Anta: Never Stops Playing Sports.

From celebrity endorsement to event sponsorship, Anta's marketing process is the epitome of the development of China's sporting goods industry in the past 20 years.

From an innovative and pragmatic new star enterprise, Anta has become a pioneer in sports marketing in China and a supporter of China's sports industry. Anta has gone through an unremitting road.

In 1991, there were thousands of small factories such as Anta in Jinjiang. Compared with other companies, there were no advantages.

Ding Zhizhong, who was just 18 years old, went north alone and joined the business sea.

In 1994, when Anta was founded, Ding Zhizhong returned to Jinjiang with 200 thousand yuan earned from Beijing.

For the first time, the logo of Anta was set up. "Peace of mind, entrepreneurship and steadfast conduct" will blend the spirit of self pcendence into everyone's life.

After more than ten years of development, Anta has developed into one of the largest brand oriented comprehensive sporting goods companies in China.

At the beginning of its founding, Anta put all its resources and energy into design, production and sales. Basically, there was no marketing cost to speak of, and it was spread entirely by customer's word of mouth.

Over the past few years, although the product sales volume is not worried, the brand has never played out.

In 1997, the company started the construction of VI system, gradually standardizing the use of trademark identification, and thus opened the prelude to the implementation of Anta brand strategy.

Unlike all sports shoes companies in Jinjiang, the first thing Anta wants to do after accumulating its original capital is to make its reputation known as soon as possible.

From 1999, Anta boldly adopted the marketing strategy of "celebrity endorsement + CCTV", and hired the world champion of table tennis, Kong Linghui, as the brand spokesperson. "I choose, I like" as the slogan, launched a large-scale "advertising bombing" in the prime time of CCTV sports frequency channel.

Although nowadays celebrity endorsement sports brands are common, but at that time, it caused a strong shock in the public.

By virtue of this TV advertisement, Anta brand has emerged in the Chinese sporting goods market, and the combination of Anta + Kong Linghui is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

Soon after, the Anta brand was firmly engraved in the hearts of the Chinese people after the victory of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and the spread of the excitement of kissing the flag and waving arms by Kong Linghui.

Anta has become a household name in China.

Anta's sales also showed strong growth at the same time when its popularity was greatly improved. In 2001, Anta achieved its first overall achievement in the annual market share of the sports shoes market. By 2006, Anta had won the award for 6 consecutive years.

At this time, Ding Zhizhong is not only satisfied with Anta's position as a popular brand, but rather hopes Anta can develop towards a more professional way.

In 2003, Anta faced the first pformation in history.

When other sports brands follow Anta's "star endorsement + C TV" marketing mode, they turn their eyes to sponsorship of professional sports events.

Although the sponsorship of the Sydney Olympic Games has been a great success, Anta has tasted the sweetness, but with the gradual maturity of marketing concept and the gradual strength of the brand, Anta's sponsorship of sports events is becoming more rational and deeper.

During this period, the most iconic event was the first cooperation with CBA (Chinese Basketball League).

With the full rights and interests, Anta has invested a lot of resources to carry out follow-up marketing and in-depth marketing strategies along with the continuous development of CBA events.

First, this is reflected in product development.

From September 2005 to March 2006, a series of Anta CBA equipment appeared one by one in front of people, causing waves in the market.

Professional All-Star basketball shoes were also launched in January 2007.

In 2006 September, Anta entered a completely new stage -- pformation to the comprehensive sports brand, which is reflected in the pformation from "I choose, I like" to "keepmoving never stops".

Around the new brand image, Anta began to show more brand personality and connotation. Its entry point is grass root culture.

In Anta brand advertising, there is such a saying, "let scars become your medals".

This sentence is inspired by sports, and those athletes who are all hurt but pursue their dreams, let everyone see a spirit: you are an ordinary person, without conditions, no talent, but give you a dream, you can also achieve by your own efforts - and this is exactly what Anta wants to convey to consumers.

With the new concept, Anta has launched the new brand TV advertisement "keepmoving will never stop".

This little foreshadowing soon showed the power. People naturally established the relationship between Chinese sports spirit and Anta brand. This means of putting the brand voice symbol into the broadcast of events is innovative.

"The blue sea is always very small. Anta has to be the biggest in the Red Sea."

In 5 years, Anta will take the first place in the market reputation and market share and enter the top 10 in the world. Anta represents the spirit of Chinese sports and represents the pride of yellow skin.

This year Anta realized a net profit of 1 billion 250 million yuan.

In July 10th this year, Anta Sports Products Limited officially opened trading on the main board of Hongkong, gaining 183 times over subscription, raising a total of HK $3 billion 168 million, and the first day of trading was 40% higher.

Ding Zhizhong, chairman and chief executive officer of Anta's board of directors, regarded this as an important opportunity to clarify property rights: "private enterprises have only two ways to achieve a certain degree", or they should continue to maintain family control while they are small.

Before, "the most important core issue is that we need to make enterprises more pparent."

"The boss is not short of money, does not mean that enterprises are not short of money."

Ding Zhizhong said on the first day of listing.

He also plans to further expand Anta's production capacity, develop more retail networks and flagship stores, and hope to play a bigger role in the field of sporting goods retailing.

He set Anta's next growth "high ground" in the field of sporting goods retail.

In October last year, Anta Group invested in the development of frontline sporting goods Development Co., Ltd., the main sportswear of Adidas, Reebok, Kappa and other brands, "the profits of retail business will be higher."

2008 the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing will trigger the climax of China's national sports.

Under this background, sports products are becoming fashionable, which has created another fast developing sporting goods market.

Strikingly, Anta's listing also attracted the investment of Alexander, the owner of the US NBA Houston rockets, where Yao Ming was based, holding 8.2% of Anta's stake in HK $234 million, becoming Anta's largest overseas shareholder.

Recently, Anta has signed Francis, a rocket star, to produce its own brand.