Ding Zhizhong: The Top Ten Of China'S First World

In a small town near the sea in Jinjiang, Fujian, Ding Zhizhong was driven by a simple desire to become rich, and became a shoe factory owner who had not graduated from junior high school.

But when he changed faster than others to become a modern business manager and took the lead in exploring the domestic market, he quickly emerged from more than 3000 local shoe companies and moved to the throne of the town shoe king.

In a conference room in Anta, a department manager, in conjunction with the projection slides, gave a detailed account of the progress of a training program.

A young man with a baby face sat at the end of a long conference table. After listening to it for about 10 minutes, he suddenly interrupted him. "Don't tell me the details, tell me, what kind of benefits will you get if you put so much into it?"

This ungrateful young man to his subordinates is Ding Zhizhong, the 37 year old president of Anta (China) Co., Ltd., a native of chentai Town, Jinjiang City, Fujian province.

Just half a month ago, he led the company into the main board of Hongkong, raising funds amounting to HK $3 billion 168 million.

On the first day of July 10th, the company's share price rose by 44%, which made Ding Zhizhong and his family members worth more than HK $13 billion, with a 75% stake in the company.

In less than 10 years, Ding Zhizhong has thrown thousands of competitors around the town of Anta behind him.

"Anta is bigger now, and Ding Zhizhong is not good at it now."

A stone lion businessman who began making sportswear in 1983 said.

His annual sales volume of "Ho Kin" brand sportswear is about 1 hundred million.

Ding Zhizhong became the shoe king in the name of the place, but he did not become the president of the local Footwear Association.

"He has a kind of domineering in his bones, and he can't deal with it."

A local media reporter said.

He also did not want to compromise with others. According to local people, if a thing that he did not want to do and could not do, another XTEP shoe owner, XTEP founder Ding Shui Bo, would choose to do it, while Ding Zhizhong would simply refuse it.

Perhaps because of this, in 2006, when Quanzhou (Jinjiang affiliated to Quanzhou) elected president of the footwear association, Ding Zhizhong, who was the boss of Jinjiang footwear industry, was the best candidate for the presidents. However, she attracted a lot of objections. Finally, Ding Shui Bo finally took the seat.

"Ding Zhizhong is an inner closed person from personality, and only a few good friends can understand his inner thoughts. Most people, even the directors of his company, may not know what he is thinking."

A person who worked for Ding Zhizhong for many years said.

Why can this "bad deal" businessman surpass more than 3000 Jinjiang shoe companies and become a fortune star in this labor-intensive industry?

Ding Zhizhong wants to grow up in a shoemaking workshop and is interested in doing business.

Later, he recalled that he hoped to live better and hope that he would have the money to buy Motorcycles like others.

He is located in Jinjiang, Fujian, Chen Dai town is a place prone to commercial cells.

Local people have a tradition of making a living out of the sea. Overseas nationals earn money, send capital back and bring market information and orders, thus giving birth to local manufacturing.

In the early 1980s, a group of shoe factories had sprung up in Chen Dai Town, Jinjiang.

Overseas Jinjiang residents brought initial orders for these workshops.

Ding Hemu, a local farmer, participated in the establishment of a village shoe factory in Chen Dai town in the middle of 1980s.

Before and after 1991, he sold his family's grain, chickens, ducks and other things that could be exchanged for money, and raised fifty thousand or sixty thousand yuan under the assistance of his relatives. He set up a shoe making workshop alone, which is the predecessor of Anta.

According to the information provided by Anta, as early as 1987, Ding and Mu gave his son Ding Zhizhong 10 thousand yuan, and 600 pairs of shoes bought from the shoe factories of Chen Dai, so he checked them to Beijing for sale.

At this time, Ding Zhizhong was only 17 years old, and he had not graduated from junior high school.

Ding Zhizhong became one of the hundreds of Jinjiang people who sold shoes in Beijing in the 80s and 90s of last century.

He has set up a shoe counter in Beijing's most important shopping malls, such as Wangfujing shopping center, which is very popular in Jinjiang.

It is said that Ding Zhizhong has been marketing consciousness since then. He has learned to study the types of consumers and pay more attention to what kind of shoes have a bigger market.

According to a person familiar with Anta, Ding Zhizhong returned to Jinjiang in 1994 with a profit of 200 thousand yuan from Beijing, when the shoe factory was opened by Ding's father and brother.

When Ding Zhizhong returned to Jinjiang, he became deputy general manager in charge of marketing.

In 1994, after changing several factory names, Ding Jia and his son decided to unite the factory name and product brand as "Anta".

According to Ding Hemu, this brand contains "peace of mind, entrepreneurship and down-to-earth" means.

Two years later, Ding Zhizhong gained the lead of family business.

He became the general manager of Anta, and his father Ding Hemu formally retired to the second line; his brother Ding Shih had a mild personality and "did not like to be in the lead", specializing in production affairs; Ding Yali, a secondary school graduate and a financial school girl, took charge of the company's pocketbook.

"Very luckily, Ding Zhizhong had a very good father who gave him power early, and his brother and sister formed a very good complementary relationship with him, without fighting for power or fighting."

A person familiar with Anta said.

In the middle of the 1990s, Kong Linghui shoes became "tied up" with Jinjiang. The shoe companies in Jinjiang also took the place of overseas companies, including Anta.

Before and after 1994, Anta's sales volume was several million yuan, and its profit was even pitiful.

Ding Zhizhong, who sees the domestic market in Beijing, thinks Anta should build its own brand and expand its domestic market.

For this reason, he immediately sought the advertising company to design the corporate identity for Anta after he steered the helm.

In the advertising company he frequented, he knew Ye Bi Quan who later became an important planner of Anta.

"Our company often makes some lectures, and he often comes to listen."

Ding Zhizhong, 4 years old, recalls Ye Quan.

At that time, he served as the customer director of the advertising company.

Ye Shuangquan remembered that when he met Ding Zhizhong like a child, he had a baby face, big eyes, very religious, studious, and very shy. He had never heard a word with him for a year in the company.

In 1998, he left the company because of a change in his advertising agency.

At the invitation of Ding Zhizhong, he began to join Anta.

According to Ye recalls, before and after 1998, Anta had only four executives: Ding himself, Ding's brother, ye Bi Quan and a director in charge of design.

As Ding's assistant, ye Bi Quan always travels with Ding Zhizhong. They often discuss business from the plane to the hotel room.

In leaf's view, Ding is a person who has a strong desire to learn and is extremely intelligent.

Ding Zhizhong introduced Ding Zhizhong, Adidas and other foreign sports brands as spokesmen. This gave Ding Zhizhong a great inspiration. He decided to follow the foreign practice and hire a sports star to speak to Anta, so as to quickly open the brand name of the Anta.

Ding Zhizhong's idea is that the spokesperson should be a world champion in sports.

When he asked a sports friend and Wang Chi, the then general manager of China sports advertising agency, for a spokesperson, Wang Qi said jokingly, "Kong Linghui, he is not only a world champion, but also looks like you."

In the introduction of Wang, Ding Zhizhong and Kong Linghui interviewed.

The two men talked very well.

The endorsement soon arrived.

The endorsement fee is 800 thousand yuan per year, which is the market price quoted by sports stars in the year. For Anta, which was not large at that time, it was a super value paction.

Since 1999, television advertising featuring Kong Linghui has appeared on CCTV-5.

This year, Anta paid 3 million yuan for CCTV-5 advertising.

"At that time, Anta had just built second shoe production lines.

The profit of a production line is about 1 million yuan a year.

You can see how much Anta will bet on this advertisement.

A former Anta executive said.

The advertising campaign was made by Ding Zhizhong on top of the company's objections.

There was no obvious effect in the two months after the advertisement was broadcast, and Ding Zhizhong himself was a little worried.

But two months later, the national order merchants began to rush to Anta factory in Jinjiang, and Anta Sales Department was overcrowded.

What is more unexpected is that at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Kong Linghui won the men's singles champion of pingpong in one fell swoop.

This makes Anta, a small brand unknown to Jinjiang, become one of the most famous brands in the country.

"Now we still regard Kong Linghui as an important contribution to Anta."

Ding Zhizhong told the Southern Weekend reporter.

7 years later, with the same kind of advertising being crowded in CCTV-5, the cost of this kind of advertisement has increased to 10 times that of the original market, which is about 30 million yuan.

After the "tie up" with Kong Linghui, Anta's sales revenue grew at a speed like a rocket.

According to the data provided by Anta, from 2001 to 2006, Anta's sales revenue increased from 100 million yuan to 1 billion 250 million yuan.

The success of Anta's celebrity endorsement has triggered the imitation of the brothers of the same city. The Jinjiang municipal government has also promoted Anta's experience in other enterprises' "duplication" and rewarded the rising brand.

For a time, there was a "brand making" movement in the area. CCTV-5 appeared dozens of advertisements for all kinds of celebrities to speak for Jinjiang shoe enterprises. CCTV-5 was also nicknamed "Chen Dai channel" (chedai town is the birthplace of Jinjiang footwear industry, where most Jinjiang shoe companies gather).

A group of well-known shoe enterprises, such as XTEP, Jordan, del Hui and Hongxing Erke, began to emerge from numerous shoe companies.

The homogenization of advertising strategy and the intensification of competition make Anta have to find a new way to find a new living space.

On the advertising strategy, Anta began to get rid of the famous celebrity endorsement model, instead of sponsoring sports events, such as Anta's annual sponsorship fee for the Chinese Basketball League (CBA) was 40 million yuan.

Ding Zhizhong believes that compared with the cost of tens of millions of dollars by other companies to hire international stars, "we are also a cost-effective business".

With its brand recognition, Anta began to break the identity limit of professional sportswear manufacturers, and began to set foot in the field of sportswear in 2002.

Anta's move was quite smooth. Four or five years later, sportswear made the same income as sports shoes.

According to a former Anta executive, Anta broke through two "tens of millions" in 2006: 10 million pairs of sports shoes and 10 million sales of sportswear.

It is worth mentioning that, while launching the clothing industry, the concept of brand retailer terminal has also been introduced, which is an important step in the development of Anta.

Previously, Anta only had specialized sports shoes sales counters in major shopping malls. With the increase of clothing and other varieties, Anta became an independent brand store.

Ding Zhizhong, who is good at marketing, believes that brand building not only relies on advertising, but also relies on strong sales channels.

By 2004, Anta's national stores had grown to more than 2000.

This year, in order to further expand the number of stores, Anta took the policy of making profits to dealers.

In just two years, Anta stores have grown to more than 4000 stores, and Anta's retail network has covered the main streets of all three cities in the country.

For Anta to lay the foundation of the clothing industry and introduce the concept of exclusive stores, it is a professional manager named Ye Qi.

He was a senior manager of Li Ning Co's sportswear, and was later poached by Ding Zhizhong.

In 2002, Ding Zhizhong set up a new business in Beijing.