Lining Fought Against Nike For Four Years To Win The Local Championship 1

To get rid of the cracks, China's most internationalized sporting goods manufacturers are eager to create new legends and make decisions.

Among all Chinese companies committed to building global brands, clothing brands may be the most challenging ones.

The reason is that the key to winning is not the low cost, the large scale manufacturing advantage, but the imaginative design, the distinctive brand personality and the brand history that can not be shortened.

With the upgrading of Chinese consumers' purchasing power and the change of tastes, they haste to embrace the international fashion brands that they never expected before. This is the beginning of nightmares for many Chinese clothing (6.19, -0.06, -0.96%) and sporting goods manufacturers.

Now, Chinese athletes are trying to fill this lesson in various ways.

The list of these practitioners includes:

China's former gymnast Prince

"I don't like to sit in an office."

Lining on "

This seems to further corroborate the impression of Lining himself for a long time: as the creator of China's largest sporting goods manufacturer named after his name, he had little experience in the specific operation and had let the professional managers team manage.

For the younger generation of consumers, Lining's name only means a brand symbol.

But in fact, he is still

One day last year, at the first meeting of Li Ning Co to replace the brand logo, each participant chose his favorite design, including Li Ning Co CEO Zhang Zhiyong.

When people cast their eyes on Lining, he stretched out his aching waist. For the training cost of lighting the 2008 Olympic torch, he said, "can I not choose?"

Since the start of the bid change project in May 2008, Lining has participated in all the proposals.

The final LOGO pattern was officially announced in June 30th this year. The new brand proposition reflects the core brand connotation of Lining's company that he owns: the sportsmanship, that is, return to professional sports itself.

This ended an internal debate of Li Ning Co since 2003: is it more professional or more fashionable? At one point, this strategic swing made Lining miss the opportunity of development, and its Chinese market share has been surpassed by Nike and Adidas.

In Zhang Zhiyong's view, Lining himself is still deeply affecting the Li Ning Co.

"All his questions are about the future."

When it comes to the two people's daily communication theme, Zhang Zhiyong tells

However, in Lining's view, he is just playing the role of a good chairman.

He did not want a company to be on the ups and downs of a strong founder, but he also hoped that Li Ning Co could realize his business dream: create a brand full of sportsmanship, a global brand from China.

The company is showing unprecedented confidence.

This may come from the following figures.

In 2009, Li Ning Co sales revenue was 8 billion 387 million yuan, an increase of 25.4%, more than Adidas's return to the Chinese market second position.

Since its establishment in 1990, Lining will enter the general sense of "adult age" of Chinese enterprises this year: 20 years old.

If the average annual growth rate of 25% is calculated conservatively, Lining will jump into the 10 billion club by the end of the 2010 fiscal year.

"In China, few brands can develop as fast as Lining, and few local brands can attach importance to brand building."

Bao Guiji, President of management consulting firm, told the Global Entrepreneur three of the long term track of sports market development (R3), "Lining will eventually upgrade from a sporting goods brand to a real sports brand.

Look at Nike, Lining will find his way in the Chinese market. "

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More importantly, Li Ning Co is a rare business company with clear business logic and strategy in China.

For a long time, Li Ning Co has been caught in the cracks of the market: in China's super large and first tier cities, Nike and Adidas are firmly in the high end; in the two or three and below urban markets, many local rivals such as Anta, XTEP, PEAK and so on are eating up Lining's share at a more competitive price.

Since 2005, Li Ning Co has made a bold strategic choice: to enter the high-end market.

"The era of growth driven by distribution advantages has passed," Zhang Zhiyong said. "Brand innovation and product innovation will be the key to the next stage of competition."

With the gradual infiltration of multinational companies and the upward trend of Chinese consumers' consumption power, the two will be doomed to encounter, but "it will be disastrous for Chinese enterprises".

In the new 5 year plan, which began in 2009, Zhang Zhiyong's goal is to regain the championship position from Nike in the Chinese market.

In the next 5 years from 2014 to 2018, Li Ning Co's goal is to become the world's top 5 sporting goods manufacturer and become a global brand.

"In the next 10 years, there will be international brands in every industry in China, and some people will create this history.

For Lining, this is the opportunity.

He said.

True and meaningful, the biggest sporting goods manufacturer in China is being redefined.

In the survey launched in 2008, Li Ning Co found that most consumers' impression of Lining brand is a reliable, mild, trustworthy and positive one, but these descriptions reflect an important flaw: what is the distinctive character of Lining brand?

Three key issues become the focus of discussion in the conference room: what is the positioning of Lining brand? Who are your customers? What is your brand DNA?

For Lining himself, he has always wished to keep himself at a distance from the company's brand.

In 2008, Lining and Liu Xuan and Jin Jing visited the children in the disaster area of Sichuan. When the hosts introduced Liu Xuan and Jin Jing, the children applauded enthusiastically. When Lining arrived, the host said, "do you need to introduce this everyone knows?" the scene is quiet.

Lining himself broke the embarrassment and pointed to Lining LOGO on his clothes.

"Oh, you are Lining."

Two children said with one voice.

But the problem followed: as the founder and soul of the company,

As the memory of 1980s goes far away, the generation of consumers inspired by Lining's name has gradually entered the middle age. The latest report of 21.83,0.19,0.88% suggests that the actual consumption group of Lining brand is too old, and over 50% of consumers are 35-40 years old.

Lining brand urgently needs to make itself sticky to the new generation of consumers after 80 and 90, which makes the brand remodeling become the inevitable choice of Lining.

The Li Ning Co responsible for the bid changing team has conducted many consumer research, channel research and internal staff surveys since the 2008 Olympic Games. All the research results have been placed before the top of the company, and then the research on brand DNA and brand personality has been carried out.

but

Of course, the most important thing is Lining's own opinion.

Zhang Zhiyong said, for the original LOGO, the most emotional person is the oldest employee in the company: Lining himself.

As the head of the bid changing project, Li Ning Co CMO Fang Shiwei confirmed the "rules of the game" from the very beginning: no democratic centralism was practiced, only two people, Lining and Zhang Zhiyong, had the right to decide.

"50% of the general companies fail."

Fang Shiwei told Global Entrepreneur, "one reason is that there are too many people involved in the decision. Two, the boss finally feels the best and the third one is unable to register."

The original design was "quite subversive", Fang Shiwei said, which was totally different from the original LOGO.

After being rejected, Lining expressed his view: no animal image; no closed pattern; the most important thing is to embody the concept of "human" and embody the sportsmanship.

When the second round of 9 LOGO designs was placed before and after Lining and Zhang Zhiyong, they all made the choice - and the same one.

But the next disaster test rejected the plan.

The reason is that global registration is not possible because it is similar to that of other countries.

The third submitted plan chose Lining's classic "Lining crossover" which was created on pommel horse as inspiration and finally passed.

The determination of art patterns is easy, and more importantly, the redefinition of brand connotation and tonality.

The key question is how to deal with the relationship between profession and fashion.

"I hope Li Ning Co is rooted in the essence of sports. I am not against sports fashion, but there are too many companies that simply pursue fashion. Li Ning Co is not such a company."

Lining himself said.

This means the fundamental difference between Lining and KAPPA brand. The latter actually draws on the elements of sports as inspiration for fashion design, which is closer to the fast fashion mode such as UNIQLO.

In order to end the conflict between profession and fashion, Li Ning Co now directly divides designers who specializes in professional products and designers of ordinary products. "It's very stressful for a person to finish his work from the beginning to the end," he said.

Fang Shiwei said that fashion can be expressed through good design, but it is not the meaning of Lining brand.

Li Ning Co hopes to seize the inherent characteristics of young consumers and get a sense of cultural identity.

This is reflected in

It is important to redefine these keywords to make Lining brand more closely related to Chinese culture.

David Semitre, Dean of the Sloan School of business at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that many Chinese companies have not established a link between brand and cultural roots in trying to build global brands.

"I hope that in 5 or 10 years, Chinese enterprises will be happy to tell the story of their brand and adopt a way of linking the brand to the culture of their own country."

He told the "Global Entrepreneur" (for details, please refer to "learn to say" yes "in Gemag.com.cn).

For Zhang Zhiyong, this is very important. Only in this way, can the brand connotation be "real and meaningful".

The design ideas embodied in the product and elements used in storefront layout will make consumers feel that is Lining.

For example, the hoisting ring, which Lining used to be good at gymnastic equipment, was widely applied to the sixth generation shop of Lining which just opened.

"What we need is strategic design capability so that we can continuously accumulate brand equity."

Zhang Zhiyong said.

However,

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The more you sell, the more expensive you are.

Zhang Zhiyong will not forget the hard time of the Li Ning Co from 2003 to 2004. The local sporting goods manufacturer, which was the first place in the Chinese market, was soon surpassed by Nike and Adidas.

This makes Zhang Zhiyong realize two problems: first, China's consumption upgrading is faster than imagination; more importantly, Lining brand has been doing "dress for others" for so many years, helping international brands do consumer education in two or three line cities, and these consumers, once they have higher consumption ability, are immediately committed to the embrace of international brands, which is the difference between brain share and market share.

Where is the future?

Zhang Zhiyong's judgment of the future sports consumer goods market is that the price range of more than 400 yuan will be the largest part of the market increment, and Lining must be able to "sell more and more expensive".

In this market segment, Lining will have a positive confrontation with Nike and Adidas.

Reality forced Lining to do so.

In 2008, China's sports consumer goods market experienced unprecedented prosperity, and the economic crisis that followed it reduced consumers' enthusiasm for purchase.

Before 2008, the industry's 5 - year compound growth rate reached 30%, while the market growth rate dropped to 11% last year.

The industry consensus is that the market will be slightly warmer this year, with an estimated growth of around 15%, but in the long term it will maintain a moderate growth trend.

At the same time, the mode of relying on the advantage of distribution network as the driving force of growth is now coming to an end.

Although there is still room for expansion of retail terminals in the three or four tier cities, the rate of single store profit is decreasing due to the increase in rents and labor costs.

Take Lining as an example, there were 1004 new stores last year, of which 80% were in two or three tier cities, but the same store sales growth dropped to 25.8% from -2.3% in 2008.

It would be an unthinkable disaster if new stores were not offset by income growth.

Come from

In this way, raising the flat efficiency ratio (sales per square area) has become a top priority for every company, which also forces Lining to increase product innovation and brand innovation.

This means a key question: is Lining going to be a consumer sports brand like Nike, or a retailer brand like Decathlon? The latter relies on a strong supply chain, as well as the size and revenue of the branch.

For many small brands that have been pformed from the industry and Commerce in China, their business models are more like a retailer brand: relying on strong distribution capabilities to achieve growth.

Lining obviously chooses the former.

This means distance from other domestic rivals.

"The threshold of the sporting goods industry is very low, and a lot of clothes and shoes companies can be squeezed in," Zhang Zhiyong said. "But if you want to make a brand with unique personality and location, and have the essence of sports and assets, it's not so easy."

In addition to climbing up the price range, Lining sees the super large tier city market as a strategic priority in the 5 year plan that began in 2009.

Bao Guiji, President of management consulting firm, three, R3, said that Lining has now successfully pulled away from Anta and other local brands.

But it should be noted that teenagers in super large cities are more similar to those in Europe and the United States, and have fewer common points with their peers in China's three or four tier cities.

Therefore, "if we want to succeed in this high-end market, Lining must take time to understand the culture and fashion trends of young people in the world, not just China."

To this end, in this brand remodeling,

At the same time, Zhang Zhiyong restructured the sales system in March this year, and divided the entire Chinese market into three parts: East China, North China and Southern China. In the future, it will no longer be a unified order by headquarters. Instead, it will convene the order meeting according to the local market characteristics, and decide the matching and listing time of the goods independently.

"To change the front desk first, the supply chain of the background will follow."

Zhang Zhiyong said.