Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, June 1 (reporter Ding Feng) on Wednesday night in early summer, Wang Donglin, who worked near the international trade center, came home from work and had a rest. He was busy changing into quick drying clothes and sports shorts, put on Li Ning’s newly launched Lejun running shoes, and he would rush to Fengtai Sports Center to participate in the group night run organized by the running group that night. Led by senior runners, Wang Donglin opened the running mode of Huawei sports watch before everyone finished heating up and started to monitor the training status tonight in real time.
Wang Donglin tried to run and exercise from 2015, so he was out of control. In more than three years, he has run 9 full marathons and 23 half marathons, covering more than ten provinces in China. At first, Wang Donglin feidas and Nike didn’t wear it. Later, he slowly recommended it through running friends. He began to come into contact with a large number of domestic sports equipment such as Li Ning and Anta, and found that the quality was no less than that of foreign brands. Today, he has become a full fan of domestic goods.
It seems that by accident, road running has become a benchmark movement popular in China. And behind this rising upsurge of road running, domestic brands have also ushered in a gorgeous turn.
What makes sports goods “fire” again
consumption is booming, then the industry has a high degree of prosperity. Consumers are the real driving force for the development of the industry. Due to the explosive growth of Road Runners, their strong needs and interests have created the endogenous power of China’s sporting goods industry.
In the first ten years of the 21st century, domestic sports brands had ushered in a period of golden development. However, due to its own neglect of innovation and research and development, imitation and phenomenon of going with the tide are serious, and products are becoming increasingly homogeneous, which cannot resonate with consumers.
After the heat of Beijing Olympic Games retreated, the public’s enthusiasm for buying quickly weakened, and the industry fell into a low ebb. In addition, the already weak sports population base made Chinese goods fall into a freezing period of several years. Li Ning, Xtep, 361 Degrees and so on suffered a serious inventory crisis, and a group of familiar enterprises such as Deerway and xdlong went bankrupt and liquidated.
But under the ice layer, a stream of heat flow began to surge, slowly gathering, and gradually erupting.
According to the data released by the China Association of Athletics, China Marathon ushered in a rapid growth in 2015.134 events were held in that year, up 163 percent from 51 in 2014. In 2016, the Chinese marathon event can be called a blowout. In that year, 993 large-scale events were held, an increase of year-on-year; In 2018, the number of Chinese marathon events reached 1581, compared with that in 2014 on the eve of the outbreak, an increase of 30 times; among 334 prefecture-level cities nationwide, 285 cities held scale events in 2018.
Behind the promotion of Chinese marathon, it is the huge running crowd in China. In 2018, the total number of people participating in the competition reached 5.83 million, which was only a small part of runners.
Liang Feng, the founder of Yue ran circle, one of the largest running social software in China, told reporters that at present, the daily activity of Yue ran Circle APP has reached 1.8 million times, and the total annual running mileage of users has increased from 0.59 billion kilometers in 2015, jumped to 2.44 billion kilometers in 2018. Running has become the most frequent sport among Chinese people.
Bandura, a famous contemporary American psychologist, put forward the classic theory of “social learning”: people constantly imitate and practice it by continuously observing the behavior of examples and socialized behavior patterns around them, finally form their own social activities.
The rapid rise of China’s road running and the rapid expansion of running groups fully explain this theory.
From morning to night, runners with health and vitality passed by pedestrians, gaining praise and envy; Tens of thousands of marathon armies are in cities, the sports genes hidden by the onlookers in the streets, alleys and mountainous fields have been awakened, encouraging more people to join this simple and easy sport, and even stimulating their enthusiasm to participate in other sports.
As a result, the huge Chinese sports consumers were activated, and the surging consumption demand made the sports domestic goods such as Anta, Li Ning and Tebu “fire” again.
Running fever drives brand recovery and is favored by capital
in recent years, most of China’s well-known Internet companies have chosen to go to Nasdaq or Hong Kong Stock Exchange for listing. The American market pays more attention to the growth of enterprises, while the Hong Kong capital market pays more attention to the company’s performance. Most of the domestic first-tier sports brands were listed in the Hong Kong stock market in the last decade.
Turning over the financial reports of the three sporting goods companies listed in Hong Kong stocks, Anta, Li Ning and Tebu, we will find that there is one common point: the stock price has bottomed out since 2015, and then a strong trend has been set off one after another; as of May, 2019, Anta’s increase in the same period was as high as 486%, Li Ning’s highest increase was 334%, and Xtep also reached 197%.
Previously, during the three years of the industry downturn from 2012 to 2014, the sales volume of various brand stores plummeted, and the wave of shutting up stores lasted for a long time. A single Li Ning company lost nearly 3 billion yuan in three years, and its market value once shrank by nearly 90%, leaving only 2.79 Hong Kong dollars at the lowest share price.
Nowadays, times have changed. With the blessing of excellent performance, the three companies have recovered again, and the share price has far outperformed most listed companies in a shares. In particular, Anta and Li Ning have become equal performance stocks with high-quality white horse blue chips such as Kweichow Moutai, Gree Electric Appliance and Hengrui medicine.
And such a turbulent growth curve coincides surprisingly with the time track of the rise of China’s road race. As the first year of the Chinese marathon outbreak in 2015, the huge demand for running shoes, clothes and other sports equipment for road runners with geometric jump growth led to Anta, Li Ning, the businesses of companies such as Tebu are growing rapidly.
Take Li Ning as an example. Li Ning, who started from sportswear, focused on the mass market at the bottom of the industry to assess the situation, predicted to step on the air outlet, and made full horsepower on the high-growth track of running on the road, develop and promote a series of products.
On the eve of the rise of China’s road race, Li Ning’s revenue in 2014 was 6.05 billion yuan, a slight increase of 3.9% compared with that in 2013. The sales of running products in that year was 1.028 billion yuan, accounted for 17% of the total sales; In the first year of the marathon outbreak in China, the revenue reached 7.09 billion yuan in 2015, an increase of 17.2 percent year-on-year, and the sales of running products reached 1.347 billion yuan, a sharp increase of 31 percent year-on-year, running business has strongly boosted the company’s overall performance.
The latest Li Ning financial report in 2018 shows that the company’s revenue has returned to the 10 billion yuan mark after several years, reaching 10.51 billion yuan, of which the sales of running products are 2.628 billion yuan, accounting for 25% of the total sales.
In a short period of three or four years, the sales volume of running products doubled, which not only grew into the pillar products of Li Ning brand, but also made all kinds of capital who were short of the prospects of enterprises favor again.
“Taking the country as the tide”, Chinese brands “both inside and outside” are like the wind
at present, “taking the country as the tide” is no longer the mentality of a few people, it is no longer confined to the trend circle, but with wider influence, radiation affects more young people’s consumption view. Young consumers are no longer obsessed with the so-called solidified foreign brand image, but have a stronger sense of identity to Chinese local culture and local brands.
Road running, as a rising emerging movement, is imperceptibly marked by the “national tide. The high integration of surrounding industries and cultural confidence also led the rise of ANTA, Li Ning and other domestic goods.
At the 2019 Qingdao Marathon, Li Ning focused on young vitality and speed, and launched a new racing running shoes that showed the spirit of the May 4th Movement and the characteristic elements of the marathon-Li Ning ROYAL WIND, Li Ning yunma, li Ning red rabbit. The reporter saw at the MA Bo meeting in Qingdao that the Li Ning exhibition area was crowded and the runners who bought running shoes were in an endless stream.
A number of big data surveys jointly launched by Xinhua Sports and Yue running circle recently show that among its 80 million registered users, the 19-30-year-old population accounts for of the total, the proportion of people aged 31-45 is. The significance of “national tide” is self-evident for the huge young running group. However, in the reference ranking of “number of running shoes for users”, although foreign brands such as Nike and Adidas are among the top, Li Ning, Anta, Xtep and 361 Degrees still push their heads into the top ten.
The appearance of “fashion” alone is not enough to support the continuous improvement of product sales. Excellent internal skills are the real skills.
According to founder Securities research report, in 2017, the R & D rates of Adidas, Puma and Asics were 0.88%, 1.15% and 1.10% respectively; In the same period, Anta, Li Ning, the R & D rates of Xtep and 361 Degrees are 2.7%, 1.9%, 2.8% and 3.4% respectively, far exceeding several world sports brands. Among them, SPIRE3 running shoes launched at 361 Degrees won ISPO Global Design Award 2018 with outstanding cushioning rebound performance.
For some small and medium-sized domestic running shoes that started a little later, they also held “the heart of craftsmen” in research and development and design, which captured the favor of many running friends. Hu Haobo, the founder of R2REALRUN, told the reporter that the marathon running shoes built by the company for two years were released last year, but they were not promoted in the market. Only by word of mouth from running friends, monthly sales soon jumped from dozens of pairs to thousands of pairs.
In addition to running shoes, smart sports watch is also an indispensable equipment for road running. It helps runners exercise safely and improve their sports performance by monitoring their physical status and analyzing sports data. Due to its strict requirements on scientific precision and professionalism, domestic intelligent wearable equipment enterprises have always performed flat in relevant markets.
In October 2018, Huawei launched the first smart sports watch HUAWEIWATCHGT close to domestic runners, with the goal of “making sports freer”. It is especially worth mentioning that Huawei WATCHGT uses the self-developed system LiteOS.
Recently, the latest data of global smart watches released by market research company Counterpoint shows that in the first quarter of 2019, Huawei’s global market share of smart watches soared from zero in the same period to 2.8%, with the first growth rate.