Returning To The Old Line, Converse Announced The Return To The Basketball Shoe Market.

CONVERSE (Converse), once popular with NBA, intends to continue its basketball story.

In April 17th, at the new conference of Broolyn, New York, the motion tide announced that it would return to the professional basketball shoes Market in 2019.

"Our brand has a history of 110 years. CONVERSE is really a basketball brand," said Brandis Russell, vice president of Brandis Russell. "Youth culture and basketball culture are interrelated. We hope to participate in it and establish contacts with young people inside and outside the stadium."

Obviously, when the canvas shoes are slowing down, CONVERSE hopes to win the attention of the young consumer market by regaining its own basketball genes.

Meanwhile, CONVERSE has released a new pair of professional basketball shoes as the top brand products announced to return to the market.

These new shoes, called "All Star Pro BB", continue the design of classic canvas shoes Chuck Taylor.

But at the performance level, CONVERSE uses more Nike technology, including the Nike React foam cushion, the Nike Quadfit mesh upper, and the lighter shoes.

Damien Silver, deputy director of creative creative design for CONVERSE, said that before that, the R & D cycle of All Star Pro BB shoes has been more than a year and a half, and the final design has been finalized after more than 50 test versions of Damion Silver.

Nike designer Thomas Bell (Thomas Bell) revealed that for business secrets purposes, shoes had not been labeled with any trademark during the design and testing process. "The athletes who helped test did not know whether they were Nike shoes or CONVERSE shoes. They kept asking if this was a modern version of Chuck Taylor shoes."

All Star Pro BB has two black and white matching colors, will be listed in the United States in May this year, priced at 140 U.S. dollars (940 yuan), is expected to be sold in China in June.

CONVERSE said that this summer there will also be a variety of basketball shoes for life.

It can be seen that Nike brand has introduced technology to CONVERSE products to support its return to the basketball shoe market, which is attracting unprecedented attention from the group.

In fact, when Nike bought CONVERSE at the price of 305 million US dollars in 2003, most people were not optimistic about the prospect of CONVERSE being traded.

At that time, the industry believed that Nike's acquisition of CONVERSE focused on basketball players' resources and channels.

Founded in 1908, CONVERSE is one of the oldest brands in the American sports shoes market. After 38 years of CONVERSE's appearance, the NBA alliance was established.

At that time, CONVERSE basketball shoes already had excellent package performance and cushioning technology, and the appearance was outstanding.

Meanwhile, before 1980s, because of the lack of competition in the basketball market, CONVERSE soon became the overlord of the NBA alliance.

This sport veteran has become the first choice for early players, including Chamberlain, Russell, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan.

But not long after, brands such as Nike, Adidas and Reebok were rising. The old CONVERSE CONVERSE, who had no idea of their reaction, was too late to respond.

Since 1990s, all the CONVERSE boots have disappeared, and the decline of basketball products has made this old brand die.

After Nike took the lead, it first merged the remaining resources of CONVERSE basketball series with CONVERSE's basketball shoes with low technical content and relatively low price as Nike's low-end products to attract young consumers.

In terms of players' endorsement, Nike signed some young players with strength through CONVERSE, and the business value of these rookies was improved, and Nike was then dug into the original brand name.

In other words, CONVERSE is seen as Nike's "springboard" on the basketball court.

Relying on CONVERSE's resources and brand's original technological strength, Nike has been standing firmly in NBA for the past 10 years.

After CONVERSE's basketball superiority and sports attribute were weakened, it gradually became marginalized, and Nike pformed it into a leisure brand.

In the years after the acquisition, CONVERSE could not find its way for the time being.

Even after that, the performance situation is still not optimistic.

Obviously, with the rise of the global sports trend, VANS, PUMA and other sports tide cards have taken a strong market share, and similar products on the market have increased dramatically.

Since 2016, sales of CONVERSE, which rely too much on classic canvas shoes Chuck Taylor, have declined.

In the 2018 fiscal year ended May 31, 2018, Nike's parent company's sales amounted to US $36 billion 400 million, but CONVERSE's brand was in trouble. In the fourth quarter, sales fell 14% to 512 million US dollars, down 11% to 1 billion 890 million US dollars a year, once again below the US $2 billion mark, or even less than the performance of 2015 fiscal year.

At the same time, CONVERSE's profitability has weakened.

In fiscal year 2018, its pre tax profit fell from $477 million to $310 million, up 35% from a year ago.

Now, finding the "old version" and returning to the field of professional basketball shoes, CONVERSE is looking forward to a turning point.

It is worth noting that the American basketball shoe market has become very crowded.

Recently, BallerShoesDB has released a list of major sports brands in the NBA alliance. To a large extent, it reflects the overall market situation, and the number of mainstream brands exceeds 10.

This season, up to 62.6% of NBA players choose to wear Nike boots, and if they add Jordan brand, the proportion will be as high as 72%.

In addition, Adidas accounted for 15.8%, Under Armour and PUMA were favored by 4.6% and 2.1% players respectively.

Similar to the situation in CONVERSE, PUMA announced in March 2018 that it has returned to professional basketball shoes market after 17 years.

In addition to signing many potential rookies and winning the warrior center Cousins as the top card, PUMA has also become an official market partner of NBA alliance.

In addition, there are plans to return to the basketball market with New Balance.

Not long ago, the US veteran just signed the Raptor Kowhai Leonard.

In the face of fierce competition in basketball market, especially in the group's Nike brand and Jordan brand's basketball position is relatively strong, Brandis Russell, vice president of CONVERSE footwear, said she was not worried about the loss of internal competition.

"Nike has the best innovative technology, and Jordan is in the lead in brand philosophy. CONVERSE can focus on the athletes' personality style in Nike group product mix.

Through these three brands, we bring different attractions to consumers, "Russell explains CONVERSE's difference.

Eric Avar, vice president of Nike global design innovation (Eric Avar), believes that CONVERSE's advantages are simpler and more versatile, achieving high professional performance, but it may need to be improved in terms of lightweight and functional aspects. This is the reason why new products rely on Nike brand technology.

What is interesting is that after large-scale robbing of CONVERSE's basketball resources, it now supports the brand to return to the basketball market, and Nike's abacus plays loudly. This may be the beginning of the overall deployment of basketball business within the group.

Author: Luo Yingying