Betting On China'S "Losing Power" Reebok Reveals Its Ambitions

Reebok, Adidas's "revenue pack", hopes to return to its peak with the help of the Chinese market.

Recently, Reebok entered Shanghai fashion week for the first time, setting off the world's first show of Reebok's autumn and winter products in 2019.

The move was interpreted by insiders as a signal for Reebok to release further efforts in the Chinese market.

Reebok was once regarded as the fastest growing enterprise in the Americas, but its development in recent years was not ideal: Reebok's global sales fell by 3% in the latest Adidas earnings report.

It is noteworthy that in the Asia Pacific market, Reebok's sales grew by 3%.

The rapid growth of the Asia Pacific market has also given Reebok more confidence.

Prior to this, Reebok not only set up a product creative center in Shanghai, but also launched a joint name to further win over Chinese consumers.

The industry believes that Reebok wants to take a place in the Chinese market, and it needs more precise product positioning. If Reebok can turn over the market, it can also help Adidas fight against Nike.

New signal of Shanghai debut

In March 27th, Reebok joined hands with Shanghai fashion week to present the 2019 Shanghai fashion week, autumn and winter in the new world, Pinghu. The Reebok spokesperson William Chan and the famous rapper Future also attended the opening show to help Reebok.

It is noteworthy that this is the first time that Reebok has landed in Shanghai fashion week. It is also the world's first show of Reebok's autumn and winter products in 2019.

Reebok takes the theme of "The OtherSide" as a theme, setting off a retro style fashion show.

In this show, Reebok presents the most advanced design and technology innovation products in the 2019 autumn and winter. It mainly includes the pioneer products of the Reebok pioneer concept series, the ReebokSoleFury series and the debut winter and autumn innovative footwear Interval, which break through the definition of traditional sports and fashion.

At the same time, Reebok is also playing the special series of "spring and summer" in the spring and summer of 2019 on the Tmall platform. It can purchase instantly at the big show side, and further narrow the distance from the Chinese consumers.

In addition, Reebok will also host the first BOF ChinaPrize award in collaboration with BOF Fashion Business Review in Shanghai fashion week.

And will join hands with China's top new designers to work together to create a new exclusive limited footwear.

"This activity is part of Reebok's strategic plan to further expand the Asian market," Reebok global president Matt MattO said in an interview with Toole.

Over the past few years, we have been investing more in China. Like most brands, we also think there is great potential here. "

In fact, Reebok's fashion week in Shanghai is also the largest and most influential contemporary fashion platform in China.

"Reebok has always been a bold, unregulated brand, and we are willing to make some new attempts. When most international brands are just trying to introduce the western fashion into the East, Reebok is willing to" reverse "and come to the Oriental fashion capital to absorb the emerging trend force, because we know that the future of fashion, fashion and innovation will be here, especially China.

ChadWittman, vice president of Reebok Asia Pacific brand and general manager of Greater China, said.

Cheng Weixiong, general manager of textile and clothing management and Shanghai Liang Qi Brand Management Co., Ltd., told the Beijing Commercial Daily reporter that nowadays, the trend of domestic brands to integrate into international and international brands has become the trend of clothing brands, especially for sports brands.

For example, before Lining boarded the fashion week of New York and Paris, this is a step towards the international brand.

And Reebok landing in Shanghai fashion week is also hoping that the brand will become more popular and further expand the Chinese market.

Restructuring and sales rebound

In order to consolidate the brand's position in China's sports consumption market, Reebok set up a product creative center in Shanghai in 2018 and signed many Chinese designers.

The creative center is mainly responsible for product design and marketing layout in the Chinese market. Some products are only listed in China or Asia.

Most of the products displayed in the fashion week in Shanghai come from the design of the creative center, hoping to show its sports and fashion categories to the Chinese market.

In early 2017, Reebok also revealed that it plans to open 500 brand image stores in the Chinese market by 2020, when the target was 50.

Insiders pointed out that behind the constant increase of the Chinese market is closely related to Reebok's "frustration" in the global market and the Asia Pacific market, including China.

Adidas's latest report shows Reebok's global sales are down 3%.

Among them, sales in the Asia Pacific market increased by 3% to 336 million euros.

From the earnings report, this is the fastest growing region in the world's major markets.

At present, the volume of sales in the Asia Pacific market is second only to Europe and North America. This also means that the Asia Pacific market has become the third largest market of Reebok.

However, Adidas did not disclose the specific performance of Reebok in Greater China.

In fact, Reebok had been brilliant before.

It is understood that Reebok was founded in 1895, the founder of Joseph Forster (Joseph WilliamFoster) to create the first pair of shoes is "Forster running shoes", which is the world's first pair of spikes.

It is easy to see that Reebok started off with running shoes.

By 1970s, Reebok has become one of the ten best brands in the world.

In 1981, Reebok's sales exceeded $1 million 500 thousand.

Footwear sales continued to soar, surging to $1 billion 400 million in 1987, a 10 fold increase over 1981.

Therefore, Reebok is considered to be the fastest growing enterprise in the Americas.

In 1992, Reebok made strategic adjustments.

The key points of the market are equally divided into fitness sports and other sports, especially the development of basketball shoes.

In 1996, Reebok signed a cooperation agreement with Iverson, the famous basketball star at that time, so that Reebok's basketball career had a new start.

While developing the basketball market, Reebok is also looking for new opportunities in the football market.

In 1996, Reebok signed a comprehensive sponsorship agreement with the Liverpool football club, including all clothing sponsorship of the football club.

So far, in the world sports commodity market, the top three are Nike, Adidas and Reebok.

In 2006, Adidas bought all of Reebok's shares for $3 billion 800 million in order to further expand the market.

According to the insiders, Adidas's acquisition of Reebok can compete against Nike. Although there are some competition between the two products, they are not completely coincident, and all of Reebok's resources will be trapped by Adidas, which will help expand the market.

It is not easy to return to the status of rivers and lakes.

However, in recent years, Reebok's performance has been sluggish. Especially in the Chinese market, Reebok is obviously behind FILA and other brands. This also makes the industry continue to say that Adidas's acquisition of Reebok may, to a certain extent, want to "marginalized" the brand.

In fact, the rumour of selling Reebok has been heard in 2012, and it was rampant at the end of 2014.

Previously, Adidas group's three major golf brands such as Telme, AdamsGolf and Ashworth, as well as ice hockey brand CCM Hockey have been clearly listed as the scope of sale.

But at the end of 2015, RobinStalke, Adidas's chief financial officer, made it clear that Reebok would not be sold.

But Cheng Weixiong believes that the main reason why Reebok has been in the Chinese market in recent years is that the brand positioning is fuzzy.

Before that, Reebok chose to pform basketball from fitness to basketball and then to football. Now Reebok is back to fitness and pays more attention to the trend.

This is similar to Kappa, Puma and other sports, but also means Reebok's position is constantly swaying.

For Reebok's positioning change, Beijing Business Daily reporter interviewed Reebok, as of press time, the other side did not give official reply.

However, in 2016, Adidas set a goal for Reebok, which achieved significant sales growth and profit growth in 2020.

There is no final conclusion on how to achieve this goal, but it is foreseeable that China's sporting goods market is bursting with vitality.

Data show that in 2017, China's sporting goods industry achieved 148 billion 490 million yuan in main business income, an increase of 6.3% over the same period last year.

In the past 2013-2017 years, the income and profit of China's sporting goods industry have been increasing. The average annual compound growth rate in the five years is 7.64% and 9.37% respectively.

It is estimated that by 2022, the income scale of China's sporting goods industry will exceed 200 billion yuan.

Taking a look at the current domestic brands such as Anta, Lining, XTEP and 31st degree, which are recovering, and competing for international brands such as Nike, Puma, MIZUNO and FILA, competition in sports goods market in China is becoming increasingly tight.

"This is also a challenge for Reebok."

Insiders say frankly.

"Although the market is big, not every brand can seize the opportunity to reinvigorate itself."

Cheng Weixiong also further pointed out that sports brands aimed at different types of demand for different consumers to expand the special sporting goods market. Therefore, segmentation of the market has also attracted more and more attention of many brands.

The market segmentation can clearly outline the user portrait, serve consumers more accurately, and seize the market.

At present, Reebok is not doing enough at this point.

Another interesting thing is that in order to further narrow the distance from Chinese consumers, Reebok recently released a joint product with William Chan. However, the advertisement of this product has aroused controversy: Reebok invited performers to dance and shoot at the crossroads under China World Trade Center bridge in Beijing, thus giving rise to consumers' dissatisfaction.

"In order to make videos, even life is not needed."

A netizen said.

Insiders say that disputes can create hot spots of public opinion, but consumers will not buy hot spots that are not ethical.

In the future, the problem that Reebok urgently needs to solve is to further focus on subdivision products and create its own exclusive DNA brand.