direction of development, Li Ning Co has carried out a series of enterprise strategic adjustment.

In terms of products, Li Ning Co has focused on sportswear and sports shoes. In terms of product development, a lot of resources have been put into production. Whether it was in 2002, it used the DuPont and 3M functional fabric manufacturing sportswear, the Chinese foot database which was co operated with the sports and science department of Chinese University Hong Kong in 2004, or some of the "Lining bow" shock shoes that were launched in 2006, or "cat's 5 generation X-claw cross-country running shoes" and "annual G-Shark basketball shoes", all proved that Li Ning Co gradually attached importance to the professional performance of products.

"Borrowing CEO's words, one of Lining's brand competitiveness is the unique personality of the product."

Zhang Xiaoyan revealed that the most significant breakthrough is that the company even used design innovation to carry out strategic offensive - to create Lining brand badminton professional equipment.

"We have set up a professional sports laboratory, and the Chinese Badminton equipment developed by the company has gone global."

The outside world also clearly felt a series of changes in Li Ning Co.

Since 2002, when the brand slogan was "anything is possible", the spokesperson of the company is mainly professional athletes: signing soccer player Li Tie in 2003, signing American basketball player Damon Jones and O'neal, and signing Isinbayeva on behalf of 5 dollars and 7 million 500 thousand dollars in 2009.

In addition, in 2003, Zhang Zhiyong introduced overseas investment in Singapore Government Investment Company TETRAD and the CDH fund company of China International Finance Corporation to enter the board of directors to improve the ownership structure of the company and introduce the management concept.

First of all, we need to solve some problems in growth.

The first is the governance structure of the company.

By introducing these two strategic partners into the company, the most important thing is to introduce their advanced management concepts.

This strategy of killing two birds with one stone has effectively solved the management problems in the development of the company.

Li Ning Co's series of reforms have achieved remarkable results. The company's sales volume began to resume growth trend after the strategic adjustment in 2002. After that, there has been a substantial increase every year, and in 2005 it has reached 2 billion 500 million yuan.

"In recent years, Lining is actually doing a thing to form his own unique competitiveness."

Zhang Xiaoyan said nothing.

In 2004, Li Ning Co successfully launched in Hongkong.

It was in this year that Zhang Zhiyong formulated a secret plan: to surpass Nike in the Chinese market in 15 years and regain the throne.

Lining's ideal

Zhang Zhiyong is not talking about it.

After the listing, Li Ning Co has readjusted the company's development goals: 2004-2008 years, focusing on the domestic market, striving to break through from inside and outside the market, 2009-2013 years as an international preparatory stage, focusing on strengthening international capabilities, and 2014-2018 years as a comprehensive internationalization stage.

"At that time, Li Ning Co is expected to become the world's top 5 Sports Brand Company, and the international market share will account for more than 20% of the total sales."

In order to improve the distribution efficiency, as CEO, at the annual meeting of Li Ning Co in 2007, Zhang Zhiyong put forward the pformation of supply chain. The reason is that "the larger the scale of enterprises is, the higher the cost is."

In 2008, Li Ning Co persuaded several suppliers of shoes and clothing products to move west to Hubei Jingmen Industrial Park as a whole, and tried to establish a large capacity base that could take orders from Lining to about 50% or more in 2013.

At the same time, the central logistics base, which is invested by Lining and co operated with logistics providers, will also be built in Jingmen, Hubei.

"In 2009, we had more than 8000 stores, and in 2007 there were nearly 7000, which were the largest in the country at that time and now."

Li Xiaoyan said, "to operate on such a large channel is the biggest difficulty in itself."

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The effectiveness of the pformation has also emerged. "The supply chain reengineering, so that we have now implemented direct distribution from factories to customers, to stores, time has been shortened by 10 days before, and can be tens of millions of cash a day."

A large increase in cash provided further protection for the performance of Li Ning Co in 2009.

However, as Zhang Zhiyong admits, at present, Lining's production line has not yet been completed to achieve lean (lean) production, and even front end and back end how to fit, are still pondering.

Li Ning Co wants to go to the top of the market structure, but it does not simply imitate Adidas and Nike. It is a differentiated positioning.

"Badminton will undoubtedly be the focus of our segmented market. This area is not yet fully mature, and it is worth our serious investment."

Last year, Li Ning Co successfully entered the field of badminton. At the same time, the group also sponsored the "2009 Lining Cup China Badminton Masters" and "Lining 2009 China Badminton Open" through integrated marketing.

"The performance of group badminton products has increased significantly in Southeast Asia," Zhang Xiaoyan said.

Entering the Southeast Asian market is only the "test of water" for the internationalization of Li Ning Co.

Zhang Xiaoyan also admitted that "to really enter the international market, there is still much to be prepared.

For example, our current stores in the US have taken a lot of thought only in product mix.

We set 2014 as the beginning of true internationalization, and now we are just preparing for the early stage. "

Although Li Ning Co's sales channels do not extend to the whole world, it has played an important role in the global consumers: becoming a partner of Spain and Argentina's national basketball teams; signing Isinbayeva as the spokesman of the Lining brand.

Through these resource carriers, the global influence of Lining brand has been further expanded.

The logic given by Zhang Zhiyong is that even if the domestic market can not win, what will happen to the foreign countries, and the results can be imagined.

It can be said that Li Ning Co's ambition for overseas markets is inevitable, but Zhang Xiaoyan also knows that this needs a process.

First of all, we should create international brands and expand the international market.

This approach is different from other Chinese enterprises' low dumping methods. We hope to increase the added value of the brand first. "

Zhang Xiaoyan explained that "the internationalization of brands is a coherent act, and we must broaden our horizon."

The possibility of "continuing to win"

"Today we want to be a sports brand that matches China's champion," Lining said a few years ago.

"I hope that the company will have its own unique professional performance in the sports industry, with enough scale to become a leader.

But I am sure that if China's economy is not developed to a certain extent, Chinese local enterprises will not be able to become leaders, and leaders will grow and expand at home.

First of all, we are faced with the problem of survival. We must compete with the most vigorous brands and not be overthrown.

Our inner impulse and dream must always be in our team and career. "

Today, many years of good dreams finally come true. Li Ning Co became the second sports brand in China in 2009.

Meanwhile, Zhang Zhiyong is optimistic about the prospect of market recovery. In 2010, he predicted that the growth of China's sporting goods market would reach 16%.

This year is also the 20th anniversary anniversary of the establishment of the Li Ning Co. A milestone is coming. According to the estimated annual growth rate of 30% in the first five years, the sales revenue of Lining will exceed 10 billion in 2010.

After a beautiful battle, the Li Ning Co seemed calm.

Li Xiaoyan believes that Lining must strengthen his brand attitude and personality, and gain more market share in the first tier cities before he has the chance to "continue to win".

"First of all, we must strengthen our strengths and be unbreakable.

The core is that we will be brave enough to let consumers see that we are willing to change and dare to innovate.