Lining'S Love With Or Anta'S Way To Kill

Anta and Lining, like a mature young man, are imposing.

As the two giants of the domestic sports brand, along the way, they are like a pair of lovers who are constantly cutting and confused.

In April 12th, Anta group announced its operating performance in the first quarter of 2019. The retail sales of Anta brand products increased by 10%-20% compared to the same period last year, and the retail sales of non main brand products rose by 65%-70% over the same period last year.

The announcement happened just second days after the announcement of Ding Shizhong, chairman of Anta group, as chairman of the board of directors of the amamin sports board.

Compared with Anta, Lining's performance is also eye-catching.

In April 16th, the closing price of Li Ning Co was HK $13.460 / share, which rose more than 112% compared with the October 11, 2018 low of HK $6.33 / share, hitting a new high in the past 8 years.

At the same time, Lining is launching a new trend of domestic products in the industry. In February this year, New York fashion week, "China Lining" logo and "line" theme aroused heated debate.

It is not hard to see that Anta, as the two largest domestic sports equipment giant, is developing on the road of high-end and internationalization with the same coincidentally, Lining.

Little known is that after 28 years of Anta and 29 years of Lining, I do not know how much love and hate I have staged.

1, growth

In 1981, Ding Hemu, a farmer in Jinjiang, Fujian, became a shoemaker in partnership with people.

6 years later, Ding Hemu's 17 year old son, Ding Shizhong, came to Beijing with a few hundred pairs of shoes. With the toughness of Jinjiang people, she sold the shoes made in Jinjiang to the major shopping malls in Beijing, such as Wangfujing and Xidan.

In 1991, Ding Shizhong took the first pot of gold earned in Beijing for 4 years, established a shoe factory with his father, and registered the trademark of Anta.

In 1988, Lining, the gymnast prince who lost Seoul, announced his retirement at a farewell party sponsored by Jianlibao and announced that he joined Guangdong Jianlibao group. Lining's endorsement made the sales of Jianlibao increased by 30 million. The capital abundant Jianlibao decided to introduce foreign capital and Lining together to make clothes. The following year, Lining established the Guangzhou Lining with the help of Jianlibao group, and Lining brand was born.

Thanks to the extraordinary influence of the founder and the marketing campaign of the Olympic Games, Lining brand became popular rapidly, becoming the leader of the domestic sports brand in the 90s of last century.

Since then, the two brands have started a long journey of entrepreneurship.

In 1999, in order to create the brand, Ding Shizhong took the lead in giving out 800 thousand yuan, invited Kong Linghui to be the spokesman of Anta's image, and spent 3 million in CCTV advertising.

That year Anta's total profit was only 4 million. Fortunately, Ding had won the bet.

In 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Kong Linghui won the Olympic table tennis men's singles champion and won the Olympic Games table tennis men's singles champion. When winning the ball, he kissed the flag on the chest in a frenzy, and he said "I choose, I like" this slogan.

A few words, let Anta sweep China, sales in that year broke through 300 million.

After that endorsement, Anta not only became famous, but sales revenue also soared all the way, from 200 million in 1999 to 1 billion 260 million in 2006.

In 2007, Anta came to Hong Kong exchange.

At that time, Li Ning Co was not idle, and pioneered the establishment of the franchise marketing system in the whole country, and sponsored the Chinese sports delegation to participate in various major events at home and abroad for years.

In 2001, Beijing's bid for the Olympic Games was successful, and the national sports became an upsurge instantly.

Under the stimulation of the macro economy and Olympic bonus, Li Ning Co has ushered in the golden period of development, and its sales performance has been rising steadily, leading the other domestic sports brands.

In June 2004, Li Ning Co successfully landed at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and became the first local sports brand to be listed. It was three years ahead of rival Anta.

In 2008, the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, the historical scene of the Olympic flame ignited by Lining, founder of the Olympic Games, was imprinted on the hearts of the Chinese people forever.

Lining's brand also reached its peak.

A year later, Lining's brand revenue reached 8 billion 387 million yuan, net profit 945 million yuan, 7249 stores opened nationwide, China's market share was 9.7%, and Adidas, which surpassed 9.5%, was only 4.1% lower than Nike, and rose to second.

This has made love to Olympic marketing at that time and brought many regrets to Ding Shizhong who surpassed Lining as a career goal.

An indisputable fact is that in that year, the market share of Anta in China was only 8.2%.

Can Ding Shizhong lead Anta in the years ahead to catch up with the ambition of big brother Lining?

2, beyond

In order to achieve the cherished wish at an early date, Anta worked hard to catch up, and at the London Olympic Games in 2012, spared no expense and prepared sufficient matching funds to operate the cooperation project with the Chinese Olympic Games.

At that time, Anta took the Chinese Legion as the main direction, grabbing the biggest piece of the Olympic cake.

Anta is trying to catch up, but Lining does not give his opponent any wheezing.

In 2010, Lining experienced the supreme glory of the parabolic top, which was 9 billion 478 million yuan, but was close to the great goal of breaking billions of dollars.

Unfortunately, the law of prosperity is ruthless in the Lining brand.

Blindly confident strategy, let it stranded in a self built fence.

With the rapid expansion of the scale of sports industry, the contradiction between extension expansion and connotative development is becoming more and more obvious. The Li Ning Co found that the phenomenon of homogenization of products and business models is very serious in the industry, and the profit has a downward trend. Therefore, the company hopes to make the products more athletic and professional, thus starting the road of pformation and adjustment.

At that time, Beijing Olympic fever gradually subsided, the market environment changed, the industry as a whole high inventory, and gradually entered the inventory cycle.

With the rapid change of sports fashion retailing and the pressure of foreign sports brands, Li Ning Co, which was victorious by the victories, did not make corresponding adjustments. Instead, they chose to continue to expand stores in 2009 and 2010 to further enlarge the stock crisis.

During this period, Lining made drastic reforms: from opening up the internationalization process and setting up a high-end image, he announced 3 successive announces of 7%-17.9% prices for footwear and clothing products, and then went crazy to enter the first tier cities, trying to create a younger image.

These measures made Li Ning Co's performance fall off cliff in 2011, and net profit dropped from 1 billion 100 million yuan to 386 million yuan.

Faced with a large backlog of stocks, the company decided to give up its old and middle-aged consumers and turn to the younger generation after the loss.

This worsening decision exacerbated the decline of the company.

In the same year, rival Anta successfully squeezed out Li Ning Co and reached the throne with a net profit of 1 billion 730 million yuan.

China's first sports brand overlord plocation.

This location swap has been going on so far, and the gap between them is getting bigger and bigger as time goes by.

This result made many consumers in the first tier cities unimaginable, because Anta was never the first choice for them to buy sports equipment.

In their eyes, the Jinjiang sports brand represented by Anta is not "high-end, atmospheric and high-grade" in product design, but it occupies half of the advertising channel of CCTV sports channel.

Anta still maintains the positioning of consumers facing the three or four line, while the inventory and capacity war also makes it aware of the unsustainability of the traditional wholesale mode.

In Ding Shizhong's values, if a product can not prove itself from sales, it is a failure.

"I want to be a real" national shoes "so that more people can really afford it. I want 1 million people to play basketball in my shoes. This is our strategy.

Ding Shizhong said in an interview with the media.

3, glory and mire

In 2011, in order to speed up the cleaning up of retail end inventory, Li Ning Co plans to recover some of its dealers' inventory. In the year, it invested about 300 million yuan for inventory recovery.

In 2012, the Li Ning Co crisis broke out.

As of December 2012, Li Ning Co's total channel inventory accounted for more than 1 years old inventory accounted for 40%.

At the same time, the two generation management team of the company made a major adjustment to the company's business development strategy, and the adjustment result aggravated the company's crisis.

The launch of the new logo has forced all products printed with old logo to sell at a large price, and the new logo has not been recognized by young consumers after 90 years. The continuous increase in price has made the Lining brand lose its original cost performance advantage.

The departure of old consumers and the disapproval of new consumers led to a decline in Li Ning Co's market share.

With the embarrassment of brand positioning and the gradual decline of influence, the fate of Li Ning Co's decline is inevitable.

In 2012, Li Ning Co announced the failure of reform, and its performance continued to decline, when CEO Zhang Zhiyong resigned.

Under all circumstances, the company uses scraping and curing wounds to remove stubborn diseases.

In the same year, Li Ning Co introduced investor TPG, TPG Korean American partner Jin Zhenjun to replace Zhang Zhiyong in charge of the company's operation and management, and made a series of new attempts: from management adjustment to increase the construction of direct network, from the promotion of POSE terminal installation to centralized advertising, new measures increased the operation cost of Li Ning Co.

In order to get rid of the cost burden, in 2012, Li Ning Co closed 1821 stores in large areas.

However, the company lost 1 billion 979 million yuan due to the recovery of dealer inventory, the large impairment of accounts receivable, the sponsorship of CBA and Wade.

In the next two years, the company is still in deep mire of loss.

In 2013-2014 years, sustained high sponsorship expenses resulted in a loss of $392 million and $781 million.

In the three years when Jin Zhenjun was in power, Li Ning Co accumulated a total loss of 3 billion 152 million yuan. Under pressure, Jin Zhenjun took the blame and resigned. Li Ning Co was in deep mire.

Three years of loss made Li Ning Co suffer a lot, while Anta, the competitor, went all the way.

At that time, Anta still maintained the positioning of consumers facing the three or four line. At the same time, the fight to inventory and capacity went to make it aware of the unsustainability of the traditional wholesale mode.

In 2012, when the industry entered the cold winter, Anta chairman Ding Shizhong suggested that Anta should shift from "brand wholesale" to "brand retail", and focus on the sustainable development of the retail network.

Ding Shizhong has made bold efforts to optimize and upgrade Anta's shop: direct control of stores, reduce the number of days of receivables turnover and inventory turnover days to the lowest level in the industry; in 2013, Anta and the Chinese Olympic Committee extended the contract for 4 years, and the Chinese delegation will continue to wear the award winning clothing with Anta Logo on the podium. In 2014, the Chinese gymnastics team valued by Li Ning Co has been snatched away. This is considered to be the most positive fight in many years.

Also in 2014, Anta took the NBA cooperation rights from PEAK, and obtained the NBA logo's right to use.

In addition, Anta's FILA, which was acquired in 2009, has also made a profit in the year, which has eaten a reassurance for Ding Shizhong to open up large-scale overseas acquisitions.

In 2015, Anta's annual revenue was 11 billion 126 million, becoming the first Chinese sports brand enterprise to enter tens of billions. In the same year, the sweetness of Ding Shizhong continued to take the M & a route, bought Sprandi, and then bought Descente and Kolon in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

In 2018, Anta joined several investment consortia and launched a takeover of Amer Sports up to 4 billion 600 million euros, and completed the acquisition in March 2019.

"We have no competition in China," Ding Shizhong said to the media in 2018 when Anta's market value exceeded 100 billion for the first time. "Our opponents are Nike and Adidas."

The Lining brand, which is far behind, has gone out of the mire with the return of Lining 4 years ago, and has tried to narrow the gap with Anta in a totally new way.

4, the redemption of "Lining"

In March 2015, founder Lining returned to CEO.

Back to the front line, Lining is constantly involved in various activities that interact with young people.

Lining's return has also begun to be keen on high-end and international, but it is different from Anta, who is keen on taking the M & a route.

Open Sina micro-blog, brush micro-blog, sell Meng, write chicken soup...

With sincerity and temperature, we communicate with millions of fans and try our best to improve brand exposure.

This year, over 50 of the "old man" did not lose to the post-90s in the fashion trend.

In order to revitalize the company's past glory, Lining got rid of the past high and cold, and frequently attended various activities and entertainment: the kick-off for the all men's Basketball League (CBA) All-Star game in the 2015-2016 season sponsored by the company, appeared on the scene of the Tencent treasure baby charity program, and even took the girl to the Shenzhen marathon.

In March 2015, Lining constantly condensed the company management team and identified the management system based on Lining +COO, CFO and CPMO.

At the very first time, the slogan is changed back to "everything is possible" and the brand ambition is re established.

In order to prevent a repeat of the massive inventory backlog, Lining sharply reduced the number of franchisees and increased the proportion of Direct stores from 35% to over 50%.

At the end of the product, Lining attached importance to the mass market, set up business divisions by category, and readjusted the company's product price band.

At the retail end, Lining strengthened inventory management, shortened inventory turnover time, and understood and approached consumers after the 1990s with the help of e-commerce channels.

Before Lining's return, supply chain management was in turmoil. After the return of Lining, the two largest supply chain managers of shoes and clothing reported directly to Lining, and a number of quality suppliers returned to the company's embrace.

Relying on external blood pfusion and internal reform, after experiencing a downturn, Lining brand came back again.

Although the first place of the domestic sports brand is no longer there, Li Ning Co is no longer the original company that strives to break billions of dollars. Today's Li Ning Co is more steady and steady.

Thanks to various immediate measures, the company realized profitability in 2015 and realized a net profit of 14 million 310 thousand yuan.

In 2016, the company rejected the sale of 10% shares of red double happiness and realized a net profit of 332 million yuan.

In 2017, the company achieved net profit of 515 million yuan, an increase of 56% over the same period last year.

In the first half of 2018, the company achieved net profit of 269 million yuan, an increase of 42% over the same period last year.

From the earnings report, Li Ning Co is not as good as Anta in terms of profitability and efficiency. But from the frequent appearance of the international fashion week, the Li Ning Co has not lost to Anta in terms of original design, product technology content and brand sentiment.

In February 7, 2018, Lining was the first Chinese sports brand to appear in the autumn and winter fashion week in New York. With the theme of "Enlightenment" as the theme, with the concept of openness and integration, the era sparks of sports vitality and traditional Chinese culture collided in the world's top show, and interpreted the Chinese Lining's understanding of the trend of movement.

On the same day, Lining wrote in Sina micro-blog: "I also called Chaozhou more than 20 years ago. Today, China Lining is appearing in New York fashion week. Please enlighten us."

A few words, let Lining successfully screen New York fashion week, the value of this show can not be estimated.

A month later, Li Ning Co's share price rose by 37%.

In June 21st, Lining came back to Paris fashion week with a series of new products.

In 1991, China's Lining's first classic product 001 departure (001R-I) returns, and combines the 3D design and compound tone elements of young consumers at the moment. Lining also introduces the latest running shoes, Chun Jun Ace, to lead the trend of retro fashion.

In February 2019, China Lining presented 2019 autumn and winter products to New York fashion week two degrees.

The brand's promotion once again raised Lining's performance.

In the 2018 fiscal year of Li Ning Co, Lining's income increased by 18% to 10 billion 511 million yuan over the same period last year, and the net profit rose 39% to 715 million yuan from 515 million yuan in the same period last year.

Unlike Li Ning Co, Anta has not taken the "tide card" route, and the main consumer is still the domestic middle and low end consumers.

Although Anta is also in pition, but compared with the design of Lining international fashion week, far from its amazing, but a "terrible" data let Lining have to admit Anta's strength: by the end of 2018, Anta had 10057 main brand stores; FILA1652, Sprandi104, Descente157, Kolon181.

What is more "frightening" is that Anta, whose annual revenue exceeded 24 billion 100 million yuan in 2018, has become a silent weapon for Ding Shizhong to realize its position in the global arena.

However, Lining, who is not willing to be a man, is still stepping up his pace to catch up with Anta, which is doomed to compete in the second half of the two major sports brands.

Author: Zong Xu