Operation Danskin Two Years Lining Multi Brand Road Of The Two Exploration Can Be Successful?

"We would rather squeeze here than Lining headquarters in Beijing."

This is the first sentence that Yan Zhigang, general manager of Danskin China, said in an interview.

Two years ago, Lining bought the American women's sports brand with a history of more than 100 years.

At that time, Lining just got rid of the low point of 3 years and made a profit. And in the past eight years, he has not bought other brands.

Return to the right track

It needs to be "disgrace before a snow" in many brand areas.

After all, Lining's acquisition of Lotto, Ai Gao and Kaisen were not successful.

Danskin, that is

Proving itself a brand new battlefield for multi brand capabilities.

This time, Lining chose new tactics.

"We have three independencies: recruiting people outside the Lining system and putting headquarters independence in Shanghai. I personally report directly to Mr. Li, chairman of the board of directors (Mr. Lining)," Yan Zhigang said. Even in the future, Danskin should have its own supply chain.

Before signing Danskin in 2016, Lining himself confirmed the operation mode of Danskin.

"I asked him if you wanted business or business (brand), and he did not hesitate to tell me that he wanted business," Yan Zhigang recalled the first time the two people met.

Lining, who wants to succeed in business, has become more pragmatic.

Lining signed with Ennis.

Danskin was born in New York in 1882, started from Ballet dances. In 50s, it introduced the multifunctional biaxial stretch nylon tights, swept the figure skating and gymnastic fields, and launched the life leisure series in 60s.

In 2007, acennis, a well-known management company, acquired this Centennial brand. In October 18, 2016, Li Ning Co and acennis agreed to cooperate exclusively with Danskin in mainland China and Macao.

According to lazy bear sports, the contract price is about 100 million yuan.

"Danskin has more opportunities than challenges. A global brand of more than 100 years has opened more than 500 stores in Japan for 12 years," Yan Zhigang said.

When he first acquired Fila, Anta became the first employee of the new brand and has been the director of the national sales and operation Department. This experience has accumulated rich experience in his brand operation.

Before that, Yan Zhigang worked as a regional sales manager in Nike for a long time. "Office has never been out of Beijing and Jianguomen, CBD."

Yan Zhigang, who has soaked in tall buildings and CBD factories in Jinjiang, has also been reflected.

The demand for Danskin is more consistent with brand tonality.

Demand.

Danskin K11 flagship store in Shanghai.

Shanghai's K11, Danskin's first store in China is on the two floor of the art shopping center.

On both sides of Danskin, UA and PUMA Select are the two sports brands. The former mainly focuses on fitness, and the latter is a trend series.

Danskin sandwiched in the middle presents a retro stage effect, with black tape and books placed in the shop.

At present, Danskin has 5 product lines, including STUIDO series of sports fitness, U-RHYTHM series of fashion trends, O-LEISURE series for daily needs of workplace white-collar workers, DANCE series of American DNA and high-end Yoga Series in Japan, of which 3 product lines are more frequent.

170 square meters of stores, on the left are sports life products.

The price ranges from 320-480 yuan.

There are several professional dancers in the middle, which account for only 5% of the Chinese market, and the price is 320-580 yuan.

On the right side of the store, there are professional sports products such as training and running. The price of tight pants is between 480 and 620 yuan, and sports underwear sells for 420 to 480 yuan.

Many skin clothes,

Leisure sportswear is a fashion and high-end product line, priced at 880 yuan, 980 yuan, and 1080 yuan.

In terms of pricing, Danskin has clearly entered the top ranks.

Location of Danskin.

Take sports underwear as an example, the price of Nike is between 229-399 yuan, most of lululemon's style is around 420 yuan, but a few people rush to the top of 550 yuan, 650 yuan, or even 850 yuan.

The price of Danskin is above Nike, Adidas and Fila, but under the brand of lululemon and Dizon.

The foundation of consumers' willingness to pay for high prices is the professionalism, fashion and brand awareness and premium space of products.

Therefore, Danskin must tell a story for its pricing.

"Pricing is the initiative," Yan Zhigang said. "We take the women's movement as an advantage and consider the color and shape of Chinese women in the face of China's middle class in the perspective of a 100 year US brand."

Danskin should balance between brand gene and market demand.

Danskin is a high-end yoga in Japan, a group dance in Brazil, and a fitness brand in Korea and Britain.

China's Danskin does not import products from its headquarters, but develops and produces products according to market demand.

Lining's 2017 earnings description of Danskin is "dance and yoga fashion fitness products".

In Lining's brand matrix, it includes red double happiness table tennis products, AI Gao outdoor sporting goods, Kaisheng badminton products and lotto sports fashion products.

Danskin is a supplement to Lining's high-end brand, and also fills the shortage of women's sports.

Yan Zhigang admits that Danskin's mind is not precise at present, which means that when it comes to Danskin, consumers can not produce specific associations.

Lululemon can be directly related to yoga.

"We can't be too greedy, focus, do professional sports and take a little leisure," Yan Zhigang said. In the future, half of Danskin's products are professional sports and half of them are leisure products.

This positioning has also enabled Danskin to enter the first tier business circles in the first tier cities. At present, Danskin is located in 10 stores in China.

"These stores are hard to enter, and we will die," Yan Zhigang said. "Our staff chatting, are rigid things, sales, and deduction points, I will talk about soft, commodity differentiation, marketing differentiation."

However, the speed of 10 stores in two years is not fast enough, and JOMA, which almost entered the Chinese market at the same time as Danskin, was sold by Geely Group in 2016. After that, 250 stores were opened in two years, of which 230 were directly owned.

This brand, which is the main soccer player in Spain, is playing a leading role in China. Its price is above Anta, Lining and Fila.

JOMA China CEO Ye Qi previously accepted the interview with lazy bear sports, said that JOMA entered China's first two years mainly to do commodity (planning landing), terminal construction and retail training three aspects of work, but in brand building and brand promotion, more efforts will be made.

Compared with the quantity, Yan Zhigang cares more about store effect. He spent a year with the team to open his first store. "Danskin business development is slower than I think. Now the store effect is not ideal. Now, there are more than ten million (monthly) targets with more than 200 thousand yuan," he hopes to accumulate word of mouth effect and expand again after exploring the single store mode.

It can be seen that, according to the first half of the year, Fila's single month store efficiency is about about 500000 yuan, while Lululemon is 3 million 400 thousand yuan.

This also determines the Danskin's careful Marketing -- no spokesperson or large-scale activities, but there are more than 1000 VIP members who usually hold small sports activities such as sports, costume ball, flower arranging, etc. in the store.

Danskin held a "salute classic" at the store.

Compared with the big marketing investment, Danskin communicates with consumers in the most direct way.

DTC (sold directly to consumers) is the major brand in the past few years has been continuously invested in business.

"I often go to the store to chat with consumers. Our shop assistants say in groups every day what consumers buy today and why they buy it, such as the position of clothes buttons is not right, we immediately change the designer," Yan Zhigang hopes to build a quick response mechanism, which can ensure that products respond to the needs of consumers in time.

In his cognition, the product is the first, "product + marketing + operation + management" is 1+0+0+0, only 1 has 0, 1 has not done well, 0 a lot of, it is useless.

Danskin is obviously still in the grinding stage of "1".

He led a small group of more than 20 people, who have changed 50% rapidly.

He hopes to keep this scale forever, and use flexible and flexible flat organizations to deal with the rapid changes of the outside world.

The caution in Danskin is Lining's experience of running multi brands in 15 years.

In 2003, Lining obtained the exclusive agency power of KAPPA in mainland China and Macao. In 2005, he established a joint venture with AIGLE. He bought a 57.5% stake in red double happiness for 305 million yuan next year and won the Lotto franchise in the next 20 years with nearly 400 million yuan.

Among these sub brands, only KAPPA, which was independent of China's trend in 2006, has experienced brilliant achievements.

Benefiting from the differentiation of the fashion movement and benefiting from the beginning of the Chinese sporting goods industry, KAPPA has been able to sweep the streets and lanes of China with colorful T-shirts in the primitive way of the horse racing enclosure, and its revenue has reached about 4 billion yuan.

AI Gao and lotto have been copying the way of KAPPA expansion under such a trend.

In 2009, Lining officially launched Lotto brand operation.

In 2004, he joined Lining's Wu Xianyong and became the leader of his career.

In the first year, Lotto opened 171 stores in 53 cities across the country, including 58 outlets and about 76000000 revenue.

"Although the business is still in a negative state of profitability, the deficit has been controlled within the budget.

The planned Lotto (Le Tu) brand will achieve good development in the next two to three years, "Lining said in his current earnings report.

When the market competition is not yet fierce, the horse racing enclosure can really achieve the best results in the early stage. After all, the only shopping channel for consumers is physical stores, and their choice is not too large.

But when the market becomes more saturated, this single expansion is the other side of the coin.

The brand has not yet been identified and the commodity has not yet been optimized. The expansion of channels can only bring ineffective passenger flow, but can not be converted into purchasing power.

If this adjustment is made, too many stores will be a heavy burden.

In 2010, the second years of operation began to relocate the brand and fully implement entertainment marketing and expand channel development.

In the middle of the year, music began to adjust, emphasizing the retail profitability, but the annual income was still only about 90000000 yuan, and the brand awareness was only 18.7% growth, which was worse than Lining's expectations.

In 2011, nearly 120 million yuan of revenue has become the "peak" of Lotto, which is far from Lining's expectations.

Lining began to seek adjustment in 2012, and entered into a supplemental agreement with Lotto Sport to advance the termination date of Lotto concessions from the end of 2028 to 2018 in December 31st. That is to say, 20 years of franchising time was cut half after 5 years of operation.

At this point, Lining did not announce the income of Lotto again. The income of Lotto began to be counted as "other brands" in 2013, shops closed, businesses shifted to online channels, production, research and development, and sales were distributed to Lining Shanghai e-commerce.

Other brands, including lotto, Ai Gao, and Kaisen, account for a total decline in the total revenue of Lining group, from 3.1% in 2012 to 2.2% in the next year, and 1.7% in 2014, until the first time below 1% last year, with only 0.6% left.

Admittedly, the crisis of industrial inventories that broke out in 2012 has caused almost all brands to fall.

But Fila, which almost entered the Chinese market at the same time as Lotto, has been successful after that.

In 2009, Anta acquired Fila's trademark rights and business in China.

At the very beginning, Fila also experienced a swing position, once imitated KAPPA, opened shop next to KAPPA, but after KAPPA declined, Fila also used Lacoste as a new benchmarking, and took comfort as a just need, breaking through the geographical and seasonal restrictions.

The simple design of Italian style makes Fila easy to match, and consumers like to buy complete sets of products, which means high unit price and store efficiency.

After losing five years ago, Fila began to stride forward in 2013, expanding its stores and expanding the product line to children, fashion and professional sports.

By the first half of this year, Fila already had 1284 direct outlets, and its revenue exceeded 5 billion yuan last year.

This proves the market space and feasibility of multi brand operation, and also enables other domestic brands to see hope.

After eight years, Lining once again chose Danskin as a new experiment in this business.

As in 2008, Lining was also on the rise in 2016.

But the difference is that this is the climb after the lowest tide. Lining knows better and more effectively and allocates funds and resources.

Lining himself returned to the daily management of the company, and Lining was more cohesive.

The sports industry has also undergone tremendous changes in the past eight years. In 2011, Anta surpassed Lining to become the largest sports brand in China. The success of Fila made the multi brand acquisition become the trend of Chinese sports brand. The new retail outlet was born, and the way of communication with consumers has undergone unprecedented changes. The market of segmentation sports has also gradually risen, and the sports and leisure style prevails.

The sports industry has finally changed from pursuing the "first big to the strong" to the "first strong and the big". It has got rid of the myth of the horse race enclosure, reduced the channel, and paid more attention to the retail efficiency.

Against this background, Lining runs low-key Danskin.

"Reasonable and prudent use of resources to invest in sports market with opportunities, including investing in Danskin brands.

Brand channel development is still dominated by testing at this stage.

In the future, the brand will be mainly promoted by digital channels, passing on brand values and strengthening ties of communication with consumers through daily contacts, "Lining said in his 2018 annual report, which is in sharp contrast to the past.

If Danskin can succeed, it will also be a great help to Lining group. Lining's current challenge is to reform the retail business and improve the retail efficiency.

The rhythm of Yan Zhigang's mind is like this. When a single store has a monthly average store effect of 350 thousand yuan, that is, about 4000000 times a year, it will expand to 3 and 400 stores to reach the scale of about 1 billion 500 million yuan.

"The ten year plan of Danskin will go through four stages. Now it is 1. Next year, it will be 2. In the future, we can make men, shoes and children's clothing, and then develop rapidly. 4 is to make more Danskin sub brands," Yan Zhigang said.

Lining himself used a tolerant attitude to look at this new business. "Women are Lining's weakest market. At present, we are still in the exploratory stage, how to find the brand positioning product positioning, and will continue to try this year by the end of this year," Lining himself said.

Two years after entering China, Danskin is still looking for the turning point of the outbreak. We hope that once the inflection point arrives, Danskin will dance.

"Don't worry," Lining himself said to Danskin.