Three Domestic Giants Will Compete With International Sports Brands To "Keep Warm"

Under such haze, the market does not seem to see a turnaround in the sports industry. On May 30, at the first China Sporting Goods Industry Summit Forum hosted by the General Administration of Sport of China and the China Sporting Goods Industry Federation, Li Ning, chairman of Li Ning Company, Ding Shizhong, president of Anta Sports and Ding Shuibo, president of Tebu International, who were listed on the Hong Kong stock market, sat together to discuss the development of industries such as inventory, channel reform and differentiation. It is worth noting that, Ding Shizhong and Ding Shuibo said that the company's inventory had been almost cleared. In the face of competition from international brands, the three industry leaders said they would "work together to keep warm".

　　 Inventory processing is nearing the end

Has the inventory of sporting goods industry bottomed out in the second half of the year?

Recently, the hot topic in the circle was that Li Ning was out of stock. It is reported that several group purchase orders of 2013 Chengdu Fortune Global Forum had to find another seller. The customer originally intended to buy Li Ning's products, but they were out of stock. In addition to Chengdu, it is reported that the goods in Wuhan area of Li Ning are also out of stock, and the shelves in the factory stores are empty. The industry has speculated that Li Ning's inventory has been basically cleared.

Coincidentally, at the summit forum, Ding Shizhong also clearly stated, "We have a good news that the inventory is almost handled." At the same time, Ding Shuibo also revealed, "The inventory is handled very well. According to the plan at that time, it is almost finished."

Inventory problem is one of the sensitive problems of several sports brand listed companies. Through inventory changes, investors can directly understand the company's operating conditions, and at the same time have an impact on the stock price trend. For the inventory of the sporting goods industry, after last year's clean-up, has the current inventory index on the market returned to the normal level?

The reporter asked a person close to Anta for confirmation. The person said, "Several companies have increased their efforts to close stores and sell special deals. At the same time, they have digested the inventory through online channels and also sold it to the Middle East, Africa and other regions through packaging. At present, the inventory has basically been digested."

Through the above inventory clearing method, although the inventory indicators of various companies have declined at present, the above people close to Anta also said that such inventory clearing is only a temporary solution rather than a permanent solution. If the sales model of several companies does not change, the inventory problem will still recur next year. According to the financial report data of major companies, the inventory of Li Ning at the end of 2011 was 1.13 billion yuan, and the inventory by the end of 2012 was 920 million yuan. Anta's inventory at the end of 2011 was 620 million yuan, rising to 690 million yuan as of December 31, 2012; At the end of 2011, the inventory of Special Step was 670 million yuan, and by the end of 2012, the inventory had become 580 million yuan. Among them, the operating revenue of Li Ning fell by 2.2 billion yuan to 6.7 billion yuan, the revenue of Anta fell by 1.3 billion yuan to 7.6 billion yuan, and the revenue of Tebu grew by 5.55 billion yuan.

At present, in order to cooperate with the inventory clearing, the three brand companies have closed their stores one after another, and incomplete statistics show that Li Ning closed 1821 stores last year; Nearly 600 Antaguan stores; Close nearly 100 stores in special steps. In terms of discount, the discount of the three companies even reached 30%.

At the same time, store closures will continue this year. Some analysts said that Anta's main brand expected to close about 6.5% of its retail stores in 2013. In the case of continuous closing of stores, unless dealers continue to increase their inventory, orders in 2014 driven only by the growth of the same store will hardly grow at a high level.

Inventory is closely related to the growth of performance, and how to balance it has become one of the most important topics for the three industry leaders. At present, the channel reform of the three companies is in a painful period, and some insiders predict that it will be difficult to get out of the reform pain by 2015.

　　 Call for healthy competition

Now, the competition with powerful international giants such as Nike and Adidas makes the market extremely worried about the pressure of its channel sinking on domestic brands. When the industry entered the cold winter, three sports brand leaders expressed the need to "keep warm together".

"A company can't compete with international brands, so we can still lock it in together." Ding Shizhong made it clear why we should stick together? The overall scale of domestic enterprises is too small. In fact, the overall scale is not 1/10 of that of Nike. Competition is not only peer competition, but also a scale competition. The first competitive goal of the group competition is to lock up the 1.3 billion people in China and establish a healthy competition. It is very important for Jinjiang to stick together because the whole industry is developing rapidly.

"To be specific, there should be a basic rule of the game. For example, during the Nanjing National Games, the director team asked me for a batch of sports clothes. I was wrong. The National Games were sponsored by Shuibo, and I gave him Shuibo's phone number. There are many things like this. It is important to establish a benign mechanism to shape the status of our brand."

Ding Shuibo also said in an interview, "I am the president of Quanzhou, and Ding Shizhong is the president of Jinjiang. We will always have communication, and everyone will promote each other in benign competition. I believe that the industry can develop more healthily by holding together."

As an industry elder, Li Ning clearly pointed out that, "I very much agree with Mr. Ding and all of you. The development of the industry needs everyone's efforts. It is very important to create some information, skills, and ideas that can be shared. Since the greatest value of the market economy is free competition, competition is inevitable, but in competition there needs to be mutual respect, which should be the consensus of the industry."

As for how to compete well, Li Ning said, "What we are facing now is the adjustment of the whole industry, so our enterprises will adjust according to their own genes and market opportunities." The biggest problem is the industry, not just the enterprises. The biggest problem is that the rapid development in the past has brought about the homogenization of products, which also means the homogenization of the entire enterprise's business model. He said, "At present, the demand for segmentation has begun to emerge."

According to the explanation of the insiders, benign competition means that the wholesale model of everyone following Nike has begun to change, and major brands have begun to develop towards the direct store model.

Behind the three industry leaders' "holding together for warmth", on the one hand, among the five sports brands, in addition to competition, they began to consider more benign competition; On the other hand, it is a signal that small and medium-sized sporting goods companies begin to integrate.

According to the 2012 White Paper on the Development of China's Sporting Goods Industry, one of the most important trends is that the industry reshuffle has intensified and brand concentration has begun to increase. Yang Dayun, president of UTA, pointed out: "I think that although there are thousands of local brands in China's sports industry in the future, the number of local brands that may survive in China in the future will not exceed 6-7."