"Tide Card" Force, Sports Brand Ushered In A New Growth Point

Anta sports, the leading sports brand in China, recently released its first half results announcement. It shows that the sales of the main brand Anta in the first half of the year compared with the same period last year achieved an increase of 10%-20%, while the Fila of its campaign was brilliant. Last year's sales volume exceeded 10 billion, and the first half of this year continued to run all the way, achieving a high growth rate of over 60%.

Behind the continued high growth of Fiat China's performance, it is precisely that domestic sports brands are paying more and more attention to the fashion trend of sports products and take a miniature of the "tide card" route. Whether Anta or Lining, they have tasted "sweetness" in the past two years by taking the "tide card" route.

From the loss to billions of dollars in the year

In August 2009, Anta announced that it had purchased all the rights and interests of Phil China, which has been losing money for two consecutive years, from BELLE group at a total price of HK $600 million. At that time, many analysts were not optimistic about it. They believed that the recognition of Phil Lok in the Chinese market needs to be improved, and at a loss, it would not bring huge profits to Anta in the near future.

When Zhang Tao, vice president of Anta, talked about the acquisition, he said that the acquisition of Felix should complement Anta's existing brands. Fei Le, a century old Italy veteran, mainly takes the high-end sports line, and has obvious advantages in the international brand effect and technology research and development. But the domestic high-end segmentation sports consumption market still has great potential, plus Anta's local influence and sales channel resources, the entry of FIE is conducive to seize the high-end sports market share.

Yao Weixiong, who took the lead in CEO in 2011, took a lot of market research after taking office, especially for young people aged 25 to 35, to explore the future demand of the main consumer groups. The result shows that the target audience needs a sports fashion brand most, but there are not many sports brands that can meet the demand of fashion.

"It is impossible to challenge Adidas and Nike in 2011, but the demand for sports and fashion has not been satisfied at that time and even today," Yao Weixiong once said in a public speech. "Since then, we have made a repositioning of Fiat, that is, return to the most consumer friendly sportswear."

After the establishment of brand positioning, Fiat China has made corresponding adjustments to the Chinese market in various aspects, including product design, sales channels, supply chain and marketing. After years of intensive farming, Fei Le China lost its profit in 2014, and developed rapidly in the following years, becoming an important thrust for Anta's sustained and rapid growth.

Lining on International Fashion Week

Coincidentally, another well-known sports brand in China, Lining, has also appeared frequently in the international fashion week in recent years, leading the trend of sports fashion.

After experiencing a continuous loss of over 3 billion between 2012 and 2014, Lining's performance returned to growth, and the attention of Lining brand once again brought to consumers is the fashion week of New York in early 2018. "Tomato scrambled eggs" Huang Hong color matching, printed on "China Lining" set off a campaign brand "retro trend." After the show, the Lining brand's Baidu index rose rapidly, far ahead of Nike and Adidas. The topic of micro-blog's discussion on micro-blog has reached 78 million.

After the fashion week, Lining's brand of retro style sportswear, sweater and T-shirt were very popular, and once appeared on the shelves of boutiques and online shops, they were sold out.

At the end of 6 this year, Lining welcomed another two good news. One was the release of Lining's 2020 spring and summer series in Paris. This is the second time for Lining brand to enter the Paris fashion week after 2018, and Lining also landed in the international fashion week for four seasons. Another news is that Li Ning Co's net profit in the first half of the year was 440 million yuan, up by 160% over the same period last year. Besides the one-time investment income, the sales revenue growth in the first half of the year is more than 30%, which is a very important reason.

Brand fashion is a major trend

In the international market, big names such as Nike and Adidas have long seen this trend.

In the early 1990s, Adidas stripped the classic sports series from professional sports performance series, the main sports and leisure market, put some key sports elements more into the sense of quality, comfort and fit, and was close to the modern trend. At present, Adidas's products are divided into three series: sports performance (three stripe mark), Sport Classic (clover logo), sports fashion (ball containing three stripes logo). The sports fashion series is the most close to the fashion front of Adidas brand, to a certain extent, it is a luxury series.

In recent years, the US movement Champion has been leading sports revival with Fiat. Statistics show that the sales of champion in 2018 increased by 36% over the same period last year, and the sales of sportswear Department increased by 50%. Powell, an industry analyst from New York, said in an interview with the US financial media that compared with Nike and Adidas, the main players of the industry, FIE and champion are smaller but unique brands. They are now winning and growing faster than the whole industry.

According to the relevant personages in China, sports are becoming a fashion in the world, and sports brands grown on this basis are no exception. Especially with the "after 90" and "00 after" becoming the main force of sports consumption market, it will speed up the fashion of sports brands. Domestic sports brands should seize the trend as soon as possible and speed up the layout in related fields.