Will US Brand Management Company ABG Agree To Acquire Reebok Adidas?

Sports brand Reebok has been heard again.

According to the news, the US brand management company Authentic Brands Group (short: ABG) wants to join Reebok in its growing portfolio. ABG has acquired Puma's Swedish sports shoes brand Tretorn, American women's clothing retailer JonesNewYork and American underwear brand Frederick 'sof Hollywood, Nine West nine Xi and other brands, through acquisitions to expand the size of the company.

Prior to this, NBA hall member Shaquille ONeil (Shaquille O'neal) publicly expressed his intention to acquire Reebok and let Reebok regain its status in basketball and fitness field in an interview.

In fact, Shaquille ONeil had worked with Reebok for the purpose of acquisition. In 1992, he signed a contract with Reebok for a total of 15 million dollars over the years, and had his own signature shoes.

Reebok, which started with running shoes, has become one of the ten best brands in the world, and its sales volume has soared and exceeded 1 million 500 thousand US dollars. The speed of development is not catchable by other sports brands. With the development of performance, Reebok also began to adjust its strategy, focusing on basketball shoes and football, and looking for new opportunities.

Reebok's breakthrough results attracted the attention of Adidas, a sports giant, and was bought by Adidas in 2006 at a transaction price of US $3 billion 800 million. But the acquired Reebok did not continue the pace of development in the past, but on the contrary showed a downturn, which made Adidas a little embarrassed.

According to Adidas's earnings data, Reebok's global sales fell 3% in 2018, while sales in the Asia Pacific market reached 336 million euros, an increase of 3% over the same period last year.

And the news that Reebok was sold by Adidas has also been heard. Even though Adidas did not sell Reebok at the end of 2015, it could not prevent enterprises from acquiring the intention of Reebok, such as ABG and Shaquille ONeil. If Reebok continues to live without a temperature, it will be hard to guarantee that Adidas will never sell.

Because of the strong performance in the Asia Pacific market, Reebok began to shift its focus of development and lay great emphasis on the layout of the Chinese market.

Reebok's emphasis on the Chinese market is mainly embodied in fitness. In March 2017, Reebok found the most handsome "old meat" in China, Wang Deshun, as the image ambassador of the brand, awakening people's attention to fitness. In July 2018, Reebok opened the world's first gym retail store to Shanghai, and strengthened the experience of offline stores.

In addition, Reebok was concerned about the endorsement of the stars. In 2017, Yuan Shanshan signed a contract with Wu Lei to become a spokesman for the Greater China brand. In February 2018, Reebok signed Victoria Song as the spokesman for Reebok Classic (greater Reebok), and upgraded William Chan to Reebok's spokesperson in the Asia Pacific region. The new brand image of the Reebok was clearly conveyed through the traffic, and it competed for more Chinese market share.

But two years later, Reebok did not seem to have much impact on consumers. Consumers focused more on Nike and Adidas. And the rise of China's local sports brands, Anta, Lining, XTEP and other products have launched a distinctive feature, grabbing the share of the sports market, Reebok is still struggling to move forward.

Fitness, traffic stars, joint names, focus on the trend, Reebok uses new forms to link consumers, further shortens the distance from young people, finds a way but lacks a tipping point, and is still living in the market in a mild way. Nowadays, consumers are more concerned about the products themselves, such as Adidas's Yeezy, Nike's AIR JORDAN, Anta's space shoes, each of which causes consumers to rob, which is an important way to successfully trigger the market trend.

Therefore, if Reebok does not have a product "ignite" the market, it is hard to arouse consumers' more attention. Author: Qin Jin Mei