Adidas'S New CEO Proposes A "Comprehensive Rectification Of Reebok" Plan.

It is said to lead.

The new CEO Kasper Rorsted, who broke away from the bitter sea, finally took office in October, but many people did not expect that the grand plan he put forward first was not aimed at ADI, but rather.

(Reebok) that they bought 11 years ago.

。

Kasper Rorsted

Last week, CEO, who was known from the German daily chemical giant Henkel and who was known to be good at boosting brand market share, announced his plan of "comprehensive rectification of Reebok" at the three quarter earnings conference of adidas group.

It is estimated that 3340 US dollars will be invested at a time.

The Reebok headquarters in Boston moved to Massachusetts, closed down the loss shop, and reduced the Outlets (factory store) by half, and rebuilt a new and exclusive global brand team.

Before, Reebok's brand team and adidas people mixed up, the structure is not very clear.

By the way, Adidas's three quarter earnings report, released in September 30th, showed that group sales increased by 14% to 5 billion 410 million euros compared with the same period last year, but the operating profit rate dropped by 20 basis points to 10.4%. The company said that it was because the 10 million euros of Reebok's redevelopment were recorded in the third quarter account. The remaining 2000 euro million will be recorded in the fourth quarter, but they stressed that this does not prevent the group from maintaining its annual profits at the expected level.

However, the media and analysts' worries about the slowdown were higher than the growth itself, so that the group's share price fell by 7% after the earnings announcement.

It seems that Adidas has made a fortune in the past year, relying on the trend. In order to maintain the momentum of the company's recovery, Kasper Rorsted has taken a fancy to Reebok.

After being acquired by Adidas in 2005, Reebok's performance has been sluggish. In the past six years, four years of revenue has been declining, and there has been no increase in the past three years in North America.

The third quarter sales increased by 3.6% to 493 million euros compared with the same period last year, but its share in the most important sports brand market in the United States has dropped from ten to 8% in the current 2%.

It used to be the second most popular sport brand in the United States.

But think again, Reebok's thin sense of existence has been around for quite some time. Despite the popularity of the fashion trend in recent years, New Balance, Under Armour and Nike have been threatened by Nike and Adidas, but they seem to have nothing to do with Reebok.

In recent years, Reebok has neither a single product nor a major event sponsorship. Besides Alan Everson and Yao Ming, you probably can hardly say another star who has recently endorsed them for you. This is very unusual for a sports brand.

"People may ask, what about Reebok?" Mark King, Adidas's head of North America, said in a media interview in 2015 in the 9 month.

At that time, Adidas was taking the last big contract from Reebok, the National Ice Hockey League NHL. For this reason, Mark King explained that "Reebok actually quit the professional sports market from 2010 and turned to the fitness field."

But before Adidas was bought, Reebok was quite active in the professional sports market, and it was precisely because of the three major contracts to go to its peak age.

In 1980s, Reebok shifted its focus from manufacturing tennis shoes and fitness shoes to increasingly popular basketball shoes and running shoes, plus the link between brand and professional stars. At the beginning of 1990s, there were more than 100 professional athletes on the basketball court wearing the most popular Reebok Pump at that time, including shark O'neal.

When Reebok dominated competitive sports, Yao Ming and O'neal were their spokesmen.

In the 2000 year of the year, two things changed the fate of Reebok brand.

The first is the signing of the gold medallist of the Sydney Olympic Games and the Wimbledon singles champion Venus Williams.

In the same year, a ten year exclusive sponsorship contract with the US professional football league (NFL) made Reebok the sole supplier of the league, selling all the 32 teams and uniforms that NFL authorized.

The original NFL market was carved up by Nike, Puma and Adidas.

But the alliance thinks that this business mode is very passive for them, which means that they are forced to stay away from some important links, such as uniform design, product innovation and quality supervision.

NFL intends to change this cooperative mode to better control "quality, fashion and health" - the efficiency of communicating with a single brand is obviously higher than that of different brands.

At that time, 32 teams voted, and 30 of them supported the cooperation with Reebok.

The contract, which is worth more than 250 million, has soared Reebok's share price by 25%. The popularity of the world has risen sharply and its income has increased. This has brought new vitality to the exclusive product line designed by NFL.

Under such an upward trend, Reebok has won the exclusive sponsorship contract with NBA and WNBA in the second years since the start of the 1.5-1.75 03-04 season in ten years.

In particular, the former is important for promoting the brand of Reebok, which has always belonged to Nike.

The contract also allowed Reebok to become an equipment supplier for the US men's basketball team to Athens Olympic Games, which is an excellent brand marketing opportunity.

Next came the 2004 acquisition of the US National Ice Hockey League NHL sponsors, the Canadian brand CCM, and Reebok also replaced it as a sponsor of NHL.

In 2001, Reebok signed a lifelong endorsement contract with Iverson, making the answer series sell well; in 2003, signing Yao Ming opened the Chinese market.

At that time, Jay Margolis, President of Reebok, also opened the flagship store of Reebok to major cities including London, Tokyo and Dhaka.

Under the escort of NBA, NFL, NHL and the three major league contracts, plus the endorsement of professional stars, Reebok firmly occupied third of the market in the US sports market more than ten years ago.

However, in 2005, when Adidas was bought for $3 billion 800 million, Reebok began to go downhill.

Adidas almost finished Reebok in the exclusive NBA market at the end of the acquisition, and signed a contract of up to 11 years and 400 million dollars with the alliance. The alliance also believed that Adidas from Germany was more conducive to the promotion of NBA brand in Europe and Asia. In 2010, five years later, with the shrinking market share and declining trend, Reebok failed to keep NFL contracts, which were renewed with Nike.

According to Citibank's statistics, the profits from NFL are impressive, or even account for 2/3 of Reebok's total revenue.

In this way, with the separation of the three major league, the sponsorship of the star retired, Reebok is now completely abandoned in the arena.

In fact, ten years ago, in order to develop the US market and compete with Nike, when Adidas acquired Reebok, the complementarity of the two was questioned.

Adidas's positioning of trendy Trifolium, high-end avant-garde Y-3, and Neo targeting younger groups leave Reebok with limited space.

The result is that Reebok's brand positioning is becoming more and more blurred, and consumers do not have a vivid perception of Reebok.

At that time, an article by Bloomberg pointed out that if the acquisition could enable Adidas to focus on the top design (high-end market), and let Reebok fill the middle end market, return to the popular products such as women's fitness shoes that they had become popular at the time, aim at the ordinary people who do not participate in sports events, and adhere to the hip hop strategy, which may be beneficial to both sides.

{page_break}

Reebok has always been very involved in the women's fitness market.

Reebok has not failed in its market positioning.

From Adidas's 2006 earnings report, we can see that Reebok is trying to adjust its strategy to the fitness industry and re engraving classics.

The 2008 year's earnings report referred to Reebok's main strategy at that time, "let fitness make people happy, so that both men and women have the chance to realize their potential in sports".

But then there was nothing to pick up.

Turning around in 2010, Reebok took the new fitness brand CrossFit in the year, probably because it tasted the sweetness. In 2013, Reebok signed the New Zealand fitness brand Les Mills and the Spartan Race, known as the "hell hurdle race", to further expand its influence in the fitness market.

Reebok has been named Crossfit gymnasium.

Finally, in 2014, in order to rediscover consumers and fight against other brands in the group, Adidas redesigned the brand strategy for Reebok: pay attention to the fitness market.

Reebok also turned its logo into a triangle, representing the physiological, psychological and social experience of a healthy lifestyle.

At the beginning of 2015, Reebok launched the largest brand promotion campaign in the past 10 years, with the theme of "Be More Human" that explores its own limits and is more powerful.

In the early stage of North American promotion, Super Bowl advertising and interactive websites have been used.

The media budget for this promotion is over ten million dollars.

According to data provided by Kantar Media, Reebok cut its advertising budget in the past few years, from 7520 US $21 million 700 thousand in 2010 to US $21 million 700 thousand in 2013.

This is also one of the reasons for their depressed market performance.

Although the positioning fitness market has improved its performance, Reebok's share of Adidas's total revenue has fallen from 20% in 2006 to 10% today.

It has also been reported several times that Adidas will sell Reebok.

But now, the new CEO Kasper has made it clear: "no sale, it's time to invest twice as much energy on Reebok."

Jane and Jing became the core of this rectification plan.

In addition to closing stores, 150 people will be laid off.

A brand with 116 years of history can't help but sigh today.

Its founder, Joseph Foster, invented her own shoes when he was 14 years old. When he was less than 20 years old, he founded Reebok's predecessor, Reebok, which sold shoes in Britain. In 1924, the British athletes were wearing Reebok shoes to participate in the Paris Olympic Games. In the 1982 year of the year, they launched the first fitness shoes Reebok Freestyle aerobics shoe designed for women, and became the best-selling shoes at that time. Now it seems to be a reincarnation to return to the fitness market.