Anta Sports "Side Attack": Ambush Nike Adidas By NBA

Recently, Anta announced in Beijing that it has become a strategic partner with NBA China, and Anta has officially become an official NBA market partner and NBA authorized provider. For Anta, this cooperation has a deeper value. NBA is the first authorized Chinese sporting goods company to use the joint brand. Anta can launch a full range of sports shoes and accessories with Anta and -NBA brand with team and alliance logo, and sell them online and offline.

In the view of chairman and CEO Ding Shizhong of Anta's board of directors, cooperation with NBA China is not just a platform for sports marketing, but more importantly, the launch of authorized brands, so that Anta's multi brand strategy has more focus.

Transformation: starting three years ago

China's sporting goods market is basically a negative voice in recent years: the negative growth of sales, the closing of stores and the high inventory. Anta is no exception. In 2012 and 2013, the negative growth of sales revenue and profits appeared. At that time, Ding Shizhong began to think about the spanformation of Anta and the problem of enterprise spanformation, considering the next step of Anta brand, how to innovate business mode and development strategy.

Ding Shizhong told reporters that in the past two years, Anta has begun to put forward strategic spanformation, on the one hand, from brand + wholesale mode to brand + retail mode spanformation; on the other hand, from single brand to multi brand mode, and strategic cooperation with NBA China has played a supporting role in Anta's multi brand strategy.

At the beginning of last year, according to the industry situation and its own situation, Anta formulated and launched a "retail oriented" approach, from the promotion of brand strength, retail culture construction, management efficiency enhancement, commodity competitiveness enhancement, flexible supply chain, effective inventory control, channel optimization and other aspects to carry out all-round spanformation and upgrading of enterprises.

China's channels are basically divided into three kinds: Street store channels, shopping center channels and e-commerce channels. Because China lacks a large national retailer, it is unrealistic to rely on a single brand to cover all channel types. For example, it is hard to use Anta's single brand to cover all street shops and shopping mall channels, while the launch of fie Lok has made up for this short board. Fie has better covered the shopping mall channels, forming a channel differentiation and complementarity with Anta.

For Anta, cooperation with NBA China is not only a brand endorsement relationship, it is an authorized commodity cooperation, the launch of joint brand products and NBA independent brand products. Among them, NBA independent brand products can be regarded as a brand new brand of Anta. In order not to form competition and confusion with other brands, Ding Shizhong put the NBA independent brand products in the electricity supplier channel sales.

Ding Shizhong said frankly, Anta did not do well in the basketball shoes market, but Nike sold only a few million pairs of basketball shoes in the Chinese market for a year, so the gap was not very large. "This time, Anta launched the NBA brand basketball shoes with high cost performance. With the endorsement of NBA brand, with the popular price, Nike and ADI's boss will not sleep well." Ding Shizhong said with a smile.

　　 Marketing Focus and efficiency

In the view of Zhang Tao, vice president of Anta, Anta's sports marketing strategy is clear for many years. Basically, there are two lines: one is around the Chinese Olympic Committee, and the other is the pursuit of Chinese sports and the essence of sports. It has won Chinese weightlifting, wrestling, judo and so on. This year, it has taken gymnastics as an all-around attack. The other line is specialization, which is mainly focused on running, basketball and other projects, such as promoting the linkage of 29 cities and running marathon together with the strategic cooperation of NBA China, making the basketball shoes market strong.

In sports sponsorship, Anta emphasizes the efficiency of sponsorship.

　　 Ding Shizhong Frankly speaking, Anta also had the opportunity to cooperate with NBA China in the past few years. But at that time, the cooperation between NBA China and sporting goods companies in China was still limited to the level of brand communication, and it did not have the value of landing. So Anta chose the CBA that looked more cost-effective at that time.

Nowadays, NBA has a brand name value for China's sports brand, and it can also land and form valuable merchandise. Such sponsorship and cooperation are very attractive for Anta. "In fact, we have been looking for suitable sports resources, and it is a comprehensive cooperation with NBA China. The symbol of NBA is not only used for communication, but more importantly, it can be used in commodities, and NBA has 30 teams of brands that can be used." Ding Shizhong said.

Besides, Anta's sports marketing has been focused on Chinese sports. Therefore, a series of cooperation with the Chinese Olympic Committee, cooperation with CBA and cooperation with the Chinese gymnastic team are focused on the Chinese market.

　　 Basketball Anta has always been the most important sport. "In the past, we asked a NBA star to endorse the cost of 300~500 million dollars, for Anta, if the development of star sports shoes can not sell 50 thousand pairs, it will be a failure. Nike monopolized NBA80%'s stars, we only signed one or two NBA stars how to play? "Ding Shizhong asked.

In the first half of 2014, the annual report shows that Anta's sales and profits both occupy the first place in China's sports brand and become the leader of domestic sports brands, but the gap between Nike and Adidas is still relatively large. "At present, there is still a certain gap between our market share and the international brand in the Chinese market. In the future, we hope to go further, not just the improvement of the market share, but I personally value Anta's position in the Chinese sporting goods market." For the future of Anta, Ding Shizhong gave a thought-provoking answer.

Embrace e-commerce channels

The rise of the electricity supplier channel has made Chinese sporting goods enterprises love and hate. On the one hand, the influence of the electricity supplier channel is huge, so they have to embrace. On the other hand, how to coexist with the channel under the electricity supplier channels is a headache for the major sporting goods companies. Therefore, in the past many years, most of the sporting goods enterprises in China still regard e-commerce as a channel for clearing inventory, and they do not really attach importance to the development of this channel.

Ding Shizhong admitted that in the past few years, although the development of Anta's e-commerce is good, the overall scale is still small. In the past few years after the Beijing Olympic Games, many sporting goods enterprises regard the electricity supplier as the channel to deal with inventory. Now the enterprises realize that the channel of the electricity supplier should be differentiated from the offline channels, and the products with different styles will be sold in a wrong way.

It is reported that Anta's NBA licensed products are divided into two categories: one is the product of the joint brand logo, the other is the electricity supplier and the offline channel, and the other is the NBA single label product, which is only sold in the electricity supplier channel. In the future, Anta's channel strategy is to use NBA's authorized brand to host e-commerce channels, Anta brand covers two or three line city's Street outlets, and fie attacks the shopping mall channel of a second tier city, so as to realize the multi brand and all channel differentiation strategy.

In Ding Shizhong's view, the launch of joint brand products is not only to enhance the brand, but also to enhance the professionalism of Anta brand; and the independent brand products, as an important brand of Anta's multi brand strategy, will assume the strategic position of expanding sales in the electricity business channel. At present, although Anta's sales channels are doubling sales every year, it accounts for less than 5% of the total revenue. With the support of NBA independent standard products, Ding Shizhong hopes that the sales of e-commerce channels can achieve double speed growth every year in the next few years.

Off site comment: Zhang Qing, founder of Beijing key sports consulting company

Frankly speaking, compared with Nike, the gap of local sporting goods brands is not small. However, the existence of the gap can not be entirely attributed to the degree of effort of the enterprises themselves. In fact, the development of sports brand is rooted in the sports consumption environment of the market. In China, whether it is entertainment entertainment or participation in experiential consumer spending, there is a big gap between developed countries and Europe and the United States. Nike and Adidas not only create substantial business income in the European and American markets, but also maintain the leading edge when they take advantage of their predominant sports resources advantage to kill emerging market countries. Of course, the gap is the opportunity. Local brands have "space for time".