Lining: Playing The "Chinese Design Elements" Brand

As usual, Zuo Zhiyue walked slowly to the desk with his green cotton satchel on his back.

Looking around, he quietly took out a pair of green green shoes that he had known before, and lifted them up.

This action immediately attracted the colleagues around, and the eyes fell on the sneakers. The green cotton coat wrapped the main body of the shoes, the red and five pointed star Lei Feng hat was incarnated for the shoe tongue, the red Li-Ning LOGO interacted with the red Lei Feng head, and the word "serving the people" was hidden in the shoe heel under the cap of the Lei Feng.

The color and texture of these shoes look a little similar to that of ordinary military rubber shoes, but they look very cool.

As a shoe designer of Li Ning Co, Zuo Chi Yue would like to see such a product appreciated.

And the product that he spent a year in has been recognized by the market. Now, there are buyers buying five thousand yuan in online stores.

The reason is simple: it only produced 35 pairs at the end of the games, and it was sold in limited edition before the Olympic Games.

The design of such a sport shoe is indeed unthankless from cost and earnings, but for Li Ning Co, its purpose is very clear.

"I am proud of China's thorough design."

Left told Global Entrepreneur.

There is no doubt that when the left is catching up with a good time, the blowout effect in this market is often unexpected.

According to the Market Research Institute, the sales volume of Chinese sports shoes and sportswear doubled from 2002 to 2006, and the annual sales growth of sports apparel in the next five years is expected to reach 20%, and the growth rate of first-line brands is expected to reach 35% to 40%.

Zuo Zhiyue himself felt the huge expansion of the market. Two years ago, he designed a single running shoe to create a miracle of 150 thousand pairs at the order meeting, but then 230 thousand pairs of records left him even more stunned.

Now, the convening of the Beijing Olympic Games has brought more opportunities for Lining and left wisdom.

Although Lining is not a sponsor of any level in the Beijing Olympic Games, it has developed a series of international sports resources, such as the Swedish Olympic delegation (award equipment, training equipment), the Spanish Olympic team and the track and field team, the Argentina basketball team (training uniform, the match suit and the award dress), the Sultan track and field team (training clothes, the match suit and the award dress).

In China, the most popular table tennis team, diving team, gymnastics team and shooting team were also included in the bag by Lining.

In order to increase the exposure rate, it even gave an ingenious sponsorship to the US table tennis team.

It looks like a series of good deals. In the past year, sales of Lining's brand products increased by 34% to 4 billion 240 million yuan.

Thanks to the promotion of professional image, regional product planning, product integrated marketing, and product design have made significant progress in the development of high-tech elements, driving sales of footwear products to rise substantially, and revenue increased by 45.7% over 2006.

Clothing products grew by 28.5%, while accessories increased by 10.9%.

As a first-rate sports company in China, after experiencing the loss of positioning and brand, with the opportunity of the Olympic Games, Lining now puts more experience in design, and creates Lining's own characteristics through this non replicable competitiveness. "We clearly realize that the independent Chinese element is Lining's future."

Lining's special basketball product designer Ma Xun said to "Global Entrepreneur".

To some extent, Lining's attention to the design of the Olympic Games originated from his preparations for the winning equipment of the previous Olympic Games.

"The Olympic Games look like a performance venue, and the performing stage feeling will be strengthened."

Lining, chief designer of clothing products Zhang Yan, said, "you need to make people see that they are Lining's past award equipment and give people the sense of fashion and modernity."

In the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Zhang spent 4 months completing the theme design, weakening the design of the award winning clothing with the specific Chinese dragon pattern as the theme, replacing the elements of dragon pattern, fan and bright colors with thin lines.

She hoped to achieve an "elegant implication".

The feeling of color is usually more magnificent.

Because not all people like a whole dragon. The image is too specific to weaken the sense of fashion. People need distinctive, abstract and restrained dragons.

Zhang believes that this design change reflects the self-confidence of Chinese people - you do not need to shout out that you are Chinese, and this sense of pride arises spontaneously.

This change in specific design ideas is not groundless.

Zhang does not rely on intuition to dominate the design. He decides the color and style of clothes by guessing, and hopes to fill the shelves of retailers with these.

Zhang went to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Mianyang and other cities. She visited distributors, talked to consumers face to face, asked about their impressions of Lining's products, and observed them shopping, to restaurants and streets where they lived and consumed.

At the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Lining's "Aurora" Chinese Olympic delegation awarded the award dress scheme to stand out in dozens of bidding schemes, and finally accompanied the Chinese team to the podium.

During the design, the design team did not draw and tone on the computer, and relied more on hand painting to complete the design pattern and use fabric to convey the sense of color.

The requirements for fabrics have naturally increased a lot. Not only do we need the right fabric to reproduce the historical feeling of brocade and silk, but also fashion sense, and it can not be too dark. Printing and dyeing and weaving patterns can not affect the decorative effect.

Fabric suppliers have been developing R & D two or three years ahead of schedule, but the response was initially despairing - there will be a conflict between Hi-tech fabrics and printing and dyeing. They can not make a wide variety of fabrics with uniform colors and good functional properties.

Subsequently, the process and project of finding fabric are very huge. It took a whole year to solve the problem.

In 2007, Lining ran the Olympic Games running dress of Sultan and Tanzania.

Before that, the design team had never been to Africa.

In order to develop this sense of design, the designers almost searched all the films, CD and pictures about Africa.

In terms of ergonomics, the version of African athletes is totally different from that of Lining. Their crotch is very long and body is very skinny, and African athletes have stronger demand for clothing personality.

Lining had to invite athletes to use the game gap to come back to China for re test wear to achieve satisfactory results.

This job is huge and arduous. In a year, Zhang Yan has undertaken about more than 100 theme designs and has been under tremendous pressure.

"In the most difficult times, I often wonder why I can't finish my work."

Zhang recalled that she was so stressed that she had to hide herself under the desk crying when she was cruelest. She even once left the Li Ning Co to adjust her mood at home.

Lining, the senior designer Wu Baolian of the second round of sports sponsorship in the Hongkong design center, is repeating similar work.

Wu graduated from the clothing Institute of Boston, England. He worked in CONVERSE before, and was the designer of the Olympic gymnastics team of the national gymnastics team and diving team in 2008.

Initially, Wu and Hongkong design team members set up a number of "theme packs" containing design elements, which reflected and represented the mainstream elements of future fashion, and collected as many photos and objects that could represent these elements as much as possible, and posted them on the whiteboard, brainstorming them, and screened them from them.

After referring to Lining's previous theme design, the design team found that the Dragon themed design was very popular, so he hoped to select a variety of Chinese animal elements from many Chinese elements, but soon they found themselves trapped in a strange circle, because there were too many oriental elements in the design, almost stacked up with the whole clothes, but there was no sense of hierarchy.

In the subsequent debate, the differences between eastern and Western design culture began to be magnified. Western designers preferred simple and neutral designs, while Chinese designers preferred to put all the beautiful elements in it.

"Westerners feel good about executing, do not like the concept of the whole world, then walk fearlessly step by step, while the easterners do more things to think about, and wish to think of everything in the design."

Wu said.

Finally, we decided to set up a new path to set our own design concept as "light, stage and future".

Competitive sports is also a kind of entertainment experience. Athletes are actors, while sports venues are show grounds.

But another puzzling problem follows: how to unify the opinions of different sports teams and improve the design according to the characteristics of motion.

It is too obvious that it is not fashionable enough, so the dragon needs to be specially woven, and the diving team requires fabrics to withstand great impact and to minimize splashing splashes, and to dry quickly and quickly. The decorative printing and dyeing layer will destroy the smoothness of the fabric layer and affect the results of the competition. The women's gymnastics team wishes to "look good" and hopes to decorate with crystals, so the design will add SWAROVSKI crystal and bright prints to do the ornamentation. These embellishment are placed in the special location of the mobilization so as not to be scratched by the ornaments during the vigorous exercise. For example, the table tennis team wants dragon and Phoenix, because it represents luck, but if simple printing and dyeing goes up,

This undoubtedly greatly increases the difficulty of fabric selection and sewing process.

In order to understand the difference between the athletes in the real competition, Wu Baolian went to the national diving team and gymnastic team several times to experience the athletes' life.

At first Wu Baolian wanted to use a light coloured system, but after watching the diving competition, she gave up her original choice and switched to Huang Hehong.

The light colored diving suit will be more white and light when it enters the water.

Wu is a perfectionist of details. In order to increase drainage speed, designers specially used drainage bridges in the crotch of athletes to increase drainage. This row of trenches with the appearance of zippers can quickly discharge water.

She even made special designs for sewing needles and colors.

In all design schemes, the abstract "L" type fluorescent band located on the front of the athlete clearly shows that these designs extend to the pedigree of Lining.

In order to achieve the best design effect, the design team has added special coloring technology to these patterns, and changed the former blanching process to embroider label process, so that the effect will appear brighter.

The zipper of the clothes is specially designed with metal ring design. The design of the zipper head is very easy to recall the Olympic medals of Jinxiangyu.

The final design of the competition equipment was ordered by Lining Olympic logistical support department to be produced flexisally. Compared with the 5 labels of the common clothes, these special clothes have up to 13 special numbers to ensure the final professional characteristics and display effect.

Wu's colleagues specializing in pattern design even designed fonts that appeared on sportswear, and a tangle with a silver thread sense decoration was created - its design comes from the electronic beam and resistance circuit of "futuristic".

The place where the core designers are to work is Lining Town, who is standing in the outskirts of Beijing.

It looks more like a sports park, the road is deliberately designed as a runway, it even has a number of standard swimming pools, football fields, basketball courts, tennis courts - as the birthplace of design inspiration, the sports company continues to press big chips in the "Chinese design".

Designers find creative inspiration from various fields, from ultra modern style architecture, Chinese seal character Chinese character and Audi sports car to the circular arc of violin made by Stradivari family.

The walls of the design office show every pair of sneakers and costumes produced by Li Ning Co, and the workshops and libraries are filled with design sketches.

The design room is a restricted area for most visitors and even for most Li Ning Co employees.

The company wrote sternly in the sign on the door: "no one is allowed to enter."

Usually, the ideal design often integrates the results of many departments, and the Market Research Department predicts the trend and color. The material department provides enough problem integration solutions for product design.

In Lining, the designer seems to dominate all this. The management of the design department usually designs the task according to the designer's personal expertise, and once the project is identified, it will no longer interfere with the specific operation, but will also require other departments to give full support.

So designers who are given great freedom seem to have nothing to do with Lining.