Chinese Sports Brand Competition Intensifies Or Sprouted New Pattern

Recently, Lining The company issued an early warning that the company's performance in the first half of the year will be relatively weak, and that it will spend 300 million yuan to repurchase inventory this year. A day later, China trend group limited also announced that it spent 200 million yuan on inventory repurchase in the first half of the year. As soon as the news of the two was announced, it immediately brought about the adjustment of the sporting goods board of the stock market in the next 2 weeks, and many individual stocks even appeared a "miserable situation".

At the same time, let reporters surprise, last weekend, reporters found that on the pat online, some two or three line brand discount price has been low to the bottom: Kaisheng 1.5 folded, CBA brand 2.7 fold up, Mun Lin Sen 3.9 fold, Lu You 64% off...... Such a crazy low price competition, whether enterprises are digesting inventory or sporting goods industry partial price war has quietly started?

Not long ago, the "raise price" storm of the five major brands of sporting goods has just caused a "riot" in the industry. Now, it is faced with Lining's "inventory door" immediately. Will its sales volume be affected in the second half of the year?

Tactics or strategy?

JP Morgan believes that the adjustment of inventory by Lining and China will lead to other second tier sports. brand The sale growth slowed down, although it has a negative impact on the second-line sports brand, but this effect is controllable.

In this regard, Hou Zhaohui, vice president of 361 degree (China) Limited, believes that Lining's move should be tactical rather than strategic, and its impact may be some, but it should be relatively short. "Lining, the trend of buy back behavior, after all, is only a repurchase action issued by the two enterprises in solving the market problems encountered. It is just like the old Adidas was deeply in the stock door. The impact of the incident on the industry is relatively short, and it will restore the normal situation in about 3 months." Hou Zhaohui told reporters that according to the recent market Feedback and two enterprises' market information analysis, the two enterprises should be tactical adjustment rather than strategic adjustment.

Turning to the recent increase in prices and whether the repurchase activities of the two enterprises will increase some sales pressure, Hou Zhaohui explained to reporters: "although 361 degrees had announced a price increase not long ago, but this is only for the dealer's behavior, in the sales terminal actually raise the price is not obvious." Hou Zhaohui told reporters, in fact, the terminal price of 361 degrees compared with other brands, has been maintained at the mid-range price, and the price difference with Lining and other brands is nearly doubled. Therefore, the price increase is only a natural growth move, and the terminal market will not have much impact.

The Anta report showed that orders growth in the four quarter of 2011 was 23%, 21%, 20% and 25% respectively. The Anta report expects sales growth in 2011 to be 20.1%, believing that the annual performance will meet expectations.

In this regard, XTEP International Holdings Limited also has optimistic expectations for the sporting goods industry outlook. It believes that the mainland's economic environment has maintained a positive growth, and the overall market for sports goods is expected to grow by 15% to 19%.

Guo Shoutan, marketing director of mingle (China) Limited, said that the "buy back door" of the two enterprises may cause short-term sales pressure on the brand enterprises with similar channels and similar positioning, but for the three or four line brand enterprises with medium location and channel to three or four line cities, it should not cause much impact.

"We are targeting different consumer groups and markets. Even if they are affected, it is also very slight. After all, Lining is the benchmark of China's sporting goods industry, and its behavior will affect some consumer psychology for the whole market." Guo Shoutan told reporters, but in order to better stabilize their market share, mingle will also do some corresponding brand promotion to push the sale of the terminal market.

Market maturity?

For this part of the brand price war, Guo Shoutan said that China's sporting goods market is a mature market, polarization is an inevitable trend. In recent years, competition in the sporting goods market has been very intense. Now most of the three or four line brands are targeted, positioning the market to three or four line cities, avoiding the edge of several brands in the second tier cities, and finding their own market positioning. But in this process, there will inevitably be some kind of "labor pains", and the price war brought by this kind of labor pains has gradually become a means for some enterprises to enter the market.

In this regard, Mei Kailong, deputy general manager of Hongqi Light Industry Co., Ltd., also told reporters that in recent years, many three or four line brands and even "miscellaneous brand army" sporting goods enterprises greatly increased their orders, and even their retail prices at the terminal were also slightly adjusted. This is somewhat surprising in the light of the whole sporting goods industry. However, Mei Kai Long said that not long ago, the top five brands in China had released the news of price increase, but at the same time, the orders of the "miscellaneous army" were quietly showing gratifying situation. Maybe this is the clue that the market polarization has just emerged. "The most embarrassing ones should be those two or three line brands that can't go up or down." Mei Kai Long said that if these enterprises did not adjust their brand positioning and strategy in time, they might be attacked by the market in the coming market.

Indeed, a number of research institutes have published reports in the near future. It is expected that competition in China's sports brand industry will intensify and will go through a round of elimination. Then, the "inventory door" incident of two enterprises may indicate the sprouting of the new pattern of sports goods industry, which may still be unknown.