Strong National Brand: After Several Years Of Adjustment, Lining Now Has An International Standard.

Author Drizzie

Reports from Paris

"I made the company 8 billion, but they felt we were going to go bankrupt tomorrow," Lining, the founder of the brand, once sighed.

Fashion may be the future of sports brand, and only in this way can the most fastidious young people be stirred up.

Now, Lining is back.

As the second step to fight for international fashion discourse, Li Ningji, the Chinese sportswear brand, first boarded the Paris men's wear week on Thursday after the appearance of the fashion week in New York in February.

If New York fashion week is still being promoted by the platform of "Tmall China Japan", the Paris men's wear week is Lining's first independent international fashion week.

From New York to Paris, Lining realized his ambition in just 4 months or intended to become a frequent visitor to the four fashion week.

Behind such a tight pace is not only a market challenge for Chinese brands to go out, but also a market situation for traditional sports brands.

Compared to the specific theme of New York fashion week, "Lining" is the theme of the 2019 spring summer series released by menswear weekly in Paris. The theme is "China Lining", which is intended to emphasize the brand's Chinese origin and domestic goods feelings.

In the sixth World Cup Gymnastics Competition in 1982, Lining won 6 men's 7 gold medals, creating the myth of World Gymnastics history, becoming China's national hero and winning the reputation of "Gymnastics Prince".

Two years later, in 1984, he became an athlete of the Losangeles Summer Olympic Games with the record of "three gold, two silver and one bronze".

In 1990, Lining founded the same name sporting goods company.

At the early stage of its establishment, Lining pioneered the establishment of a franchise marketing system in the whole country, and sponsored Chinese sports delegation to participate in various competitions at home and abroad for many years. After the successful bid of Beijing's Olympic bid, national sports became an upsurge instantly.

Thanks to this, Lining has also grown rapidly to become an industry leader behind Anta, another domestic sports brand.

In June 2004, Lining successfully landed on the Hongkong stock exchange.

In 2008, founder Lining was at the Olympic Games in the bird's nest.

Lighting the torch made Lining brand known instantly.

Data show that in 2009, Lining sold more than the German sports brand Adidas in the domestic sports market, second only to the American sports giant Nike.

In 2010, Lining announced the brand new slogan "let change happen" to replace "anything is possible" and replace the brand Logo. In the same year, the brand sales reached the peak of history over 9 billion yuan, and the number of stores in the country exceeded 8000.

From the long line of history, the 1990 movement

The birth of the brand represents the first batch of brands that emphasize personal influence after China's reform and opening up.

Similarly, in 1982, the cosmetic brand "Yuesai", created by Jin Yuxi in the Chinese market, is also seen as a microcosm of this phenomenon.

Both sports shoes and toiletries, to a certain extent, represent modern lifestyles and are popular with young consumers at that time.

With the rapid change of sports fashion retailing and the pressure of foreign sports brands, and because of the blind expansion of shops, Lining suffered a lot of backlog in 2011.

In order to stop the loss as soon as possible, Lining decided to abandon the old middle-aged and old consumer groups and turn to the younger generation.

But the product is not keeping pace with the brand image.

Subsequently, Lining suffered losses for three consecutive years, totaling 3 billion 100 million yuan. In 2012, Lining closed 1821 stores altogether.

Some analysts believe that the main reason for Lining's failure in this age change is to abandon the established market of the brand completely, but when he enters the new market, he ignores the accurate brand positioning and establishes an effective emotional connection with the target consumer.

When the fall situation was almost out of control, Lining, who was retiring behind the scenes, decided to "come back again" after careful consideration.

In July 2015, Lining announced that he was re elected as chief executive in person.

After the return of Lining, the first move is to change the brand slogan to "anything is possible", implying that he wants to make the brand stand up again.

At the same time, Lining also significantly reduced the number of franchisees, and increased the proportion of Direct stores from 35% to over 50%, so as to prevent a large number of backlog problems.

From continuous loss

It took Lining only a year to reverse.

Over the past two years, Lining has begun to introspection on the essence of his personal influence brand. He has continued to tap the value of Lining's brand and how to tell the Millennium generation of brand stories that resonate with him.

The newly released 2019 spring summer series takes the brand creation age as the time axis node, takes the brand's "starting jacket" as the starting point of design, and inject the cultural background of Lining's personal experience, bringing the collocation styles and styles of 90s sportswear, including the classic sports jacket and gym suit, into the new series.

Lining landed in New York fashion week, which seemed to let consumers see the hope of the rise of domestic clothing brands.

In addition to the shape and style that cater to the current revival movement, Lining is also gradually becoming more and more familiar with motivate consumers.

In the last quarter, the Manifesto slogan "China Lining" and the large print of "Prince of gymnastics" were used to convey more impacting information by text.

Two white pajamas style shirts from Berlin brand Random Identities also decorate Chinese characters, one is "China Lining" and the other is "arbitrary status".

A slightly semantic analysis of these words makes it easy to see the latest series of insights into young consumers.

"Prince" and "China" point to a certain identity of blood or race.

Nowadays, when young consumers buy clothing products, they do not buy clothes, but the meaning of clothes as symbols, and the new identity established by clothes.

With the global travel and the reception of internationalized information, it has become the habit of young people in China. Many of them are unwilling to assimilate and neglect the western culture in the process of globalization. They are eager to establish their unique identity, and the clothing representing Chinese culture and patriotic feelings and fashion at the same time becomes a kind of market demand that can not be ignored.

This also provides an explanation for the increasing interest of young consumers in domestic products.

According to the CBNData report released by the first financial and business data center, with the escalation of consumption, domestic products are rising vigorously, and over half of the market of domestic goods in clothing, home and other related consumer areas.

The consumption of imported products in coastal areas such as Shandong and Fujian has increased, but the growth rate of Beijing and other traditional cities and developed areas such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai has been limited.

This shows that consumers in the developed areas closer to consumption upgrading are turning to domestic brands.

After 90% of young consumers in China, their interest in Zara, H&M and other international fast fashion brands is gradually decreasing, but they are more interested in domestic brands.

A report released earlier by McKinsey said that the global fashion industry will create an incremental market of $2 trillion and 500 billion in 2018.

And several emerging markets led by Asia will be the main thrust of the global fashion industry's growth.

This gives the domestic brand a broader expectation and market prospect.

Against this background, the domestic tide brand (usually referred to as the "national tide") has also developed into a potential business with the help of the two trend of the rising of domestic goods and the trend of movement.

There are not only brands that have developed relatively mature, such as CLOT and NPC, but also emerging brands such as Lost General, Randomevent and so on, which are popular among celebrities and online variety shows.

For Lining, a sports brand based on the spirit of true Patriotic Sports, new market opportunities have also arrived.

Lining BADFIVE street culture women's wear line chief

For fashion headlines, "now there are many brands in the market, and there are many sports brands, but Lining brand has some special attributes when it is named by the founders. Such historical and cultural accumulation will become the advantage of the brand.

When we tell the brand story, we hope to pass this accumulation on to the young people, which is also the key to distinguish ourselves from other domestic brands.

Zheng Ruicai, an industry trend analyst, said earlier that "Lining's exposure to the international fashion week has been exposed to a lot of exposure in social media. One of the reasons is that Lining is a truly sporty Chinese brand. There are real athlete genes, so that it has caused a stir in fashion circles besides clothes in fashion circles. This has been different from Anta and 361, and brand recognition is the highest among domestic brands, with a rich cognitive foundation.

The second is that its design has subverted the domestic consumers' understanding of the brand, breaking the impression of traditional old and boring domestic clothing brands. Third, the domestic sports brand has been on the fashion week, and the public opinion environment has become more internationalized.

In addition to emphasizing the status of Chinese goods, Lining aimed at the trend of sports brand fashion.

For a long time, Lining took the professional sports brand as the orientation, which originated from the athlete's experience of founder Lining, so athlete professionalism was also written into the brand spirit.

Before the movement style was accepted by the fashion industry, the boundaries between sports and fashion were also very clear.

Around 2014, with the spread of Athleisure sports and leisure, the boundary between sports and fashion was officially broken. This not only meant that fashion brands began to launch sports style products, but also marked the beginning of fashion pursuit of sports brands.

In the global market, Adidas, as the beneficiary of this trend, quickly counterattacked. Nike struggled to get rid of the sportsmen professionalism persisted, instead of fashion design and star marketing. Under Armour eventually became out of fashion because it did not follow the fashion trend in time.

Under the leadership of Rihanna, Puma boarded the fashion week in Paris, captured the capital of "fashion discourse power", and promoted the trend of sports brand fashion to a higher level.

Lining, who captured this trend, became the first sport brand in China to enter the international fashion week, which, to some extent, enhanced national confidence for consumers.

In the competition of sports shoes, the competition is not price, but who is more "cool".

Whether the $1000 Lining sports shoes or the $8000 luxury brand sneakers are in the selection list of the millennial generation with spending power, they are more willing to pay for the uniqueness of products and brands than the price considerations.

Lining is on fire. Behind this is the Chinese consumers' time complex and the expectation of domestic clothing brands.

In the 2019 spring and summer series of Lining, the first classic product of China's Lining, which was born in 1991, returned from 001 (001 R-I).

AURORA SKYWALKER, combined with multiple fabric combinations and built-in functional socks, is a new upgrade of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

Combined with the 3D design and compound tone elements currently popular among young consumers, Lining also launched the latest running shoe Ace Furious Rider Ace.

Last year, Lining and rap brand GOSH sold the custom shoes "Le is the fog capital", and then signed the "Chinese hip-hop" champion GAI, launched the joint sneakers "GAI is perfect."

"Fashion is the most effective language to connect brands with young consumers. We have the genes of sports brand, the guarantee of technology, the construction of a complete quality platform, the current trend in design, and the outward output of representing Chinese culture. There will be great opportunities," Lining, director of product design at Sun Mingxu, told fashion headlines.

Products, brand stories, and appropriate emotional agitation, Lining gathered the three elements to create influence.

Facts have proved that this strategy has worked for Lining.

4 months ago, the New York Fashion Week "Tmall China Japan Tmall China Day" was officially unveiled.

Among the four brands led by Tmall, Lining became the biggest winner of the test.

As the show and brand on the Tmall electronic business platform to open the "look at the buy" mode, many showrooms sold out in one minute.

According to fashion business express, Lining's share price rose nearly 10% after the show, and its market value soared by 6 billion in one month.

The topic of social media was also detonated, and Lining's WeChat index soared to 18934395 in 3 days. The daily ring ratio was nearly 300%. The WeChat public number reported that the total exposure of Lining's New York fashion week was over 15 million.

On the eve of the Paris men's wear week, Lining also continued to send positive signals.

In June 12th, Lining's share price rose more than 6%, a record high, and its share price rose 1.76% to HK $8.68 after yesterday's show.

Since this year, it has accumulated more than 30%, becoming the 20 billion level clothing group.

According to the fashion headline data, last year, Lining group's revenue grew 10.7% to 8 billion 874 million yuan, gross profit increased 12.7% to 4 billion 180 million yuan, and gross margin increased 0.8 percentage point to 47.1%.

In the same store sales, Lining sales increased by 10% to 20% in the first quarter of this year, of which retail and wholesale channels recorded 10% to 20% and the number of units increased. The electricity providers also recorded a significant increase of 30% to 40%.

In order to compete for more young people, Lining quietly launched a small program mall earlier, intending to further expand the business of e-commerce.

The group said it will further integrate multiple brand resources into the electronic business platform in the future, forming the resultant force of shop matrix and shop matrix from the media.

In addition to core brand Lining, the group also builds brand matrix through the enhancement of children's clothing category.

After experiencing the two test run with the children's wear brand, Lining set up a children's wear department in 2016, and last year launched his own brand, Lining YOUNG.

According to data in the first half of 2017, Lining YOUNG has 20 stores in 14 provinces across the country, and is expanding its children's clothing business.

Ceng Huafeng, chief financial officer of Lining, said at the beginning of this year that the 2018 target was the increase in the number of units, which means that Lining is expected to enter the 10 billion for the first time.

In 2010, Lining's sales had sprint to 9 billion 478 million yuan, which was only a step away from 10 billion.

With Lining attracting more and more attention to the international fashion week, global expansion has naturally been on the agenda.

Some analysts believe that enhancing international exposure is more beneficial to Lining group's bargaining power in the acquisition of international brands.

In the face of Anta, 31st degree, XTEP international competition and their respective layout in brand diversification, Lining said earlier that there would be better companies in the competition. The group would make the brand the best and focus on the core products, but in the future, it would not exclude potential mergers and acquisitions that meet the company's development requirements, and is actively looking for M & A targets.

In response to the recent sale of Puma, Lining has become the latest buyer of Anta's latest speculation.

Some people in the industry believe that the acquisition of Puma may be a competitive weapon for Lining to match Anta.

Analysis also pointed out that even in the discussion of fashion and shoes circles, Lining's discussion fever seems to have always been higher than that of Anta, which means that the potential of Lining in fashion is still great.

No one wants to see the rise of domestic brands more than Chinese consumers, but conquering consumers must be good products.

Obviously, Lining's goal of "going out" is still "coming back". After all, Chinese young people have become the focus of global sports and fashion brands.