Jinjiang Sports Shoes Brand Faces The Dilemma Of Sticking To And Leaving

Jinjiang is a small city in Fujian, but it is a big city with sports brands. Surrounding Jinjiang City are famous sports brands such as Anta, Special Walk, 361 °, Jordan, Delhui, and Guirenniao.

This county-level city, which was not established as a county until 1992 and covers an area of less than 650 square kilometers, carries many signboards such as "China's Shoe City", "World's Jacket City" and "China's Brand City".

For more than 10 years, Jinjiang sports brands have sprung up. A complete upstream and downstream industrial chain has been formed around sportswear and sports shoes products, and the sports industry cluster has begun to take shape, forming a huge scale advantage.

"The emergence of Jinjiang brand cluster is both accidental and inevitable. As a famous hometown of overseas Chinese, Jinjiang people who have traveled across the sea have achieved success in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, bringing back a variety of small commodities to Jinjiang as well as a large amount of funds. Jinjiang people have embarked on the road of entrepreneurship on the basis of imitating these designs and products." Ke Fengwei, secretary of the Jinjiang Youth League, said.

However, how can Jinjiang's limited resources carry the further development of so many brands and choose to leave or stick to the local? It has become an important problem faced by many Jinjiang enterprises.

　　 Big brands in small cities

At this time last year, because the financial crisis affected exports, many Jinjiang footwear enterprises' orders fell by 30% on average. This year, despite the recovery of orders, the average wage of workers has increased by 20% - 30% due to lack of workers, the cost of human resources has increased, and the profits of enterprises are even more meager.

However, compared with Dongguan, Kunshan and other places with nearly 100% dependence on foreign trade, Jinjiang's dependence on foreign trade is only 55%, which is not only lower than the southeast coastal areas, but also lower than the national average of 65%.

Therefore, only in 2009 can Jinjiang's GDP rise by 11.9% against the trend and its total fiscal revenue grow by 13.8%. In particular, under the condition of negative export growth across the country, Jinjiang's export grew by 11.9%, 30.2 and 20.6 percentage points higher than that of the whole country and Fujian Province respectively.

"At the time of crisis, the brand benefits of Jinjiang enterprises are highlighted. Since Anta hired Kong Linghui as its brand spokesperson in 1999, many Jinjiang enterprises have begun to create their own brands. Therefore, the financial crisis has affected our exports, but we still have a strong domestic sales ability." Ke Fengwei said.

Statistics show that by the end of 2009, Jinjiang had 334 enterprises with an output value of more than 100 million yuan, accounting for 67.7% of the city's total industrial output value. The output value of 85 brand enterprises accounted for 32.5% of the total industrial output value, the operating revenue of Heng'an Group exceeded 10 billion yuan, and that of Anta Group exceeded 6 billion yuan.

However, as a small city in the southeast, Jinjiang has no advantages in information dissemination and talent reserve. The creativity and innovation of products need the support of talents, and Jinjiang's advantages in this respect are not prominent.

The reporter saw in Jinjiang that the centripetal force to consolidate the local industrial foundation of Jinjiang and the centripetal force to go out of Jinjiang and transform the living space coexist at the same time, even becoming the contradiction of some enterprises.

Anta holds an order meeting every year, and there are not enough hotels in Jinjiang. Even hotels in nearby Shishi City and Quanzhou City will be fixed. At present, Jinba Men's Wear has moved its marketing headquarters from Jinjiang to Shanghai, including R&D and design, marketing, operation and management and other central intelligent departments, while Anta has moved its operation center to Xiamen, near Jinjiang.

Ke Fengwei believes that it is reasonable for enterprises to relocate according to their own strategic needs. Moreover, although some of these enterprises have moved away from Jinjiang, their roots are still in Jinjiang. The core capital of 23 listed enterprises in Jinjiang is still in Jinjiang. "I think this is an opportunity. The requirements of enterprises force our city to upgrade and transform, so Jinjiang is increasing its urban construction efforts. Enterprises going global may come back in the future."

At present, Jinjiang has established the largest county-level museum and library with a collection of more than 300000 books in the country, and a large SM city square has also been established. The purpose of urban cultural construction is to attract more and more people to Jinjiang for entrepreneurship and development.

Seen from the surface, perhaps the enterprise relocation is for the local favorable tax conditions and land support. However, from a deeper perspective, it cannot be denied that many enterprises are also thinking about whether the accommodation and support of Jinjiang brand has reached the limit, and whether the development of Jinjiang can realize the ultimate mission of the brand.

Wu Jiangwei, a famous marketing planning expert, told Shanghai State owned Assets that the establishment of a brand is not intrinsically related to the size of a city. For large cities, the macro resources of brand communication may be rich, but small and medium-sized cities like Jinjiang have huge industrial advantages. Wu Jiangwei once made a detailed investigation in Jinjiang. "Shanghai may create a first-line strong brand, but Jinjiang can create a brand cluster. Jinjiang shoes and clothing brand cluster has a strong ability to integrate upstream and downstream resources of the industry, and Shanghai does not necessarily have this advantage." {page_break}

　 Sink down and be yourself

In Jinjiang, the reporter heard a story. At the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Li Ning, the former famous gymnast and current chairman of Li Ning Company, unexpectedly acted as the last torchbearer and lit the flame. At that moment, Xu Yang, director of Anta Brand Management Center, was also among the audience at the Bird's Nest. Later, he recalled: "Li Ning ran and ran on my head..."

At the military parade of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 2009, sports stars such as Liu Xiang and Yang Yang in the sports development square were wearing Anta sportswear, including Li Ning in the float.

Although Anta has surpassed Li Ning in terms of net profit, it still has a long way to go before its brand value can surpass its rivals.

Although the development has slowed down in recent years, it is undeniable that Li Ning is still the first brand to mention Chinese sports in the minds of consumers, and is a national brand that can compete positively with Adidas and Nike.

Anta's current situation is also a microcosm of many sports brands in Jinjiang. Although this county-level city has produced more than 100 Chinese famous brands and Chinese well-known trademarks, the brand is still their weakness for those Jinjiang enterprises that need to go out of Jinjiang and go global.

In fact, many Jinjiang brands are still "fake brands" in the minds of consumers. Although enterprises such as Seven Wolves, Powerful Bull and 361 ° have built their own brand images with relatively rich connotation through various communication methods, they still cannot compare with international first tier brands and can only occupy the domestic second and third tier markets.

"In fact, there is no distinction between high and low brands, but the positioning of products is different. First tier brands may have more profits and returns, but we must pay attention to that the international first tier shoes and clothing brands have not changed significantly over the years. They are still Nike and Adidas. Jinjiang enterprises cannot shake their brand appeal in a short time." Wu Jiangwei said.

In addition, according to the observation of some local entrepreneurs in Jinjiang, enterprises that had done a particularly good job in OEM business before creating their own brands were not easy to succeed after the transformation, while those enterprises that had done a good job in branding were often not particularly outstanding during the OEM period, which is also puzzling.

Wu Jiangwei believes that at present, many sports brand advertisements give people a strong sense of similarity, basically following the advertising style of Nike and other first-line sports brands. In fact, this is very unfavorable for brand upgrading. There should be some focus, such as CBA focusing on basketball shoes and Converse focusing on canvas shoes.

"I think the sports products in Jinjiang will sink to the second, third and even fourth tier markets. With the continuous release of consumption capacity in these markets, Jinjiang will have more brand opportunities. Jinjiang enterprises should become themselves rather than others," said Wu Jiangwei.