Anta: Grassroots Hero Who Constantly Surpasses His Opponent

Labor has always been the main driver of global migration of manufacturing industry.

In 1970, the US GDP per capita was US $4814, while Japan was US $1967. Therefore, cooperation with Japanese shoe factories is an inevitable choice for Nike. In the same way, in 1990, the per capita GDP of Korea was US $6482, while China was 1634 yuan, so the shoemaking would inevitably withdraw from Korea.

The advantage of labor resources has made China a hotbed for the development of manufacturing industry in the past 20 years.

In this environment, a large number of wealth heroes have emerged in China's manufacturing industry.

Ding Zhizhong is one of them.

An executive who worked for many years around Ding Zhizhong once said that Ding Zhizhong's greatest strength is his ability to learn and respond quickly.

After Anta went public, Ding Zhizhong's wealth and honor soared.

But the market is not without doubt. Many people want to know whether Ding Zhizhong is a tactician or a strategist.

We are all grassroots heroes. Recently, Anta organized an event: "Anta's ten grass roots hero selection", selected by thousands of ordinary staff members of the company to vote, and the deeds of employees who moved the masses and judges, will win the "ten grassroots heroes" seats.

Compared with the "official" evaluation of management departments, "grassroots hero selection" is a folk activity.

At the time of the award, these grassroots heroes from the production line stood with Ding Zhizhong, the chairman of the board of directors of Anta, who was ranked nine higher than himself.

In addition to the workers on the production line, Anta has a broader meaning.

Since 2006, Anta has launched the Anta CBA grassroots plan. It consists of three parts: the dream CBA Anta KO street ball game, the Anta selection CBA training camp and the dream CBA Anta KO street ball final and the Carnival Carnival. It is aimed at those ordinary young people with sports dreams to help them realize their dreams from "grass roots" to the stars.

"Grass roots" has become a core of Anta culture.

Perhaps, for the grass roots culture, Anta's new advertisement is the most explanatory power.

"You don't have his talent, you don't have his conditions, you don't applaud?

Is the world unfair?

Let your heartbeat be your manifesto, let scars be your medals, let the unfair world bow before you!

As a sporting goods manufacturer, Anta has been working on the grass roots market for 15 years.

Young people between 14 and 26 are the main consumers of Anta.

This group amounts to hundreds of millions of people in China, and most of them belong to "people who can not afford Nike" (Anta shoes price is about Nike's 1/3 strong).

"Grass roots" is Ding Zhizhong's cultural spirit of Anta.

Consumers and employees are grassroots groups. Anta is a grass-roots enterprise, while he himself is a grassroots entrepreneur.

Facts have proved that in the business world, Ding Zhizhong has become a truly "grassroots" hero.

Last July 25th, Anta sports (HK2020) closed at HK $8.4, only 15 days after listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange. It was 59% higher than the Hong Kong market price of HK $5.28, and its market value reached HK $20 billion 916 million. For the first time, it surpassed Lining (closing price HK $19.94, market value of HK $20 billion 604 million), becoming the largest sporting goods company in China.

Ding Zhizhong's personal wealth also soared to HK $13 billion 700 million.

Then, by the beginning of this year, Anta's Ding Zhizhong appeared on the list of candidates in the 2007CCTV China economic year.

The sales channel of grass roots was opened in Chen Dai Town, Jinjiang. Before 1999, Anta had nothing special in appearance. It is an ordinary family business as well as other local shoe factories.

The footwear industry in Jinjiang began in the 80s of last century.

In the early 1980s, a Jinjiang man introduced the production of tourist shoes to Jinjiang from the famous Nike shoe factory in Quanzhou, which was invested by American Nike in 1983, then moved to Fujian and Putian. Later, some people continued to do it.

Before that, Chen Dai town in Jinjiang was one of the famous poverty-stricken townships in Fujian province. As a livelihood, shoemaking was rapidly promoted.

At that time, the conditions of Jinjiang shoe factories were rather primitive. There were only some simple shoemaking equipment, and the factories were mostly felt houses with stones and felt.

At that time, a shoemaking technician from Taiwan looked at the machine of the Jinjiang family workshop and couldn't help laughing. "They still stick their soles in the oven and kerosene oven. They feel like fried eggs."

At that time, the mechanization degree of Taiwan funded shoe factories was very high.

The start of Anta should be traced back to this period.

In 1987, Ding Zhizhong, 17, went to Beijing with 600 pairs of shoes to sell sports shoes with his fellow countrymen.

In his hometown, his father, Ding Hemu, chairman of today's Anta, had already established a shoe factory with people.

Chen Dai shoe factory is developing very fast.

By the year 1999, more than 3000 shoe factories in Chen Dai town had become the important production base of China's tourism shoes industry.

In the mid 1990s, Anta's annual sales volume was only about 10 million yuan.

At that time, many enterprises in Jinjiang were larger than Ann Tai, and their fame in the area was larger than that of ANN.

The difference is that in addition to the normal overseas orders, Anta has focused its attention on the domestic market and is committed to developing the distribution channels in the domestic market.

Of course, this is not seen as an advantage, because many companies have large OEM orders in the hands of a stable profit.

What's more, there are only two stars and Lining in the market. Only double star and Lining are leading the domestic market, such as the shoe factory of Chen Tai town to expand the domestic market. It is a waste of money and little efficiency. The domestic market is not so attractive to them.

But Ding Zhizhong has different opinions.

After rolling in Beijing for 5 years, Ding Zhizhong, like many other townsmen who go there to do marketing, has an important mission: to open up sales channels for shoes produced in Jinjiang.

Over the past 5 years, Ding Zhizhong has done a good job in addition to accumulating a lot of marketing experience.

In Beijing, Ding Zhizhong allowed his shoes to go into all the big shopping malls. The advantages on the Internet paved the way for the subsequent development of Anta. Today, shopping mall is still a difficult problem for Anta's brothers in the same city.

At the same time, in the forefront of the market sales, in the consumer psychology, consumption habits have a lot of delicate feelings, Ding Zhizhong also understand a truth: what kind of products consumers like, enterprises should produce what kind of products.

Everyday consumer goods like shoes are needed by everyone, so the market is huge.

In China, the sporting goods industry has just started and the market space is limitless.

When he returned to Chen Dai to take care of his family business from Beijing, Ding Zhizhong made up his mind to make the shoe factory bigger.

For Anta, besides the local counterparts, another force in the footwear industry has existed for a long time - that is, Taiwan funded enterprises in Dongguan, Guangdong.

In the middle of 1980s, due to cost pressures, the bosses of Taiwan shoe factories left Taiwan, because at that time they had to turn to Hongkong on the mainland, so Guangdong became their first foothold on the mainland.

In the industry of sports shoes, the three largest shoe making enterprises -- Baocheng, Qing Lu and Fengtai -- all come from Taiwan, especially Baocheng, the company founded by Lukang teacher Cai Qirui in Lukang, Taiwan. In 1990s, they grew into the world's largest sports shoe maker. They have more than 100 production lines in mainland China, India and Philippines and 100 million pairs of sports shoes annually.

In terms of scale, Taiwan funded enterprises are not the same as Jinjiang enterprises.

But the Taiwan department did not become an opponent of Jinjiang enterprises, and neither Baocheng nor Anta were rivals.

After 2002, Anta shoes even began to order in Baocheng.

OEM is the main mode of Taiwan system, and they have made a choice in the development stage of the island.

Because of the narrow market in the island, the Taiwanese made shoes, which began with OEM.

However, unlike the quality of Jinjiang OEM enterprises, Baocheng and other Taiwanese funded enterprises are all world-class brands, and their customers are mainly Nike, Adidas, Reebok, PUMA and other brands.

Many shoe factories in Jinjiang can only work for international second-line brands.

The domestic market has become the hot pursuit of Jinjiang shoe enterprises. It should be traced back to 1999. This year, Anta became the most famous company in Jinjiang shoe producing area.

Another source of Anta, a sports culture hypermarket, came from Ding Zhizhong's father-in-law Ding Siren.

In 1994 and 2000, Ding Si Rong set up Anta Fujian and Anta China company in Hongkong's Anta enterprise company, mainly engaged in footwear manufacturing and sales in China.

In 2000 and 2002, Ding Siren added 14 million 700 thousand yuan to Anta Fujian.

In April 2002, Ding Zhizhong, a founder of Jinjiang, invested 30 million yuan in the world, holding 60% stake in Anta Fujian, and Ding Siren held another 40% stake in Anta company.

In May 1, 2002, he signed an agreement to pfer Anta's Fujian and Anta China rights to Ding Zhizhong without compensation.

On the same day, all shareholders of Jinjiang Shi Fa signed an agreement and pferred their rights and interests to Ding Zhizhong without compensation.

Thus, Ding Zhizhong became the sole holder of Anta Fujian and Anta China.

Although family support gave Ding Zhizhong a good foundation, his success did not come from gifts.

In 1999, when he was 30 years old, Ding Zhizhong became the general manager of Anta group. He summoned a high-level meeting of the company to make an important decision: he signed an agreement with the national table tennis team and hired the then world champion Kong Linghui, who was the most popular table tennis player, as the spokesman of Anta.

Star advertising has long been in the country. A little bit different is that Anta has hired a sports star according to the industry positioning of sports shoes.

At that time, the main role of domestic sports stars in advertising was the first time.

The first theme, "I choose, I like" advertisement, was broadcast on CCTV, causing great repercussions among domestic consumers, which made Anta quickly gain a high degree of recognition.

For Anta, many shoe factories in Jinjiang mostly attributed its success to the first step in advertising.

In the small city of Jinjiang, thousands of large and small shoe factories have embarked on the entrepreneurial road at the same time.

None of the entrepreneurs of the private sector will take the blame. The mood of the local counterparts is spreading like a drug addiction. If you look for Kong Linghui, then I'll find Wang Nan and Ma Lin.

When the table tennis players finished, I looked for the badminton players, and they came to the movie stars without them.

This rush of colleagues seems to be too late to come up with more ideas. Their practice is to follow the famous line of Anta once again, spend a lot of money on the image spokesperson, spend a lot of money on marketing, many of them are rushing to the road to catch up with Anta.

For a time, the five sets of sports shoes of CCTV were all over the world. As these sports shoes basically came from Jinjiang, they were called "Fujian channel" and "Jinjiang channel" for a period of time.

But Anta's success is because advertising is unfair.

Because the real key to Anta's success lies in its channels.

It depends on the market network established by Ding Zhizhong and his brothers since 1980s. By 2002, Anta has basically formed a monopoly network covering the whole country (county) and above the city level, and has the largest coverage of the largest local market in its local counterparts.

This foundation released a lot of energy when Anta advertised, otherwise, Anta in 1999 could hardly achieve 35% growth after advertising.

By 2003, Anta's sales network had been pferred to battalion in large scale.

By the end of 2005, Anta had controlled 40% of the terminals.

These 40% self operated stores occupy 60% of the company's sales.

At the same time, Anta invested a lot of money to build about 200 flagship stores.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that Anta's expansion and elimination are simultaneous.

This shows that Anta's network expansion has entered a mature stage. It is no longer simply to expand sales performance, but to integrate brand building, market impact, sales performance and long-term development together.

And after 2006, Anta's monopoly system was getting better.

Anta has built the flagship store of Anta brand throughout the country, and promoted the construction of sports goods retail City, and entered the era of sports culture.

At the same time, Anta also intends to enter sporting goods zero.