Sports Brand Under Inflection Point

The athletic attributes of sportswear should be strengthened, brand positioning should be strengthened for product lines, and brand planning should be distinctive.

In 2010,

At the end of 2010, the Li Ning Co, a local sports brand leader, was hit by a record drop of nearly 16% on the 20 day of December 2010 and the market value evaporated about 3 billion 500 million Hong Kong dollars a day, due to the decline in orders in the second quarter of 2011.

And after the crash, share prices did not stop the decline.

The capital market truthfully records the market's worries about the brand operation prospects of local sports.

After years of rapid development, along with the blowout of sporting goods market, the local sports brand represented by Jinjiang brand has achieved extraordinary development.

However, in 2010, with the decline of Li Ning Co's ordering quantity and the integration of stores, it means that the whole industry has entered a period of pformation.

Extensive and intensive

"After the Beijing Olympic Games, the sports market in China formed a blowout trend. The competition upgrading and marketing upgrading brought about by the expansion of the market pushed the competition of sports goods industry to the extreme.

However, from 2009 to 2010, the mode of horizontal growth by relying on paved channels and multiple shops opened up a bottleneck and reached a critical point.

The key way is CEO, Zhang Qing, a sports consultancy.

In the brand building, we should invest more resources, seize high-quality sports resources, and create new stores on the channel to promote growth. This is the main driving force for local sports brands.

However, due to the substantial increase in rent, it is more and more difficult to make money in new stores.

Li Ning Co CEO Zhang Zhiyong said: "sports goods retail market is facing heavy pressure.

On the one hand, the growth mode of relying on a large number of new stores has been difficult to sustain. On the other hand, the cost of operating terminal retail stores is increasing, which makes Li Ning Co dealers more cautious about the growth prospects of the next year.

In order to help dealers ease the pressure of rising costs, Li Ning Co even said it would increase the discount rate to dealers.

Not only Li Ning Co, but also brands like Anta, XTEP, Jordan and 31st degree have felt the pressure of the market.

When the original path can not go down, only look for new path.

Improving brand attractiveness and brand premium is an inevitable choice.

Nike's entry into the two or three line market and the introduction of cheap shoes can make local sports brands nervous. It is because the local sports brand has gone through the stage of brand building, but compared with the international brand, there is still a big gap. When losing the advantage of price and channel, facing the competition, the local sports brand is inevitably "guilty".

Zhang Qing believes that there will be a new form of competition in the industry, that is to form a hypermarket from the channel, such as the Gome and Suning of the household appliance industry. For example, the Gome investment of Peng run group is to integrate many sports brands and control the price through professional channels.

"I support division of labor, circulation and manufacturing should be different.

In the future, this will become a direction, but there will still be differentiation. After all, there are more factors that affect the consumption of emotional clothing.

However, the new trend of channel development is only to alleviate and divert the pressure. If the horizontal expansion is not realistic, then the attraction and premium capability of the brand will only be increased longitudinally.

Concentration and

In fact, the pressure on local sports brands is not only due to the international brands such as Nike and Adidas.

Because brand homogenization is serious, and most of them are located in sports and leisure.

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The "dog meat" that sells sports in the local sporting goods industry, which used to hang on sports, is not working now.

Zhang Qing said.

In the past, sporting goods enterprises were hanging out of sports shell, actually selling leisure.

However, if we continue to develop, we need a more professional division. We need to tap the spirit of sports, truly emphasize the connotation of sports, and emphasize the sports brand itself.

On the last day of June 2010, Li Ning Co suddenly announced that it wanted to change the brand logo and slogan: "L" Pinyin logo became "human" symbol, "everything is possible" for a more internationalized "Make The Change" instead.

Li Ning Co changed its bid, and its turnover in mainland China finally surpassed Adidas, becoming the second largest sports brand after Nike.

In fact, this is a great effort by Li Ning Co to focus on the connotation of its brand.

More than just the first tier Li Ning Co, many local sports brands have begun to calm down the direction of brand development and think about their future path after the clamour of the licensing movement.

In 2010, Jordan launched his new brand proposition: "crossing the new life, Beyond Yourself."

In any mature industry, either raise the brand value up to the first tier, or go downhill.

"Jordan has readjusted his own development orientation. The next step will focus on the establishment of comprehensive professional sports brand attributes, establish the brand personality image style, lay the foundation for the future development of the brand, and at the same time, strengthen communication with young consumers to help brand younger."

Jordan general manager Ni Zhennian said.

Now is a watershed, left or right, it's time to make decisions.

Zhang Qing believes that some sports goods brands lack foresight strategic vision, and are constrained by the original ideas. When analyzing the decline in orders and growth rates, the simple reason is that the number of shops is not enough and sports resources are not abundant.

"The sports attributes of future sportswear should be strengthened, and the brand positioning should be strengthened according to the product line, and the brand planning should be distinct."

In Zhang Qing's view, some local sports brands, such as PEAK and XTEP, have problems in developing their ideas. With PEAK's volume and ability, they should spend more energy on reshaping the brand.

"The process of Jinjiang's brand development is relatively crude. It is usually resource oriented and speculative. It can quickly build the brand through a large amount of input of resources. At this time, even the product name can become a brand. But after this stage, we must comb and understand the target consumer group, its brand proposition, the core of its brand spirit, define its brand clearly, and then strengthen it through a large number of market behaviors."

Zhang Qing said.

Phoenix Nirvana

"After years of accumulation of international sports brands, both operational skills and preemptive marketing resources are better than domestic enterprises. Under existing conditions, domestic enterprises should narrow down their differences with international brands and work hard to make more innovations, including product innovation, marketing concept innovation, marketing tools innovation, sales and service innovation and so on.

Ni Zhennian said.

For Jordan, we need to take a more active view and take the initiative to deal with the market pformation. The reconstruction of the brand before the Asian Games in Guangzhou is a positive way.

Jordan will continue to comply with the requirements of the development of the industry, and steadily push forward and develop, based on the two or three line market, and actively enter the first-line market.

In the eyes of Song Shisan, the industry watchdog, the competition has escalated. Enterprises must work hard on the system and many details.

After extensive wild development, Jinjiang sports brand should embark on a fine development path.

Song Shisan said: "at present, Jinjiang has not yet had a very strong brand. Most of them are in the two or three line. Anta, PEAK, Jordan and others have a tendency to take the lead, but the feeling is still weaker.

If we can achieve leapfrog development through brand merger and go out of Jinjiang, or upgrade the image of the city and enterprise management innovation, we can say that we have really entered the brand age.

Zhang Qingze said: "compared with foreign brands, local sports brands do not have enough place, but because rooted in such a big market like China, and China is developing from a sports power to a sports power, then it will surely produce an international brand in the national brand. So no matter what the past is, it is just a difficult development process, and we have to be confident in the future."

Who will succeed in the next wave?