Li Ning Causes Internal Strife: Designers Taunt The Vice President In Front Of Him For Not Understanding Business

On July 5, Li Ning announced that Zhang Zhiyong, the former chief executive, had resigned, and Li Ning, the founder of the company, went to the front desk. Jin Zhenjun, a TPG partner who had previously invested in Li Ning, was the executive vice chairman responsible for the internal affairs and operations of the group. On the same day, Li Ning's intraday share price rose 5.33%.

This is indeed a symbol of a turning point for this company, which began to show signs of decline in 2010. In the article "Li Ning's Dream" of Globegroup in July last year, we have analyzed all the problems of Li Ning Company in detail. The conclusion is only one: CEO Zhang Zhiyong should take the blame and resign. The reason is that he still thinks he can still control the situation that is on the verge of collapse.

After the article "Li Ning's Dream" was published, Li Ning himself had an in-depth interview with Global Entrepreneur, which was the first time that the founder, who had long been regarded as fading out of daily operations, fully told the media about his understanding of business and his views on the company's current situation. Li Ning has received too much criticism since he launched the brand rebuilding campaign marked by changing the logo in mid-2010. Li Ning himself revealed that at the end of 2010, he considered whether to start the adjustment, but finally - "I gave the team three years to make this change." He told Global Entrepreneurs. However, he admitted that it was terrible for the management team to deny the seriousness of the problem, "this is really what the management wants to change, and can't (always) justify itself".

What prompted Li Ning to decide to end Zhang Zhiyong's three-year trial period one year ahead of schedule was that this once the largest domestic sporting goods manufacturer in China was close to the bottom - yes, now Li Ning's market position has fallen behind Anta. Although Li Ning's sales revenue last year was 8.929 billion yuan, a little more than Anta's, 25 million yuan, Is surpassed by the latter. Its net profit plunged from 1108 million yuan in 2010 to 386 million yuan, down 65% year on year. This figure is less than half of PEAK's net profit, and far from Anta's 1.7 billion yuan.

Compared with this, other bad news is probably nothing. Li Ning's internationalization has become a phantom - his design center in Portland, the United States has lost half of its employees. "If the other half is still there, I don't know what they are still doing." A former executive of Li Ning told Global Entrepreneurs. At the same time, the agreement with the American partner Foot Locker Inc. has been terminated, and the sales company established with the Spanish agent has also gone bankrupt. The company issued an early warning that the total order amount of Q4 orders this year showed a high double-digit decline, and the annual revenue and profit may show negative growth.

The wrong positioning of "post-90s Li Ning", the failure of brand remodeling, the decline of sales, high inventory and the resignation of senior executives are all appearances and results. The fundamental reason is that this company has deviated from its main channel. The deposing of Zhang Zhiyong, the former president, is the first step of Li Ning's self governance. Re focusing on Li Ning's brand, sportsmanship and domestic market is the key to getting things right. This strategy is obviously the result of Li Ning's own careful consideration. In the in-depth interview last year, he revealed: "Many brand The strategy needs to change. We will focus our resources more on one brand of Li Ning "," Zhiyong is the CEO of the whole company, he is not the CEO of Li Ning brand. On the whole, Li Ning brand needs a general manager "," The real way to do business (sporting goods) is to rely on professionalism to do excellence, and then cover the mass market. Profession and fashion are not the opposite poles ".

It is not difficult to find a recipe for rejuvenation. Li Ning had a chance to avoid all this - it was even in a top secret secret room not far from Li Ning's office. These are two top secret reports of ZIBA and PPT (Pilot Project Team) project achievements. In 2006 and 2008, some elite soldiers in Li Ning tried to launch two disruptive revolutions related to products, operations, supply chain and other links. After the initial success, these two reports were strangely hidden. On the title page of a report, it said: "The new generation of China is looking for their realistic idols, and Li Ning's team will take the lead in setting an example to inspire them."

The question now is, can Li Ning still be saved?

Eye of Storm

One evening at the beginning of 2008, in a private room of Beijing 798 Tianxia Salt Restaurant, there was a gathering of Li Ning's designers with the largest lineup and the highest specifications at that time. All of them were chief designers in various design fields of Li Ning, and could be called the company's priceless treasure. Zhang Zhiyong recounted Li Ning's strategy at the dinner. The conversation was "exciting". Some people even wet their eyes when they were drinking.

This is a meeting of practice. These people are going to Portland, the United States, to participate in Li Ning's most expensive reform project. The lecturer comes from ZIBA, the world's largest and most award-winning top design company. The internal code of this project is "ZIBA" project, which aims to bring about a radical change for Li Ning.

Zhang Zhiyong believed this and wrote a check of up to 30 million dollars. Such a great product renaissance movement is like the Jianlibao Brazil secret training program in the Chinese football industry. According to the plan, if all goes well, the company will achieve 20 billion yuan of revenue in 2013, almost five times that of 2007. As early as a year ago, Li Ning spent a lot of money to provide English training for project team members for up to a year. A participant recalled to Global Entrepreneur that he was too busy to complete the scheduled English course, and he had to pay 20000 yuan for English lessons afterwards. In his opinion, compared with this once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity, the personal expenditure of 20000 yuan is just a drop in the bucket.

The training lasts for a whole month. The first task of the training is to rationalize the existing process of Li Ning according to the product development concept of ZIBA. The morning is the teaching time, and the afternoon is the physical design class. Designers are also required to conduct consumer research in foreign countries to find a certain type of specific consumers and provide targeted creative design.

This is a pleasant time. "Everyone was very expansive at that time. We all thought Nike was nothing but Li Ning," said one participant. During the study period, some people received overseas calls from headhunters, and all of them chose to refuse.

This fairy tale learning career ended with an American steak. The "host" was Wu Xianyong, who was then in charge of the ZIBA project. After returning to China, everyone was promoted, and some even began to hold multiple positions across departments - this was a glorious moment of complacency.

These ambitious young people are sure that a product innovation storm will be set off in the company, and they are the "eye of the storm". ZIBA project has put forward the new slogan of "Define your game". In the brainstorming, some designers suggested that the company produce portable equipment connected to the Internet - these ideas coincide with Nike's epic product Nike+series concept.

According to the reform experience of ZIBA, Li Ning grouped the footwear and clothing designers and set the project leader. ZIBA suggested that Li Ning abandon the past practice of relying on the current popular trend and terminal sales data to design products, and go the opposite way, re in-depth study of consumers, understand their needs, and predict the trend accordingly.

Astray

In a top secret report, ZIBA positioned Li Ning as "the first generation of creators of China's reform and opening up" (unfortunately, this position was later interpreted as the much criticized "post-90s Li Ning"), and subdivided consumers into professional athletes, sports participants, sports lovers, and product lines into professional sports, urban light sports, and sports life in turn.

"I felt that after ZIBA, Li Ning could immediately keep pace with top brands," ZIBA project participants told Global Entrepreneurs. The fact indirectly proves this point. Li Ning Company once conducted targeted research on basketball game clothes among target consumers. The unmarked Li Ning game clothes were put together with Nike and Adidas in a blind test, and the results were exciting - Li Ning won many times.

At that time, Li Ning was thriving. Optimists believe that ZIBA has provided Li Ning with a set of methodology for rapidly climbing to the top brand in the world. First, it is for the research of brand positioning, then it is for the realization of products and the implementation of market promotion, and finally, the sales system is for the channel strategy and sales innovation of brand positioning. The rest is how to land it.

At that time, Zhang Zheng was eager to create a younger super brand, and the age of the actual consumer group was regarded as the biggest stumbling block of brand premium. If you want to achieve a higher premium, you must lower the age of mainstream consumers and please them. In the senior management of Li Ning, some people believe that brand rebuilding is more critical than product reform.

The marketing system believes that the logo must be replaced if the brand is to be upgraded. Fang Shiwei, who was then the CMO of Li Ning, once cited the great enterprises that successfully changed their standards in aviation, chemical industry, logistics and other fields as evidence. The target group of ZIBA project has been refined from "the first generation creators of China's reform and opening up" to "the post-90s Li Ning". The seeds of error are sown here. Insiders insisted that it was the positioning of the target group in ZIBA's report that directly led to Zhang Zhiyong's decision to rebuild his brand in the future. Unfortunately, Zhang himself did not correctly understand the meaning of ZIBA. He rarely focuses directly on the process improvement of innovative products. "The implementation of ZIBA was obviously biased. Zhang should focus most on product transformation, followed by brand," said the insider.

Errors are not limited to this. Zhang was soon transferred from ZIBA's project leader Wu Xianyong to Xu Maochun, the newly appointed vice president and CPO, who is very good at sports life products. This field of expertise even covers the other two sub product lines set by ZIBA for Li Ning - professional sports and urban light sports. It turned out to be a huge disaster.

Xu, who was named Morrison in English, was very powerful, and almost had a full say in the product system at that time. Xu really contributed a lot to the introduction of the new product design process. Under his advocacy, all product designers must do VLP (virtual load map) virtual design, and designers must provide research data, story packs, creativity and sketches. At the early stage of the project, Li Ning began to organize product managers and designers to hold "Kick Off" meetings regularly so that all parties could brainstorm. These development processes popular in Nike are also copied to Li Ning. In the past, Li Ning's product manager only gave the designer a product structure table, and nothing else.

In terms of staffing, Xu Maochun strives to be professional. He even used his contacts to help Li Ning recruit three product directors and a creative director, all of whom are Hong Kong or Westerners and have worked in Nike, Reebok and other related background companies - but they are keen on sports life products and are not good at professional sports.

The negative effect is that Li Ning did not have the post of product director before, and designers only need to communicate with product managers. Usually, when the two are different, designers are often the final decision makers. But Xu's appearance ended this point - designers are only one part of the assembly line, not all.

Among these airborne soldiers, Li Ning's director of sports life Meta is the most respected by Xu Maochun. The two had worked together at Nike for six years. Meta is smart, beautiful, fashionable and typical of American thinking. Her "ghost sister" character is very close to Xu Maochun's aesthetic outlook and personality. With Xu's support, the sports life under Meta gradually became the mainstream of Li Ning's products, and its order volume once stood at 60%.

Xu doesn't like designers' unconstrained creativity. He stipulated that all product creative concepts must be decided by KD Waltner, the creative director of Li Ning's clothing and a German. In the opinion of Li Ning, KD's creativity is mediocre, and the concept proposed is usually "painless". The participants of ZIBA prefer radical creative styles, such as the professional basketball series, which advocates Chinese style and is named after "18 kinds of martial arts". Its product family only has more than 10 styles, but it once accounted for 30% of the basketball order volume. Even so, it has not been favored by Xu.

"The reason is that Morrison is very westernized. He once said that he can't understand oriental elements," said a designer. Dramatically, Xu has a very Chinese nickname in private. People call him "Chairman Mao" because he is too autocratic. Xu readily accepted this. Compared with the puzzling oriental elements, Xu prefers the American campus style of Abercrombie&Fitch, which is a kind of design feeling of Polo shirt turned up and stand collar.

In the eyes of onlookers, Xu's advantages and disadvantages are quite obvious - his professionalism in sports life leads to his incomprehension of professional sports products. Some designers think Xu is too partial to Meta's sports life department, and deliberately snubs professional sports concepts and urban life products. Some innovative ideas were stifled. At the end of 2010, the chief designer of Li Ning's basketball team put forward the concept of "muscle" - by studying the muscle fiber of the human body and the muscle function of each moving part, and endowing it with the function and image of Li Ning's new products. This creative plan was rejected. Nike later launched a tight, muscle supporting Nike Pro bodysuit, which was highly praised. In addition, the rejected product ideas include "potential", "dark energy", etc.

Xu, who occupies a high position, is losing the trust of designers more and more. In the latter's view, his understanding of the DNA of Li Ning brand is superficial, and his personal likes and dislikes are too obvious. At a Kick Off meeting in 2010, Xu found that his favorite and most common blue product in the basketball series had disappeared and replaced it with dark brown, so he was very angry. He asked the basketball chief designer why. The latter explained that the coffee color products came from the interview with NBA star Baron Davis in Los Angeles. This is the special color Davis prefers, which may be very rich in market selling points. Xu didn't agree with this. He refuted that its color was too old, which was immediately attacked by many designers.

Conflict is still fermenting. Shortly thereafter, at a plenary meeting of the design system, a participant of the ZIBA project, Li Ning, the chief designer of basketball, mocked Xu on the spot in front of all the designers. He said provocatively, "Aren't your LV and Hermes rooms full of coffee? Why don't you say they are old?" The audience roared with laughter.

{page_break}

be out of control

Internal strife eventually became a big problem. A dangerous signal is that product orders have declined since 2010. As a series of creative products with oriental elements were rejected one after another, some dissatisfied designers began to leave. "My work has been suspended, and now it's like boiling a frog in warm water, so I can't bring it into full play and can't bring any benefits to the company anymore," wrote a designer in his resignation letter to Xu Maochun.

The complaint of designers lies in the process. They were deprived of the right to draw - the creativity of the creative director was drawn by a special pattern designer and then handed over to the designer, but the designer could not control the design direction through the detail drawing. "This frustration is that you become a drawing tool, and you can't play anything, and you feel that what you have learned before is useless." A designer told Global Entrepreneurs.

The new design process stipulates that accessory patterns are also in the charge of special personnel. Xu recruited several graphic designers from Hong Kong, but the gap between the two is obvious. "You give Hong Kong people a direction, but what you do is not what you want," said the insider. Hong Kong designers like to make very large and exaggerated letter patterns on their chest, but Li Ning's designers think it is very rustic. After repeated conflicts, the conflict can only be resolved by the level of position - usually the position and salary of the Hong Kong team are higher than those of Li Ning's mainland employees, and they are the winners. As a result, a strange phenomenon appeared. Even though Li Ning's mainland designers complained about the poor picture matching effect, they had no right to modify the "out of shape" products, and finally the "out of shape" products could only be put on the market. Most of the time, designers can only choose silence.

A mainland designer once sent comments on the details of each dress to the Hong Kong allocator for modification. The latter replied to a long English email and copied it to Xu Maochun. In the letter, the illustrator said that he had decades of experience and that the designer was not qualified to criticize his work. He insisted that he would not make any changes. Xu Maochun doesn't have any table about this? State.

In the view of Li Ning's designer team, This is due to Xu's excessive favoritism - "If something goes wrong, he will blame us for this. We said that the pattern designer did not follow the established direction, and they did not change their ideas, of course, they are out of shape. But Xu did not blame Hong Kong people, but blamed us for poor communication. It was the same three times and five times. Later, no one mentioned it." A designer who left the company on condition of anonymity told Global Entrepreneurs.

Such an absurd situation has lasted since 2010. Insiders said that Li Ning's designers could not control the design direction so that they completed eight quarters of goods. The red light of the market has been on for a long time - the Q2 order amount held at the beginning of 2011 was flat and fell by 6% on an annual basis based on the retail price and wholesale price, while the Q3 order amount had a negative growth of about 15%.

Another mistake

If we follow Li Ning's established error correction mechanism, errors may be avoided. As early as 2006, Li Ning set up a PPT project team internally to avoid inventory problems through a collaborative supply chain inventory management system called CPFR. This system was first created by Wal Mart. Through the cooperation between retail enterprises and production enterprises, the IT system is used to plan and manage production plans, inventory plans, distribution plans and sales plans in a unified way.

This is not a simple supply chain project, but a lean production model based on dealer collaboration, demand forecasting, hedging design, and material sharing. It is also a business model that Zhang Zhiyong is eager to rebuild. In the past, Li Ning's quarterly goods required about half a year's supply cycle. If the ZARA style fast turnover model can be achieved, the supply chain can be shortened to 14 days. After the simulation calculation of the operation results of the Li Ning PPT project from 2007 to 2008, the supply chain inventory can be reduced by 70% on the basis of shortening the supply chain inventory from 40 weeks to 12 weeks, and the selling out rate will be increased by 10%, the store out of stock rate will be reduced by 75%, the logistics cost will be reduced by 20%, the working capital occupation will be reduced by 30%, the overall sales will be increased by 9%, and the net profit will be increased by 33%. In the early stage of the project, in order to express his determination, Zhang Zhiyong once asked the project team to operate independently. He himself served as the chairman of the PPT project committee.

At the spring and summer order meeting in 2007, the optimized 31 single products had an order volume of 2.2 million pieces, with the tag amount up to 209 million yuan. It should be known that Li Ning's revenue was only 4.349 billion yuan that year. The PPT project team is famous for providing killer products with small quantity and high quality. Its 10% product model accounts for more than 25% of the order quantity, and its test supply cycle is also reduced to about 20 days - a remarkable number in the clothing industry. The initial person in charge of the PPT project was Guo Jianxin, who was then the chief operating officer. Since then, he has been promoted to COO.

The PPT project team is also known for its efficient operation, and its efficiency ranks first among all departments - its quick response, supply chain cost, inventory management, and single product efficiency rank first. "PPT is like a lighthouse, where it is built, which is an example of efficiency. Whether it is a product system, an operation system, or a sales system, it has to work hard," said the insider.

However, such achievements in Li Ning have aroused panic in product, supply chain, sales and other departments. For a long time, the supply chain cycle of Li Ning has been as high as 60-90 days. The supply chain department is unwilling to reduce the supply cycle or re select suppliers. The same is true of the sales team. In the past, the sales forecast had to be made once a quarter, and it was difficult to adjust it to the weekly forecast expected by the PPT project. The lack of cooperation from various departments eventually left the PPT project in a helpless situation. If the PPT mode is fully implemented, it means that product design, supply chain, retailer transformation and factory assembly line transformation need to be changed. As far as the foundry is concerned, it needs to give up the large orders of millions of pieces and produce tens of thousands of pieces of goods quickly and flexibly. To achieve accuracy, it is necessary to accurately calculate the supplier's capacity and material rate, and deliver the finished product list and material list on the IT system. In this way, suppliers cannot report more production capacity for outsourcing processing, nor can they report more material rates to earn money for materials.

As it involves the interests of all parties, PPT does not belong to any department, but has become the target of public criticism. Li Ning CPO Xu Maochun once accused the PPT project team of stealing the business of the big goods department, while the members of the PPT project team retorted on the inefficiency and incompetence of the big goods department. Finally, PPT's right to independently plan products was deprived.

Unfortunately, the PPT project has finally become the prop of the power game. After serving as COO, Guo Jianxin also intentionally downplayed the PPT project. "Guo also knows that the power of PPT is too strong, and whoever gets it can win the world. He has already taken the position of COO and doesn't want others to use PPT again. PPT has become a big problem for him." An insider told Global Entrepreneurs. In April 2007, Zhang Zhiyong arranged Zhang Hui, then the strategic director, to take over the PPT project to contain Guo.

A scene worth pondering happened. At the launch ceremony of the PPT celebration, Guo Jianxin said a long aftertaste. Guo said: "Everyone is the elite of the company, but after today's achievements, I don't know what direction the project team will go in the next step, and I don't know where the future path is?" The next speaker was Zhang Hui, Zhang refuted Guo and said, "I believe that the operation mode adopted by the PPT project must be the most advanced in the world, and it must also be the management mode that will contribute the most to Li Ning in the future." But a year later, Zhang Hui hoped to promote the PPT project to the whole company, but it was unsuccessful after all.

Zhang Hui was almost driven away. The factory used for rapid response in the PPT project simply cannot obtain support from large orders. The bulk goods system privately stipulates that as long as the factory makes PPT orders, it will not distribute bulk orders. PPT orders are all rolling production, and the single production volume is very small. If there is no large futures order as the basis, the OEM will inevitably be unable to make ends meet.

Even though there are many obstacles, Zhang still hopes to reorganize new models for PPT projects on the LNG product line. In 2009, the PPT project team set its price slightly lower than the current price of Li Ning by 10% to 20% during brand planning. LNG is similar to the Adidas Original product line, which is located in fashion to distinguish it from the parent brand Li Ning and focus on professional sports. The project team divided its inventory control into five levels, and the order quantity per quarter was up to 300000 pieces, but there was little inventory.

Subsequent events destroyed all this. At the beginning of 2011, the board of directors discussed that the positioning price of LNG was more than 50% and 30% higher than that of Li Ning and Letu respectively, without any market costs. "Is it possible for the company to let you build a top brand higher than Li Ning without paying a penny?" a core LNG member told Global Entrepreneurs.

LNG is also trapped in the channel. The company stipulates that LNG cannot develop new distributors independently, and there is no independent sales organization in the LNG structure. LNG stores can only be opened by top dealers of Li Ning in each region and managed by sales representatives of Li Ning region. Since then, the Board of Directors of Li Ning has wrongly positioned LNG as an online sales brand. Such a big decision was made almost overnight. LNG finally failed.

This devastating blow stems from the short-sighted financial orientation strategy. Writing any project report in Li Ning requires that the first year's income and expenditure be balanced, which has almost become Li Ning's unspoken rule. The same is true for PPT. The PPT project team initially set the goal of opening 100 stores for LNG every year, with slight losses - it is not easy for the industry to keep the same level for three years. However, under the pressure of high performance, the management was blindly raised to 300 stores. This comes from the calculation of the financial department. If LNG wants to achieve balance of revenue and expenditure, its annual flow must be 300 million yuan, and its gross profit needs to be 150 million yuan. To achieve this flow, 300 stores need to be opened.

Zhang Hui also wanted to apply PPT to the Red Double Happiness brand to develop shoes and clothing products, but was rejected.

flee helter-skelter

Zhang Hui finally chose to leave. Zhang planned the strategy of Li Ning Company and was highly valued by Zhang Zhiyong. Zhang Hui had written the report of Li Ning's board of directors before. However, since then, the gap between the two has gradually grown due to a disagreement called "09-13 Strategy". The core of the plan is that Li Ning will achieve a revenue of 20 billion yuan in 2013. Insiders said Zhang strongly opposed this strategy and refused to write.

Since then, the report of the Board of Directors was submitted to Chen Shaowen, a subordinate of Zhang Hui and the manager of the Strategy Department, who was informed that Chen quickly rose to the position of Vice President because he listened to Zhang Yan. Facts have proved that the "09-13 Strategy" is indeed too optimistic. Ironically, Zhang Zhiyong once said internally that only two people in Li Ning Company understand strategy, one of them is himself, and the other is Chen Shaowen.

The legacy of power infighting is far-reaching. Guo Jianxin, the COO, was another senior executive who was hit hard. Guo was once second only to Zhang Zhiyong, and was regarded internally as a strong competitor for the position of president. In order to decentralize power, Zhang began to introduce many senior management positions such as CMO and CPO. Guo, who suffered repeated power cuts, ended up with no real power despite his high position as COO. His controllable department was only the sales system, which triggered a strong rebound from Hu Nan, the general manager of the sales company.

Hu is one of the super elders of Li Ning. He has outstanding ability and pays attention to loyalty. He is a "underground leader" in dealers and sales systems. Hu, who is arrogant, finally hangs up his boots and leaves.

Guo is not a winner. The insider said that Guo was excluded from sales, products and brand system at that time, and he could not manage product direction and sales system, and had no right to manage market resources. However, as COO, he needed to bear the pressure of operation assessment. The mutual prevarication among various departments also gave him a headache. In addition, Guo has been criticized for frequent quality problems in the supply chain. Guo finally chose to resign. "Donkeys can be used to pull mills or burn donkey meat," Guo said angrily in private.

Guo's resignation is the most bleak one among many executives - there is no farewell party, and even "no one dares to have a private dinner and say goodbye".

Insiders said there were two important watersheds in Li Ning's decline. The departure of Hu Nan and Guo Jianxin was one of them, which led to the fluctuation of the sales system's popularity and the great change of the operation layer, and the market performance was also greatly affected. Another watershed was the resignation of Chen Weicheng, former CFO of Li Ning, in September 2008. Chen served as the CFO of Li Ning in 2003, and handled the listing of Li Ning, known as "Mr. Efficiency". During his tenure, the days of inventory turnover of Li Ning's supply chain efficiency continued to decline. In 2004, compared with 2003, it decreased by 23% to 124 days, and again in 2007, it decreased to less than 70 days. In the capital market, in just four years, Chen pulled Li Ning's share price from one Hong Kong dollar to a maximum of 33 Hong Kong dollars. After the news of Chen's resignation came out, Li Ning's share price fell sharply to 9.68% that day. Since then, there has been no bull market in Li Ning's share price.

future

Can Li Ning be better?

Li Ning himself has a clear judgment of the company. The three-year restructuring plan announced to the outside world reflects his profound reflection on the past lessons. Why should we focus our resources on Li Ning? "(Each sub brand) should be relatively independent, not independent. It's like eating a big pot of rice. It seems to be able to share resources, but in fact it is a drag on your real core content." At the beginning of this year, Li Ning has completely liquidated the sub brand Xindong (Z-DO) founded in 2007, Lotu has also suspended business, and the expansion plan of Double Happiness has also been cut.

In that conversation a year ago, he told Global Entrepreneurs. He also saw the problem that has plagued Li Ning for a long time about swaying at both ends of sports and fashion: "We are not swaying, but not professional. If professional comes up, no matter how professional you are, it seems that we are doing fashion." At a recent order meeting, Li Ning himself suddenly appeared, He also mentioned "specialization" to the designers and senior managers on the scene for many times. He criticized Zhang Zhiyong for not taking basketball as the main resource in his strategy, and thought it was an obvious defeat to sign Lin Zhiling as an endorsement.

He did not turn a blind eye to the internal battle of the company. "Everyone sees others naked, and few people say how I can make my department better and become a first-class department". As for the problem of airborne soldiers, he thought that the company did not have enough ability to stimulate these airborne soldiers to play a greater role, and other people could not understand and cooperate with the professionalism of these airborne soldiers.

Li Ning really needs to make changes happen as soon as possible. The insider said that TPG had organized a core team of more than ten people to settle in Li Ning at the beginning of April. These people, including sports goods, marketing, retail, procurement and supply chain management experts, dominated the core departments of Li Ning, and began to meet with the middle level of each department one by one to try to find out the crux. TPG's prescription is to reorganize the company's business chain with CPFR - that is, return to the PPT project mode. TPG has tried to find managers who are familiar with this project within the company, but the embarrassment is that the core members of this project have left.

However, for Li Ning and TPG, it may be just a transition period in management. He still needs to find a professional manager who is familiar with the brand spirit of sporting goods and has strong execution power to take over as president. However, the challenge is that the market and competitors have not left enough time window for Li Ning to easily regain the throne of the largest domestic sporting goods brand.