Adidas Gao Jia Li: Adidas Needs To Revitalize Its Professional Sports Status

Five years of growth in a row

Now we are in the sprint stage of "the road to 2015".

Gao Jiali, managing director of Adidas group Greater China, told the Beijing Commercial Daily reporter that four years ago, he promised to invest in brand strategy, retail reconstruction and store expansion plan.

However, this does not mean that Adidas will start a smooth road in China. Adidas, who has successfully turned over from the low tide, hopes to revive its influence in the sports field.

Expanding future cities

Unlike other stores that reduce inventory, Adidas has maintained a low speed in this industry downturn.

"Since we launched the strategy of" 2015 road ", Adidas has added 2000 stores in China, most of which are located in the lower tier cities.

The expansion of cities such as three or four tier cities and even lower tier cities is a way for all sports brands to resist slow growth, but Gao Jiali prefers to call these cities "future cities".

"If we call small and medium-sized cities or non tier cities, there are some negative meanings, so we call them the future cities."

According to its disclosure, Adidas's new stores in 2014 accounted for 50% of the shops in the future cities.

Compared with previous stores in a second tier city, opening stores in the future cities needs to be more cautious. This is also one of the 15 modules of the "2015 way" strategy, the retail expansion module.

Gao Jiali said that before opening a store anywhere, we would make a very rigorous investigation before opening a franchise store, and then we would make an assessment of how much sales per square metre could reach.

For Adidas, most of the layout of future cities is realized through distributors, so there are 3 growth modules for distributors in 3 modules.

Gao Jiali said, "now we can get the sales data from 80% of the stores, including the sex of consumers and the products and prices they choose.

About 5%-20% orders for large dealers are purchased and packed to the warehouse.

Among the 2000 new shops in the "2015 way" plan, there are some specialized shops that are different from traditional shops.

These are tailor-made consumer experiences for Chinese consumers, including the most advanced Adidas brand centers in the world, women's exclusive stores and footwear franchised stores.

"By the end of 2014, we had covered more than 1000 cities in 2279 cities in China.

In the Chinese market, we now have more than 8000 stores, and there are many forms of shops.

Gao Jiali believes that over the past three or four years, Chinese consumers have more self and subdivided choice needs, increasing the differentiation mode of stores, enabling different store models to adapt to the tastes and preferences of different consumers.

For example, women's franchised stores are mainly targeted at high-end female consumers. 50% of the products in the store are high-end brands such as Stella McCartney by Adidas and Stella 's sport, which are targeted at women who advocate healthy life for regular fitness.

At the same time, subdivision stores also expand in different cities according to their respective product positioning.

The series of sports performance is from the first line to the five line and the six line cities. The classic series of Original sports is opened in the second and three tier cities.

Women's stores are mainly open in the second tier cities with high consumption.

Gao Jiali revealed that from the second half of 2014 to the first half of 2015, the two forms of Homecourt and Neighbourhood will spread in China.

In addition, we hope to build the flagship store in the 15-16 largest cities in China.

Revitalization of professional sports status

In terms of quantity, there are only more than 80 stores, accounting for 1% of the total.

Gao Jiali's subdivision

The requirement is, "if there is no such subdivision, customers will run to other brands to consume, and the existence of these stores will keep them here.

Therefore, the contribution of the subdivision to our profits is gradual.

This also means that subdivision shops only let consumers continue to generate interest in Adidas shops.

Last year, Adidas Greater China achieved a 10% growth rate, a fourth quarter growth of 11%, which is Adidas's fifth consecutive year of growth.

Gao Jiali said, "in fact, we are taking advantage of the two brands of Original and NEO to seize the opportunity for Chinese consumers to grow and mature."

Many people in the industry believe that the growth of Adidas's performance stems from its entertainment and leisure oriented rather than its essence as a professional sporting goods.

Now, it is about to reach the end of "2015", and Adidas, who has successfully turned over from the low tide, hopes to revive its influence in the sports field.

"In 2015, we will launch a new global project - sports promotion project. Through this project, we hope to continue to build astas as a sports brand. Original and NEO's female products and outdoor sports products are fast growing categories, but they are 70%-80% or sports products of our core business, including football, basketball, running and so on."

However, it depends on whether consumers buy it. Gao said that the challenge in the Chinese market is that the change of consumers is too fast and China has a vast territory. So the difference between consumers is very large. There is no way to solve the consumption needs of different cities by the same way. Especially when the global shopping is becoming more and more popular, how to ensure that consumers are still satisfied with products and services is a challenge for Adidas in the next five years.