Yao Ming Injured The Shoe Maker And Secretly Complained About The Fate Of The New Olympic Boots.

31 months ago, Adidas bought Reebok at a price of 3 billion 800 million US dollars. In fact, they were expanding their products in the US market, plus Reebok's 20% market share.

This is the Olympic battle boots designed for Yao Ming before RBK. Now, except for the NFL Jersey, Reebok's trademark hardly exists.

In the NBA arena, by the end of 2007, only 3.6% of the players were wearing Reebok shoes, while Adidas sponsored 5.1% players and Nike accounted for 86%.

According to SportOneSouce's market research, this figure is about half less than Reebok acquired by ADI.

Now Yao Ming's whole NBA season has been reimbursed, and worse still, his foot injury may have made him miss the most important competition in his career, the Beijing Olympic Games. No sports brand is more concerned about Yao Ming's prospects than Reebok, because of his huge potential in the Chinese market.

It can be said that Reebok's dependence on Yao Ming is bigger than any other sports brand's dependence on any star.

This is not just a matter of shoes. It is related to the big problem of Reebok brand promotion. Reebok has just released Yao Ming's new war boots The Dragon ATR Elite II, and they have already prepared special Olympic equipment for Yao Ming --Hexride. This limited edition sneakers will issue only 208 pairs in the United States and 2008 pairs in China.

From this, we can see that Reebok Co needs more than just sales. What they need is brand effect.

When Nike decided to give up their sponsorship contract in Yao Ming's rookie season, many sports brands were unbelievable, but now it looks like Nike is lucky.

The problems of Adidas and Reebok are coming now. As NBA and China are getting closer, Yao Ming's brand influence in the Chinese market has been far behind.

This can be clearly seen from the sales of NBA jerseys in China. In the 2005-06 season, Yao Ming's jersey sales ranked third after T-Mac and Iverson, and dropped to sixth last year. James, Kobe and Wade all surpassed him except McGrady and Iverson. Don't tell me this is because everyone in China has got the shirt of Yao Ming.

So, Reebok needs to work harder. We are waiting to see what kind of technology weapons it can produce to arm Yao Ming's feet. Now we are not sure yet. But once Yao Ming really missed the Beijing Olympic Games, Reebok Co would be in big trouble.