How Does Lining Refuse Brand Aging? Design And Enhance Brand!

A few years ago, China occupied a long time in sports. market After the first position of share, Lining The company is Nike. Adidas Transcend, brand Aging is a serious problem. How does Lining respond to challenges and revitalized the brand?

Nike's choice of basketball spokesperson in China is James of the Cleveland Cavaliers; Adidas's Reebok Co chooses the well-known Yao Ming; compared with them, the Damon Knights of the Cleveland Cavaliers, chosen by Li Ning Co, can only be regarded as nameless at NBA in NBA. But after all, this is a good start. The Li Ning Co has started a brand strategic alliance with many sports events and organizations worldwide, including NBA, ATP (International Association of male professional tennis players), CUBA (Chinese University Basketball League), Swarovski (SWAROVSKI, the world's top cut crystal manufacturer, used in Lining brand tennis, fitness apparel and fitness shoes) to solve the problem of brand aging and unclear product boundaries.

Behind the achievements

Li Ning Co listed in Hongkong, as of December 2005, the total revenue in the fiscal year reached 2 billion 450 million yuan, and its profit reached a record 186 million 800 thousand yuan, an increase of 52.6% over last year. However, behind this "gratifying" performance is the grim situation faced by Lining: Nike and Adidas are pressing step by step, and China's local sports brands such as Anta and Conway are making great progress.

From 1997 to 2002, Li Ning Co maintained the first place in China's domestic market share. In 1999, when Lining reached 700 million yuan in sales in China, Nike had only 300 million yuan in China and Adidas only 100 million yuan. But the growth rate of the latter two in China is far more than that of Lining. As early as 2000, Nike made strategic adjustments and placed its first competitor Adidas in the Chinese market in the second place, and regarded Lining as its first rival in China.

In 2001, Lining's sales in China were 820 million yuan, accounting for about 12% of China's market share, and sales and China's market share were the first. In the same year, Nike and Adidas occupied 7% and 6% of the Chinese market respectively, and the situation was very unfavorable for Lining.

In the following years, the adverse situation finally turned into reality. According to the information of Zou Marketing, China sports marketing company, Nike currently occupies the first place in the Chinese market, with annual sales volume of up to 410 million US dollars, Adidas ranks second, annual sales volume is 385 million US dollars, and Li Ning Co ranks third with annual sales volume of 300 million US dollars. Nike is also the largest company in China. Lining once said, "there is a big gap between Lining and Nike and Adidas, and I admit the gap. But this does not mean that there is no chance. I used to practice gymnastics, but also from a little will not be the world champion. I remember that in 1978, I resumed my lawful seat in the Olympic Committee, and I did not enter the national basketball team in 1979. Our team went to Japan to train in order to participate in the competition. In 1979, pushing forward 20 or 30 years, we sent troops to the Soviet Union to ask the coach to tell us what gymnastics, horizontal bar and training are. That's what older generations did. I became the world champion in 1982 and won 6 gold medals. I believe everything is possible. "

　 The dilemma of brand aging

In April 2001, Li Ning Co invited Gallup to make a comprehensive consumer survey for Lining brand. The survey shows the problems of Lining brand: first, the target consumers are not clear. The target consumers of Li Ning Co management are: between 14 and 28 years old, mainly students, large and medium-sized cities, enjoying sports, and advocating fashion trend and internationalization trend. But the core consumers who actually buy Lining sports goods are between 18 and 45 years old, living in two tier cities, middle income, and not "heavy consumers of sporting goods". Two, the brand is facing the danger of being forgotten. The loyalty of the brand is very high, but the loyal consumers are the people who worship Lining. The younger generation doesn't know who Lining is, and the Lining brand is separated from the new generation chasing fashion. Three, brand personality is not distinct. In the eyes of real consumers, Lining's personality is linked to Lining's image. It is "affinity, national, sports, and honor". It is not the "young, fashionable" brand personality that Li Ning Co strives to build. Four, Lining's product line is constantly expanding and it is difficult to figure out what its flagship product is. More products will make it impossible for consumers to figure out what the concept of "Lining" is. In short, the Lining brand has fallen into a dilemma of market segmentation and product boundaries. The brand aging and transformation are imperative.

Lining's brand aging problem appeared after 1997. In fact, Lining himself is aware of the aging of brands. "No matter what products you make before 1997, there will be a good sale. So we found that the product renewal could not keep up. No one studies the behavior of consumers in the market. No one makes a long-term plan from the perspective of brand strategy. Although China is the world's largest sporting goods production and processing base, 65% of the sporting goods in the international market are made in China, but from the industrial value chain, we have the lowest value. I don't think China's cheap labor is the biggest competitive value. Li Ning Co runs its own brand. " This has improved with Lining's view a few years ago, when Lining still believed that low price was the necessary weapon to contain competitors.

　 Design and enhance brand

In addition to a wide range of brands and strategic alliances with many sporting events and organizations around the world, sponsoring sports events, increasing the scale of advertising and upgrading the design standard of Lining products have become the two magic weapons for Lining to enhance the brand, especially the latter. In 1987, Nike marketing director Scott Bedberg raised $34 million in advertising budget, and Nike founder Phil Nate (Phil Knight) forced the budget to rise to $48 million. His reason is, "how can I know that your budget is enough?" and in 2005, Nike's advertising budget in China alone reached $36 million. According to Nielsen Media Research, Nelson estimated that advertising spending increased by more than 20 times over the past 2001~2005 years in the Li Ning Co. Even so, it has only 1/3 of Nike's advertising budget in the Chinese market in 2005. Of course, compared with Lining's annual profit, this figure has been very impressive. It is not advisable to spend money on advertising with an internationally powerful Brand Company with abundant capital.

Design has always been the biggest weakness of sports goods in China. On the one hand, many local sporting goods enterprises enter the industry by OEM. The development of enterprises form inertia and is good at imitating. On the other hand, local enterprises have less accumulation of high-tech designs such as sports shoes. But on the contrary, it is precisely that if we are willing to invest, we can gain profits quickly. Compared with other local sporting goods companies, Li Ning Co has always attached great importance to design and originality. Since its establishment in 1990, Li Ning Co has begun to design products independently. As we all know, the first original work is different from the Chinese sportsmen of the 1990 Asian Games. The real first piece of Li Ning Co's original work is the gloves worn by Lining when he took the torch from the Tibetan girl in the torch relay of the 1990 Asian Games. In 1998, Li Ning Co set up the largest design and development center in Foshan, Guangdong, to design and develop its own products. In 2001, Li Ning Co signed a contract with the designers of France and Italy, and applied the concept of international front-end design to product design, which promoted the specialization and internationalization of design. In 2003, Li Ning Co officially entered the field of football and basketball, concentrating on the development of professional products. On the basis of the professional subdivision of Lining products, the design formed a comprehensive breakthrough, emphasizing the original concept into the products. Cao Yong, manager of Sportswear Design Department of Li Ning Co, said in an interview with reporters: "in the 2006 autumn and winter basketball costumes, designers analyze the nature of basketball in advance, and finally come to the concept of" violence engine ". Finally, combine this concept with specific products.

In terms of functional design of sporting goods, Li Ning Co joined the US DuPont Co in 2002, using the Coolmax functional fabric developed by DuPont Co. This fabric is made of DuPont patented four sweat pipe fiber. It can quickly evaporate the sweat generated from human activities to the surface of the clothes, and its high permeability and quick drying function can make the human skin keep cool and comfortable under the condition of high speed or high temperature. In 2004, Li Ning Co and the human sports science department of Chinese University Hong Kong jointly conducted a biomechanical test on the mechanical properties of the sports shoes produced, established a foot database of professional athletes, and collected and analyzed the characteristics of professional sports so as to further enhance the professionalism and comfort of the products. In October 2004, he worked with DRD design office in the us to carry out the design of Lining sports shoes. It is also in this year that Li Ning Co began to use western design to express and advocate Oriental elements, and take the initiative to distinguish the international brands. In the process of product development, some oriental features, such as the patterns of ancient Chinese bronzes, are used as the main elements to integrate into product design. China has become one of the fastest growing sports products markets in the world. After years of efforts, the problem of Lining's brand aging has been greatly improved, but the development of Lining brand is still long. Whether the Lining brand can become a world-class sports brand? Maybe Damon Jones can answer you in Chinese. This is the only Chinese sentence he will say. It is also the slogan of Li Ning Co: anything is possible.