What Problems May Adidas Encounter?

Although it has retained second of the world's brand status, Adidas is facing a lot of problems and may no longer be able to return to the golden age of 1980s. In recent years, a series of problems that it encountered in the global market probably stems from the strategic mistakes made by the German company in the North American market.

Marketing: though aware of the importance of the female market, in general, Adidas is still the traditional company that will focus on product presentation and sales channels. Nike and Under Armour have increasingly emphasized the brand attributes of lifestyle, and establish closer and continuous interaction with consumers, such as the running fashion caused by Nike+. Under Armour emphasizes the high-end sports experience based on its own professionalism.

Technology development: Adidas basically keeps the frequency of new technology development which is almost identical with Nike and other brands, but it is far inferior to Nike's intention to introduce Flyknit to consumers in terms of key technologies such as Boost's selling.

　　 Player sponsorship Thanks to years of deep ploughing in the field of football, Adidas knows that it is necessary to sponsor the most popular and most popular European teams. But it did not take this shrewdness to international competitions and athlete sponsorship, so it lost a large number of potential consumers directly.

Store design: Adidas We have learned to build different types and preferences of customers in the form of retail stores. brand This is a big step forward rather than subdivision.

Trend grasp: from the earnings point of view, Adidas has begun to shift its focus to the number of sub brands that focus on fashion and design, but the overall layout of the United States away from the fashion trend is still very poor.

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Compared to the poorly performing North American market, Adidas performed well in the equally competitive China region: in 2014, Adidas's Greater China sales reached 1 billion 811 million euros (12 billion 247 million yuan), up 10% over the same period last year. This is also its Greater China region since the 2010 fiscal year, fifth consecutive years of sales growth, the total growth rate of about 80%.

The inventory problem, which has been mentioned since the Beijing Olympic Games, seems to be gone. At that time, Adidas invested $80 million to $100 million in sponsorship, and at the same time produced a large number of thematic products. But after the Olympic Games, the serious inventory problem made the cash flow pressure of the company huge. At that time, the total goods in the warehouse of Adidas were even up to hundreds of millions of yuan. This decline lasted until 2010 and closed more than 200 stores in 2009.

What ultimately saved Adidas's Greater China performance was a reform plan called "2015 leading": tracking the habits of users through cooperation with distributors, eventually increasing the quantity of orders and the selling rate of products, replanning the store layout, paying more attention to the vast four to seven line city market, and investing in more and more profitable subdivision stores in a second tier city with relatively saturated market.

But in the gradual recovery of sales volume, Adidas did not get the simultaneous growth of brand influence. A comparable example is New Balance: with running becoming a new trend in the city, New Balance's running shoes have become a fashion trend among young Chinese consumers. From 2012 to 2014, the number of New Balance stores in the mainland of China increased from 301 to more than 1600, and sales reached three digit growth in two years, and even threatened Nike, who also worked in the field of jogging shoes for several years.