Tebu International: How Far Away From International Brands

On July 13, TEB International released a profit forecast: in the first half of this year, it is expected that the net profit will increase by more than 65%.

Such a net profit growth can also be said by netizens after the news of the cooperation between Tebu international and Hillard capital was sent out: "it can only be said that it's really a" extraordinary feeling! " To describe.

On June 15, terstep International announced that Hillhouse group and TEB global will establish strategic partnership and cooperation, and that terstep international will receive two investment of nearly HK $1 billion from Hillhouse capital.

Stimulated by this news, the stock price of Tebu international has gone up all the way and almost doubled. The market expects Hillhouse to bring strong assists to Tebu. After all, there was a case of Baili international "counter attack". So what "Pu Yu" characteristics of Tebu have been seen?

Special step in the field of running shoes or one of the advantages. Looking back on the 20 years of Tebu's development, today's brand comes from two transformations. The first time: in 2015, special step proposed the "3 +" strategy to upgrade products, optimize marketing and reshape channels; The second time: in 2019, special steps will be taken to launch the "multi brand" strategy, joint venture + M & A, to create product matrix and enhance brand tonality.

After two transformations, Tebu's competitiveness has been greatly improved, and it has occupied a high volume in the runner circle, and the company's revenue has been increasing. In 2020, the revenue of Tebu international is 8.209 billion yuan, which is quite different from that when it was listed in 2008.

However, compared with Anta's revenue of 35.512 billion yuan and Li Ning's revenue of 14.457 billion yuan in 2020, there is still a long way to go. What's more, there are foreign giants such as Nike and ADI in the track of sportswear.

Can the "high altitude effect" reappear in special step? Can special step become the second "Anta"? In China's consumer boom, it may take only time.

01、 First transformation, survival of the Jedi ?

The success of Beijing's bid for the Olympic Games in 2001 has brought China's sports consumption market into the golden decade.

With the rapid growth of domestic sportswear brands, special step has also taken advantage of the situation and landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2008. According to the data, this year, Li Ning, the "big brother" of sports apparel in China, had 6245 offline stores, while there were 5056 Tebu stores in the same period.

However, the tide will eventually recede. With the closing of Beijing Olympic Games, the subprime mortgage crisis broke out in the United States. In this situation, sportswear brands have not escaped the cycle, and have tasted the bitter fruit of blind expansion - "inventory crisis".

After 2010, the turnover rate of sportswear brand inventory continued to decline, while revenue and net profit also declined ? Run. ? There are two main reasons

On the one hand, the mode of distribution as the main mode and direct marketing as the auxiliary mode lacks the control and feedback of the terminal channel, which leads to the brand unable to fully grasp the sales situation, and blind expansion eventually leads to the inventory crisis.
On the other hand, the agents grasp the terminal sales resources, and the brand bears the sole responsibility for the terms, which easily lead to overstocking of inventory, difficulty in recovery of accounts receivable, and further deterioration of financial situation.

As a result, domestic sportswear brands have entered the "de Stocking" stage, and are also actively self-help. In 2009, Anta bought FILA at a price of 325 million yuan, and went to the road of "buy buy buy". In 2010, Li Ning started the brand rebuilding plan under the management of Zhang Zhiyong, the then CEO of the company.

However, it was not until 2015 that Tebu officially launched the "3 +" strategy reform action, namely, "product +", "sports +" and "Internet +", to promote changes in product design, brand marketing and retail management. Compared with Li Ning and Anta, the transformation of Tebu seems to be a little slower, but it is just at the right time.

In 2014, the State Council issued a number of opinions on accelerating the development of sports industry and promoting sports consumption, and the State Sports Administration also cancelled the approval of mass and commercial sports events.

Once again, this policy will release dividends to the sportswear industry, which is especially good for the special step, which focuses on the running field, because the marathon sponsored by the special step has entered the "blowout period". ? In the external good stimulation, special step officially waved the "three board axe".

The first move, "product +", is to pay more attention to the functionality of products while retaining fashion design.

On the one hand, it cooperates with international leading fiber material developers to improve the quality of raw materials and establish a design team for product development; On the other hand, customers are divided into three categories: professional / Senior runners, ordinary runners and entry-level runners. Products with different functions are designed according to different requirements.
In addition, take into account the fashion. Such as cooperation with Hasbro, a world-class brand entertainment company, to launch the second generation of Tebu blade × Transformers co branded limited football shoes, transformers sports life series and other products.

Second, "sports plus", that is, from simple sports sponsorship to comprehensive services, strengthen the construction of sports ecosystem, especially running ecosystem.

On the one hand, around "running", the influence of running in the circle of runners should be continuously expanded by sponsoring marathon and other running events, cultivating "special running groups" and inviting well-known track and field athletes as spokesmen.

On the other hand, the company actively updated the spokesperson, cooperated with the top stars, changed the promotion channels and turned to "run! "Brother", "day up" and other popular variety shows. ?

The third measure, "Internet +", that is, the closed-loop of retail and online and offline activities based on big data of runners and consumers, uses new technologies to establish a seamless new retail system combining user experience and community construction, and provides customized product suggestions and information services according to runner data.

Offline, by substantially reducing the distribution level, establishing a professional operation team, improving the company's control over the terminal, and completing the role transformation from "distribution channel manager" to "retail network manager"; At the same time, big data analysis is used to supervise the business activities of each store and guide the ordering, store display and new product direction.

Online, special step uses o2o mode to realize Omni channel retail. First, online special contributions will be launched, accounting for about 50% in 2017 and rising to 60% in 2020; Second, share the stock with the exclusive agent to improve the delivery efficiency.

After three years of reform, although the revenue has not been improved, the operation efficiency and retail capacity have been greatly improved, laying a solid foundation for the outbreak in 2018. ?

However, compared with Anta and Li Ning in the same period, there is still a big gap in special step. In 2018, Li Ning's revenue reached 10.53 billion yuan, and Anta's revenue reached 24.12 billion yuan, both far higher than that of Tebu.

02、 Second turn ， Looking for the second growth curve ?

It took three years to lay a solid foundation, but what we need to solve urgently is how to find the second growth curve. After all, the market needs to speak with data.

According to Euromonitor, Anta ranks third in China's sportswear market with 16.4 market share in 2019, behind Nike (22.9%) and Adi (20.4%). 3%, 4. 9% and 3. 1% respectively.

It can be seen that Nike and Adi still occupy the leading position, while Anta, with good capital operation and operation management, has surpassed Li Ning to become the domestic sports apparel leader. On the contrary, although Tebu has certain influence in the field of running shoes, its product structure is relatively single. Therefore, finding new growth points and consolidating market position are the primary tasks of Tebu.

Multi brand strategy to enhance brand tonality

In 2019, special step will focus on the "multi brand" strategy.

Signed with Lin Shuhao to enter "Basketball"

Seizing the opportunity of CBA outbreak and continuing marketing, special step's first basketball shoes, Yu Yunsi, become one of the most popular shoes in basketball circle in 2019.

Joint venture + M & A to expand brand matrix

In March 2020, Tebu won the development, marketing and distribution rights of shoes, clothing and accessories of Merrell and SAUCONY in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao; In August, TEB completed the global acquisition of K-Swiss and palladium with a total price of 260 million US dollars.

So far, Tebu has formed a brand matrix integrating professional sports (soconne, melo), mass sports (main brand of Tebu) and fashion sports (gasway and paladin). ?

The top international brands in these subdivisions have different positioning and target customers, which are highly complementary to the main brands of Tebu, so as to strengthen and continue the leading position of Tebu in the professional sports market.

Enrich the brand matrix and enhance the brand tonality of the group; The synergy and interaction between brands should be brought into play, and the superposition effect can be achieved by sharing R & D, channels and supply chain; Segment the market to increase the professionalism of vertical goods to meet the multi-level consumer demand of different users.

In terms of store size, as of December 31, 2020, sokoni and myle have 32 and 6 self operated stores respectively in China, which are distributed in the first and second tier cities. Gaswell and paladin have 43 and 54 stores in the Asia Pacific region respectively, among which Paladin has 21 stores in mainland China. Moreover, Tebu has increased its online investment. During the period of double 11 in 2020, the online sales volume of sokoni is three times that of the same period in 2019, and the online sales of Mele also increased by 38% year on year.

According to the financial report data in 2020, the revenue of fashion sports series represented by gasway and paladin accounts for 12.2%. Ding Shuibo, chairman of Tebu, also has high hopes for the two brands and plans to speed up the opening of stores in mainland China in the next five years. ?

Close to the young consumers, "going to Shaolin" to play the national trend

In June 2020 and may 2021, two national tide Kungfu shows with the theme of "getting to the point" and "Chaobai Shaolin" will be staged at Shaolin Temple in Songshan“ XTEP × "Shaolin" series, "special step" × Jiang Ziya: the first World War Fengshen series and other cross-border products, the success of Tebu in the Z generation of sound and reputation.

Jia Luo, vice president of Alibaba group, believes that the co branding of Tebu and Shaolin is rooted in the two-way output of genes, which will bring the sports gene of Tebu and the Kungfu culture of Shaolin into a unique national trend of Kung Fu. He believed that through the joint efforts of the two sides, together with the blessing of the marketing IP of tmall super brand day, a strong impact will surely be formed among young people.

In addition, special step tries to open a brand collection store. In November 2020, the first multi brand collection store x-street opened in Xiamen SM city square. The shop covers an area of 1500 square meters, accommodating four major brands: Tebu, Paladin, sokoni and melo. The decoration style tends to industrial style and matches with Minnan cultural characteristics to meet the young consumers' pursuit of fashion shopping experience.

03

How far is it from Anta and Li Ning?

There is no doubt that the second transformation of Tebu is to become a comprehensive sportswear brand like Anta and Li Ning, but it seems that catching up is not so easy.

First of all, the market concentration has increased and the competitive pressure has increased. According to Euromonitor, from 2010 to 2019, Cr5 in China's sports shoes and clothing market rose from 51% to 72.8%, and CR10 from 72.2% to 86.2%. In terms of market share, Tebu ranks the third among domestic brands, but in terms of marketing, there is still a big gap between Tebu and Anta and Li Ning. From 2011 to 2020, Tebu has not exceeded 10 billion yuan, while Anta has doubled in 10 years, and now it has exceeded 35 billion yuan. ?

Secondly, the risk of M & A integration is high. The industry believes that TEB intends to make K-Swiss (gasway) benchmarking Anta's FILA into a new strategic fulcrum and new performance engine. However, Anta's success in FILA is difficult to replicate. In the process of transferring the brand focus of K-Swiss to the Chinese market, it is difficult to reshape the K-Swiss brand in terms of market operation, brand positioning and supply chain management.
Challenge is opportunity.

With the increasing proportion of sports consumption expenditure in China's residents' consumption expenditure, the sports goods market will continue to grow. In addition, consumers' recognition of local brands is further enhanced, which provides the conditions for special step to reverse the super market.

And K-Swiss and palladium are the "weapons" against the ultra, which has an clue in the financial report in 2020. Although affected by the epidemic situation, the income of fashion sports business represented by gasway and paladin increased by 114.4% to 999 million yuan, accounting for 12.2% of the total revenue; In 2020, the revenue of the main brand of Tebu was 7.101 billion yuan, a decrease of 7.9% compared with the same period of last year, and its proportion in total revenue also decreased from 94.2% in 2019 to 86.9%.

This is exactly what the high-altitude people look at. After the completion of the investment and subscription, Hillhead will hold 20% of the shares of TEB global, a wholly-owned subsidiary of tepb International (with gaswell and paladin brands), and will send directors to the company.
In this way, Hillard will develop these two brands together with Tebu. However, the operation method of Hillard in Belle International is to split "taobo" to be listed separately or reappear on Tebu.
Two transformations, just to find a better self. In the new journey, special step's "ambition" is to break through itself and realize Nirvana with the help of high-level experience in the field of consumption, digital ability and capital strength.