Adidas Broke Through Pressing Down With Nike In China

Speaking of sports shoes, many people may aspire to Nike rather than Adidas. But in recent years, Adidas quietly broke through the suppression of Nike, and Nike has been on the same track in China.

2016 will be Adidas A year of major reform. Recently, the sporting goods giant officially announced the appointment of the original hankor CEO Kasper Rorsted as the new president of the company to take over the recent CEO Herbert Hainer, which has been under pressure for many years. After the announcement, Henkel's share price dropped by 4.5%, and ADI's share price soared by 5.8%.

The new CEO Kasper Rorsted appointed by Adidas

The weakness of the North American market and the crisis of investment profits have made ADI, the industry leader Nike, more and more distant in recent years. It is now thought that the new CEO, 53, will help ADI group end this unhappy day. Rorsted has extensive management experience and extraordinary vision. Shareholders hope that he can lead Adidas in the key North American market and expand the company's development.

Although many key indicators such as share and speed increase, ADI's performance is under Nike. But they have proved themselves in an important indicator, that is, the market share of Greater China (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). According to Euromonitor's data, in the 2011-2015 four years, ADI's annual sales growth in the Greater China region increased from 8.5% to 13.8%, while Nike in the same period increased from 11.2% to 14.3%.

Distribution of sports apparel market share in China in recent five years

　　 Nike It has been a dominant position in several strategic markets, and has always been the target of ADI's covetous. According to Euromonitor, the world's authoritative market research firm, ADI shares only 6% of the American sports shoes market, while Nike controls 68% of the market share. In the local market, ADI is also not dominant. According to the financial times statistics, the sales growth of German manufacturer ADI in Western European market is also lagging behind Nike.

But through the rapid growth in recent years, ADI has been sprinting on the road to catch up with Nike, and has initially achieved the chase in the Chinese market competition.

At present, China's sports brand market has surpassed Japan, Brazil and Germany, second only to the United States. As of September 2015, Adidas's sales in the Greater China market increased by 18.4% over the same period last year. In fact, as early as the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese market has become the target of many sports brands including Nike and ADI. In those days, Adidas had won the sponsorship qualification of the Beijing Olympic Games. It thought that it could create brilliant achievements and did not expect to suffer from a stock disaster. Due to the blind increase in output during the Olympic Games and the oversupply of the industry at that time, the production of ADI products was excessive, and a large number of stocks could not be digested.

After the attack, ADI has been seeking change. They want to be more close to consumers, in-depth reading of the market, allowing those most popular products to be injected into the market again, and drive the development of the company through products.

ADI chose to work hard in the female market and dig out the huge business opportunities. Besides big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, they have opened women's sports products stores in China's second tier cities, such as Chengdu, Shenyang and Chongqing. Although women's stores will not become the mainstream of the market, they can be used as a complement to the existing store system and the diversification of sports brand. The image spokesperson can see the determination of ADI to compete for the Chinese market. The first line stars Fan Bingbing, Eason Chan and Deng Chao have joined the leading lineup as the spokesperson of Adidas Greater China in 2016.

Matthew, director of marketing research at Mintel, a British market research firm, said in an interview with the business news website Quartz, "Adidas is seeking spanformation, no longer moving towards the direction of sportswear brand, but gradually refining the retail mode". Crabbe In this regard, Adidas group's Greater China director Gao Jiali (Colin Currie) also holds the same view. In its view, "what Chinese need is a sportswear that can be worn in sports and life, and even in some second tier cities, wearing ADI clothes is also normal when they go to work and attend weddings."

Some commentators are worried about the current situation in China. Economics When the environment is depressed, the purchasing power of consumers will also weaken. It may be a disadvantage to cater to the so-called fashion. Besides, fashion is unpredictable. However, so far, ADI's business strategy has worked quite well, at least in the Great China market, the spancript is quite good.