Local Sports Brands Enter The Era Of "Behind Horse Racing"

With China

Faced with the increasing number of local sports brands, how well do domestic consumers accept them?

These ones here

The current development of China's local sports brands can be described by a film that has been showing a few years ago "left to the right". In 2011, a year after the end of the world cup in South Africa and one year before the opening of the London Olympic Games, the 2011, which should have passed peacefully, is a passionate and colorful year for the Chinese sports brand to the whole Chinese sports community.

Although just six months ago, these sports "big guys" intentionally and unintentionally created news: in May, Li Ning Co, including CEO Guo Jianxin, left 3 executives, which led to the biggest talent crisis since Lining created the brand. PEAK's sponsorship of NBA's star Kidd's Mavericks won the first championship in the history of the 31 year team, PEAK became the first Chinese brand to sponsor the championship team; Anta first put forward for the first time that there were 1 stores in 2011, and for the first time in March, the brand of children's wear.

Fine segmentation in sports category

Although China's sports in 2011 won Liu Xiang's comeback, Li Na's French Open champion and many major events took place in China, it was not a traditional marketing year for many local brands. How to improve internal strength and further identify the market position will lay a solid foundation for the next Olympic and World Cup year.

We see that more and more brands are no longer "a thousand armed forces across a single timber bridge", but "left and right" choice, and thus find their own brand positioning. The subdivision of Chinese sports brands in 2011 is more and more obvious.

Once upon a time, 5 sets of CCTV were called Jinjiang channel. From the 1996 Anta "I choose, I like" to today's "happy movement, who says no", 15 years, the same is the Jinjiang sports brand group day to night, day after day, year after year bombarded advertising, but after you carefully observe and taste these ads, you will find that quietly changing is due to the gradual differentiation of brand positioning brought about by the phenomenon of differentiated competition.

From the perspective of China's local sports brand structure, it is not difficult to understand this phenomenon.

Lining and more than ten Fujian Jinjiang brands shoulder the important task of revitalizing the national brand, and at the same time, they are fighting against foreign brands such as Nike and Adidas. However, in the 10 years of initial competition, Lining's imitation of Nike, Adidas, Anta and PEAK followed Lining's trail too clearly, leading to a deformed imitation route. So many brands were plunged into cruel cruelty in the Red Sea. In the past, comic and double star brands were overwhelmed and gradually withdrawn from the front line, and the rising stars dressed in underpants such as Hongxing Erke and 361 degree were all constantly adjusting the brand segmentation strategy in the past 5 years.

Nowadays, the brand structure of China's local sports can be roughly divided into: comprehensive sports brand, such as Lining and Anta; professional sports brand, such as PEAK, Jordan; leisure sports brand, such as "noble bird" and "Voight"; fashionable sports brand, such as XTEP, 361 degrees and so on.

They also focus on sports such as PEAK's basketball, Hongxing Erke's football, or advocate the movement of the people and the entertainment of the whole people, such as the "personalized bird", "361 degree", even some recreational sports, and the personalized sports brand of the street sports are also gradually emerging. Though not yet mature, it will provide a reference for further segmentation of the future market.

Some people will ask about the extent to which China's local sports brands are subdivided. Perhaps you still can't tell the exact positioning of these brands. There are two reasons for this: first, you are not really a local sports brand enthusiast. Two, the segmentation of these brands is not long.

But in fact, the subdivision of these brands is not limited to brand positioning. They have been meticulously differentiated and differentiated in many aspects such as market positioning, consumer groups, product attributes and so on.

Jordan focused on the college student consumption group and continued to sponsor the twenty-sixth Chinese delegation to the Shenzhen World University Games this year. PEAK took the professional basketball players as a positioning group and advocated basketball professionalism and high technology. Through the renewal of NBA, the exclusive sports brand sponsor of China has made herself the king of the profession. From the first star to the five person team, LOGO of "China's top" has even walked out of many NBA teams' home courts. Another look at 361 degrees, it advocates "entertainment basketball", that is, no need to be professional, no age, entertainment for all the people to play basketball, and it is well known to basketball fans through the 5 361 consecutive entertainment basketball programs with CCTV for 3 years. It is also a group of basketball lovers.

Just from the brand differentiation of basketball equipment, it can reflect the efforts made by enterprises and industries over the years. Instead of worrying about the low level competition brought by price wars and plagiarism, they are innovating in their studies and seeking characteristics and differences in creation. Is this not what the Chinese local sports brand industry wants and advocates? I hope this situation is not a flash in the pan, but a real theme for the future development of the industry.

After winning a horse race, what can we do to win?

Some people say that the sports brand in the 90s of last century depends on advertising, and the brand of sports in 2000 depends on opening a store. What will it win after 2010?

This is a difficult question to answer.

This year, Jordan pioneered two revolutionary technologies and applied to two categories of clothing and sports shoes, namely, "bingba technology" and "ACS technology". The former mainly relies on the unique cellulose fiber characteristics of Bembery, so that the moisture content and temperature of the skin near the human body can be maximized and the temperature is regulated. The latter relies on the extrusion pressure generated by the heel during the movement, and the external air is inhaled into the gas chamber and then discharged to the front palm through the outlet valve, thereby forming a damping effect.

These two technologies can not be regarded as the top technology of China's local sports brands, but at least represent two very competitive products selling points in 2011. However, it is even more difficult for them to be accepted and understood. It took nearly 20 years for Nike to fully accept the "air cushion shoes". Adidas's cushion rubber technology has not yet completely conquered consumers. I hope Jordan can win the hearts of the people through a series of advertising films and continuous technology research and development.

Coincidentally, Anta has recently developed Anta "elastic glue" technology, I hope this brand new "glue technology" can create Anta's own new era.

Whether it is Jordan or Anta, they are increasingly finding the support role of technological innovation in sports brand. If a revolutionary technology can form a real industrialization and is related to the brand and not just with the product, winning the hearts of consumers will become easier and more stable. Some domestic sports brands are trying to take this road.

This is the information age. For sports brands, this is also the era of channel revolution. When Anta put forward the ambition of completing the "ten thousand shops" this year, other brands disagreed, because everyone knows that the era of "horse race enclosure" has passed. According to the current development speed, whether PEAK, 361 degree or Jordan, it is only a matter of time in the next few years to realize the scale of WanDian.

According to statistics, there are 70% outlets for domestic sporting goods brands in two or three line cities, more than 280 in prefecture level cities, more than 370 in counties and more than 370 in counties, including more than 1600 autonomous counties, districts, autonomous regions, special economic zones and forest areas. A large number of two or three line cities provide huge space and consumer market for these brands.

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If you open the official website of the above sports brands, you will find that these brands have no exception with the links and plates of the brand online store, which means no one is willing to give up the new channel of online sales. Even if you go to Baidu to enter these brand names, you will find that the number one is not the official website of the brand, but its online shopping mall, which in a sense reflects the importance of online channels in the future.

Of course, the contention of the channel can not be centralized online. Its maturity will take time to test, but it will not be easy to compete with more than ten sports brands in the same two or three line market. Therefore, whether the first tier market of foreign brands such as Nike and Adidas will be captured will become the focus of the future.

Because of the early arrival of international brands such as Nike and Adidas into the first tier cities in China, the local brands now choose the strategic pattern of "encircling the cities" in the early days. When they face the first tier market that is almost monopolized by foreign brands, it is easy to imagine the difficulty. Fortunately, Nike and Adidas also turn their heads to develop the market of the two or three tier cities, which provides an objective condition for our local brands to snatch and challenge.

Is it the choice to continue expanding existing channels, or to seize the first tier cities? Or to vigorously develop online channels? This is a topic for Chinese sports brands to revisit in the next 5 years.

Some people have statistics, in 2009, Lining, Anta, China trends, XTEP, 361 degrees, PEAK and other enterprises together up nearly 30 billion of sales, about six years ago, the entire domestic sporting goods consumption scale several times.

In the short five years, China's sporting goods industry has shown an explosive growth.

In the next five years, who will control the channel of the consumer market will become a new movement, "Wang Zhong Wang".