Sports Brands Define Their Own Positioning And Combine Modern Technology

"Pressure mountain is big", which is a common problem faced by sports brands.

The first is inventory. By the end of 2012, the inventory of six major sports brands in China had reached 3.293 billion yuan. As of June this year, the inventory had reached 3.029 billion yuan, less than 10% of which had been reduced.

Then it was to cooperate with the tide of store closing brought by inventory clearing. According to incomplete statistics, in the first half of this year, the number of stores closed by Li Ning, Anta, PEAK, China Trends, 361 °, and Tebu brands reached 2249 in total, that is to say, six companies closed 12 stores every day on average.

Then there are discount promotions at the expense of profits, order reduction and net profit decline. According to the financial report released by the international giant Nike, the net income in the second quarter of this year fell again by 18% after the net profit in the first fiscal quarter fell by 12%. It can be seen from the release of the order meeting of major sports brands that the orders of Anta, Tebu, PEAK, etc. have declined. In terms of terminal sales, it is common for sports brands to discount as low as 30%, and some brands even launched price reduction promotions of 10%.

And then look at the semi annual reports of several sports brands: Anta's revenue was 3.37 billion yuan, down 14.4% year on year; Li Ning's revenue in the first half of the year was 2.9 billion yuan, down 24.6% year on year. Anta's business end fell back to the level of 2010, and Li Ning fell back to 2008.

After nearly 20 years of rapid growth in the golden period, the good days of domestic sports brands have finally come to an end. Next, whether to survive in the cracks or to break out of the difficulties is a problem that major manufacturers need to solve.

Active technological innovation

NIKE'S NEW RUN WITH NEW NIKENITE TECHNOLOGY shoes The vamp is made of yarn from computerized flat knitting machine spin The upper is only 34g. The whole upper is made of a single piece of material and is seamless. Coincidentally, adidas announced that the new seamless technology running shoe adizero Prime knit was also launched almost at the same time. Its revolutionary significance lies in innovative design.

Among domestic brands, PEAK Sports and NBA star Tony Parker recently unveiled an innovative sole technology system, gradient dual energy technology shoes, jointly developed by PEAK Beijing R&D Center and international biomechanics research institutions. PEAK publicizes that gradient dual energy technology is more humanized, designed for speed athletes and bouncing athletes respectively, and configures materials with different mechanical properties according to the pressure distribution law of different users' soles, so as to provide the most reasonable mechanical feedback for the feet.

In fact, in the past development, especially in the competition of domestic sports brands, homogenization development, blind expansion, price war and shopping have been the persistent problems that have restricted the development of the industry, while scientific research and technological innovation for products are easy to be ignored.

It is not too late to mend the knot. When manufacturers gradually taste the bitter fruit of this vicious competition, major sports brands begin to pay attention to the strength of product technology research and development and have gradually produced results, such as the recent successful research and development of high-end technology products such as badminton rackets made of special fibers in the aerospace field, built-in inflatable basketball, and sports floors made of biodegradable materials, Scientific and technological innovation enables sports brands to enter a new era.

Clarify self positioning

In fact, in the development of the two major international sports brand giants, Adidas and Nike, clear positioning and highlighting their professionalism in this field have always been their distinctive characteristics. Although both brands have invested and developed in sports such as tennis and running, Adidas football and Nike basketball are still invincible in their fields.

As the leader of domestic sports brands, Li Ning has been positioned as a professional sports brand for Chinese people since the beginning of his entrepreneurship. However, in the subsequent development, this professional orientation conflicts with the leisure and young products, and brings adverse effects to the subsequent development. Learning from the experience, Li Ning refocused on basketball, running and badminton, returned to professionalism, and restored brand awareness through professionalism.

In addition to specialization, there are many directions for sports brand positioning. As consumers pay more attention to health, new sports events are emerging and becoming more diversified. The market demand is also growing. Cross country, mountain climbing, hiking, rock climbing and other new healthy lifestyles are becoming popular. General sports equipment will not meet the market demand.

Therefore, positioning brands and products and developing marketable products will also be a new blue ocean for sports brands. In this regard, Pathfinder has provided a good reference for peers from an industry that seems to have a small application field to a successful public company.

It has to be said that as a sports brand, professionalism is an important gene of the brand. Although the product line can be diversified, your professionalism in the sports field is an important part that must be maintained and continuously enhanced for a long time. Only in this way can you have a higher voice in the market.

Combining modern technology

Compared with sports brands closing physical stores in succession, online shopping and physical sales can be described as "ice fire double sky". Data shows that the total amount of domestic online retail exceeded 1.3 trillion yuan last year, and the growth rate of online shopping was 4.7 times the growth rate of total retail sales in the same period.

Compared with online sales, the main problem of offline sales is that there are too many links between production and final sales, which on the one hand leads to high costs. The other most direct impact is that because of the fragmentation of information flow, brand manufacturers have difficulty in predicting sales scale, and a large number of goods are overstocked to channels, It is also unable to quickly receive demand and information feedback from the consumer market.

The development of network media provides a good brand marketing communication platform for sports brands. However, as far as the current online sales model of sports brands is concerned, one way of combining it with the network is online sales based on B2C platform, and the other way is online store alliance based on C2C platform. Compared with the above two models, brand exclusive online sales websites have also come to the fore in recent years. This model is a website platform built by enterprises with their own funds. It requires that the brand has a certain popularity, and requires high investment in enterprise resources. It is a long-term behavior. Once it has formed sufficient influence, it will continue to promote the online sales of enterprises.

In addition to combining modern network technology to carry out online marketing, there is still much room for sports brands to expand in the application of modern technology. For example, Nike's outdoor sports watch with GPS function; For example, Nike's running app also advertises the sales of new products while focusing on customers.

Among domestic brands, Li Ning is also beginning to realize this trend and carry out exploratory work. In the cooperation between Li Ning and Gudong, marketing is carried out in combination with Gudong's sports app. As long as consumers use the app to run a heart shaped route on the map, they may get Li Ning's latest running shoes.

There is no sunset industry, only sunset enterprises. Although we can see that the current sports brand industry seems to have declined, it is also an inevitable trend of market adjustment after long-term and rapid development, and also a reflection of the gradual maturity of the market. Although this adjustment is passive, it may not be a good thing for the long-term development of the industry in the future. After the great waves of the industry, the future prospects of sports brands are still promising, Especially for domestic sports brands, how to grasp the advantages in product manufacturing, channel laying and other links, and how to make up for the disadvantages in brand value, design and research and development are problems that must be seriously faced and considered.