Text: Yu Yi
According to reports, in recent years, China has nearly 400 million female consumers aged 20-60, controlling up to 10 trillion yuan of consumer spending every year. Women's consumption decision-making position is very important, and more than 60% of household consumption in China is dominated by women. It is estimated that the total expenditure of Chinese women in the past five years reached 670 billion, an increase of 81%.
In the current clothing market, which pays more attention to personality, consumer experience and identity expression, fast fashion that blindly plays a cost-effective slogan but has no distinctive design characteristics has gradually withdrawn from the stage and has been abandoned by the younger generation. On April 22, Xinjiang La Chapelle Garment Co., Ltd. officially entered the delisting period. From revenue of more than 10 billion to A-share delisting, La Chapelle has only experienced 3 years.
However, the rise of some niche clothing brands has benefited from the Z generation's pursuit of clothing personality. Surveys show that nearly 90% of chinese style enthusiasts are Generation Z young people. At present, more and more local fashion designers have begun to export original brands, opening up new frontiers on live broadcast platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Taobao, looking for target groups.
In the past 30 years, the traditional manufacturing industry has completed the transformation from Chinese manufacturing to Chinese brands, and the current national hot flashes are undoubtedly a great opportunity for domestic brands to overtake in curves. At the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021, many people saw that the clothing sponsor of the Chinese team was ANTA, and at the Beijing Winter Olympics held at the beginning of this year, the uniform sponsor was also ANTA. Anta seems to get rid of domestic brands such as 361 °, Xtep, Hongxing Erke, Peak, etc., and last year's annual operating income was about 50 billion yuan, becoming a leading enterprise in the industry. So why did the Li Ning brand, which sponsored the Olympic Games in the past, not appear in recent years?
Throughout the history of mainland sports, Li Ning is the originator of sponsoring the domestic sports brands of the Chinese representative team. The most impressive thing is the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Li Ning is not only the brand sponsor of the Chinese team, but also the scene at the opening ceremony of Li Ning himself holding a torch around the bird's nest and lighting the Olympic flame is even more impressive. So, why didn't Li Ning get sponsorship rights this year?
In fact, in recent years, Li Ning has been cooperating with foreign Olympic committees, such as the Spanish Olympic Committee and the Swedish Olympic Committee, and during this year's Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, Li Ning sponsored the Hungarian delegation. In the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the more competitive Canadian team, the Netherlands and Italy were all won by ANTA, after all, ANTA has many well-known foreign clothing brands. Although Li Ning's popularity is not as good as Anta, Li Ning's endogenous growth force is very strong, that is to say, the Li Ning brand is still the first solid Chinese brand.
According to public information, Li Ning was born in Guangxi in 1963, and his father sent him to the gymnastics team for training when he was very young. At the age of 17, Li Ning met his own Bole, the coach of the national gymnastics team Zhang Jian, under the introduction of Zhang Jian, Li Ning successfully entered the national gymnastics team. In 1982, Li Ning successfully won 6 gold and 1 bronze in the world gymnastics competition, and he also became the "prince of gymnastics" in the mouth of the people of the whole country with his excellent competition results.
In more than ten years of gymnastics career, Li Ning has won 106 gold medals and hundreds of awards. Especially in the 23rd Olympic Games held in Los Angeles in 1984, Li Ning won 3 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze in one fell swoop, close to one-fifth of the total number of medals of the Chinese delegation, becoming the most awarded athlete in the Los Angeles Olympic Games.
But the peak period of professional athletes is short-lived, in the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, under the influence of age and injury and many other factors, Li Ning made two major mistakes in succession and lost the championship, which disappointed the audience who were accustomed to watching Li Ning win, and triggered a large number of irrational voices in the country, and Li Ning had to announce his retirement.
But unlike the difficult life of some athletes after retirement, Li Ning met the founder of the second noble Jianlibao Group in his life in the same year of retirement - Li Jingwei, Li Ning was invited to join Jianlibao as the assistant general manager, and appeared on camera to shoot an advertisement for Jianlibao Beverage, which was endorsed by the Prince of Gymnastics and immediately became a hit all over the country. The advertising investment of 600,000 yuan has brought more than 30 million yuan of returns to Jianlibao.
Seeing that Li Ning's commercial value is so huge, Li Jingwei directly took out more than 10 million yuan and created a sportswear brand in the name of Li Ning - Li Ning. With his own efforts and the help of nobles, Li Ning completed the gorgeous transformation from athlete to entrepreneur in only one year.
In order to increase the popularity of Li Ning's brand, Li Ning aimed at the 11th Beijing Asian Games. But at that time, the organizers issued a sportswear advertising offer of 3 million, which was undoubtedly an unbearable huge amount for Li Ning at the beginning of its establishment. In order to win the advertisement at a low price, Li Ning had to personally negotiate with the contractor, saying how can Chinese athletes wear foreign sportswear at their own Asian Games? This sentence was finally uttered by the former Olympic champion, and soon impressed the organizers, and finally the sportswear advertisement was won by Li Ning at a low price of 2.5 million.
With the spread of the Asian Games, Li Ning completely gained popularity, and tens of millions of orders followed. In the following years of various sports events, the Li Ning brand can be seen everywhere. At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the Chinese delegation also appeared in Li Ning's sportswear. With the development of Li Ning Company getting better and better, it was successfully listed in Hong Kong in 2004.
Since then, Li Ning has become the first mainland sporting goods brand to be listed in Hong Kong. Four years later, at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, Li Ning appeared to light the torch, once again adding a fire to the Li Ning brand. Since then, Li Ning has become the first brand of domestic sports, at its peak, Li Ning's annual revenue exceeded 9 billion yuan, and the international sports giant Adidas was not Li Ning's opponent.
After the 2008 Olympic Games, Li Ning's brand stores expanded to 8,000, but with the gradual fading of the Olympic heat, the operation of offline stores has also opened up and gone low. There are many openings and closures, and Li Ning once closed more than 1,800 stores in a year. But this situation did not last long, Li Ning, who had retreated to the second line, came out of the mountains again, carried out drastic reforms, and the spirit of athletes who did not accept defeat for many years allowed Li Ning to pull Li Ning back on track and turn losses into profits.
But Li Ning's masterpiece of returning to the top can be said to be the 2018 New York Fashion Show. With the fashion show, Li Ning's stock price soared to HK$20 billion. At the same time, Li Ning's brand positioning is also getting younger and younger, becoming the leader of the national tide. In the following years, Li Ning launched Wade, Quancheng, Wudao and other series, the most popular of which is the national tide series, which has driven the national tide of the domestic clothing industry, the brand positioning is getting younger and younger, becoming the leader of the national tide, and now the market value has risen to 162.2 billion yuan.
However, after all, Li Ning is still a Chinese brand, and its main performance is still in the Chinese market, with a share of only 1.5% in the international market, and there is no fierce radical expansion of Anta. However, Li Ning's ability to gain a foothold in China is bound to be a major breakthrough in product and marketing channels. I have to say that Li Ning's transformation from an athlete to an entrepreneur has been very successful in this step.