ADI'S Strategy: Women + Children + Technological Innovation

A company may be backward just because it made a mistake, but to catch up with it, it needs to do many things at the same time.

Two years after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games,

China was once dragged down by high inventory left over during the Olympic Games.

After a year's recuperation, Adidas finally got rid of its inventory burden and began to expand it lightly.

Five years later, Adidas once again left the local brand and stood on the same line with Nike on the market share.

It must have done something right.

To sum up, in the past five years, Adidas has gone all out to attack big cities with all kinds of products, and has expanded into small and medium-sized cities. It has made many bold layout in women, children and outdoor lighting market segments, and has rapidly expanded Originals, NEO and other different positioning product lines to get a successful positioning and mode.

This series of measures does help ADI get out of the inventory pressure in the short term and complete the five year growth plan, but in the long run, it still needs stronger growth momentum.

Why is this motivation? Perhaps we can see one or two from its rival Nike.

It is true that Jordan, the ultimate star in sports history, has achieved Nike. However, the key to Nike's "coming from behind" and keeping competitiveness is the best use of M & a strategy, re focusing on market segmentation, rich product mix and more innovative ability.

In the M & a strategy, as early as 1988,

The leverage principle of acquisition has been applied.

In 2004, when Nike acquired CONVERSE, a sports shoe manufacturer, it has become the most extensive and longest line company in competitive products, and these products also bring huge returns to Nike.

Nike's strategy is to look for products that can complement each other in different market segments, have similar business style and have a certain R & D capability.

In contrast, Adidas, which was bought by Adidas in 2005, soon fell into a long-term loss. It became a heavy burden for Adidas. Not only did it fail to win the market, its value also shrank sharply, but at the beginning of this year, Adidas had just sold its Lok step brand when its performance was dragged down.

The acquisition strategy of ADI is obviously not effective, and the acquired brand is not only complementation not strong enough, but also can not lend much strength to each other.

Develop characteristic market.

Although football and basketball are the core areas of Nike, it absolutely does not want to miss any potential market segments. Nike founder Phil Nate often says, "why don't we take a look out of basketball?" Nike has won a wider market in the areas of roller skating and golf.

Adidas is also making efforts, but the result is not satisfactory. Golf products suffered two digit decline in the fourth quarter of last year.

In these distinctive markets, Adidas needs more wisdom and stronger strategies to ensure that the core business is not dispersed and more blooms are realized.

The female market is the "Chaoyang market" that both of them are focusing on.

Since 1999, Nike has begun to seriously consider how to seize the market.

Now we have begun to research and Design Women's physiological characteristics and habits from the technical level.

Adidas opened three stores at the end of last year, while Nike had only two stores in the world.

In terms of product mix, Adidas has done a lot of work.

Adidas ORIGINALS and sports leisure Adidas NEO products, which are the main sports fashion, have been used as a magic weapon for Adidas's growth in recent years in China.

However, there is a problem that comes together.

The more successful it is, the more ambiguous the consumers' characteristics of Adidas's brand are. In other words, they do not have a unified understanding of Adidas's brand. Adidas may have a brand formation with both offensive and defensive capabilities, but it needs to play more effective tricks to form a stronger force.

When it comes to technological innovation, there is a saying that can basically summarize Adidas's dilemma in this respect: it has been making good shoes, but it is not suitable for consumers.

ADI's designers are not familiar with customers when they design shoes.

In this sense, ADI is more like a shoemaker, and Nike is a marketing company. It knows better how to maximize the value of products and ideas.

In order to understand customer needs, Adidas attaches great importance to market research in the five year plan.

Data analysis has played a very important role in the five consecutive years of growth.

Every day, Adidas headquarters can collect and master the sales data of 80% stores, which enables them to compare each store and product and understand what the hottest market is in the season and what products consumers want most.

This is what Gao Jiali desperately needs -- constantly approaching the needs of consumers.

He knows that consumers in the Chinese market tend to pursue the trend much faster than other markets.

"If consumers' tastes change, we have to follow them together."

Lack of rapid response and innovation has long been considered the "culprit" of ADI behind Nike.

Where to fall, where to climb up.

And in

Compared with bottlenecks, at least in China, Adidas has a promising future.