Text / Yin Hang
Edited by Li Luyuan
Decathlon, which has always been low-key, is no longer low-key because the entry "secretly raising prices" once dominated the hot search on Weibo.
Recently, some consumers have found that some of Decathlon's products are raising their prices, and the brand's once "cost-effective" and "replacement" labels are shaking.
After seeing the hot search, Krypton colleagues opened their own Decathlon purchase list. After checking, it was found that among the 12 clothing products, 2 are currently sold at a price higher than the purchase price at that time, one of which is a polar fleece jacket from 129.9 yuan to 149.9 yuan, and another warm pants purchased a year ago have also been raised by 30 yuan.
Warm trousers after the price increase
From the perspective of product quantity, Decathlon's price adjustment is only for a small number of commodities at the moment, but the price increase is indeed not small - after simple calculation, the price increase of its single product has reached about 20%, which has outperformed the gold increase in 2023.
In fact, Decathlon has not suddenly increased its price recently, and it is not just happening in China.
Since 2021, they have tested price increase strategies in multiple markets. On the sikayetvar.com consumer complaint platform, some overseas consumers have expressed their dissatisfaction with Decathlon's price increase:
Decathlon has always been regarded by consumers as the "king of cost performance" in the sports market, and at the beginning of any sport, you can buy cheap and reliable products here. In order to facilitate consumers' choice, the brand will also use the blue label logo to delineate the lowest price products in the same category.
However, although Decathlon has excellent cost control ability and follows the strategy of small profits and quick turnover, it is helpless that cost has still become a big mountain in front of them.
In the podcast "Fa King", a former Decathlon employee mentioned that some of the brand's products have always been in a state of negative profit sales, which is what we call "selling one and losing one". This is a good choice for consumers to "pick up leaks", but it is obviously not a healthy operating model for an international brand - it will only be a matter of time before a small price increase is attempted.
This is not just happening with Decathlon, either. In 2021, IKEA responded to the crisis by raising prices by 9% in the face of rising costs. According to the official statement at the time, the price increase was due to the rising cost of transportation and raw materials, "and we had to pass on a part of the rising costs to our customers for the first time. 」
Up to now, Decathlon has not announced a global price adjustment strategy, nor has it put the price increase on the table, but we have been able to capture some clues from the subtle changes in the brand architecture and products:
At the beginning of this year, the news that "the former head of lululemon China went to Decathlon to be CMO" broke the circle from the industry incident to the public level as soon as it was exposed, and since then, Decathlon's new women's fishbone slim jacket has exploded on social platforms because it looks like lululemon Define.
The price of this fishbone slim jacket is 399 yuan, which is medium to high for the public's impression of Decathlon, but on the other side of the scale, the product is also out of the label of "cheap" and "ordinary". Decathlon is justifying the gradually rising price with more designed products, a shift that could have been seen as part of the brand's transformation strategy.
In March this year, Decathlon released a new brand image, launched a new brand purpose and a new brand strategy "North Star" - as the official partner of the Paris Olympic Games, this is also a big move for Decathlon to upgrade its brand in the Olympic cycle.
Previously, Decathlon almost did not do large-scale brand marketing, did not sign spokespersons, nor advertised, and only sponsored professional sports events such as the Tour de France, which was regarded by the market as one of the reasons why Decathlon was able to maintain low prices for a long time.
On the brand's official website, Decathlon said, "We insist on reducing marketing expenses so that we can deliver on the promise of preferential prices. But when the Olympics returned to France, the birthplace of the Decathlon brand, geographical considerations and the fit in the sports field forced Decathlon to seize this opportunity and spend unprecedented marketing costs in exchange for global popularity.
Extended reading: The wind of explosive reform has finally blown to Decathlon
Not only that, looking at the entire affordable clothing market, high-end and professional strategies are also tacit trends.
Taking Zara as an example, since the new head took office, the brand has not hidden the high-end transformation of the brand to raise prices and reduce the number of stores, and data analysis shows that the average selling price of Zara products increased by as much as 23% in the fourth quarter of last year; Uniqlo, another brand accused of "secretly raising prices", has also slowed down the pace of store opening in recent years and turned to pursue single-store revenue.
For these brands that focus on cost-effective market recognition, they are turning to the upstream market and opening up new consumer groups in the state of gradual saturation of the parity market share.
However, back to the hot search itself, even after a round of price increases, Decathlon is still the price "horizon" of the sports consumer market - T-shirts, shorts, accessories, etc. with a unit price of 39 yuan are still a big deal. For comparison, most brands don't even have products with double-digit pricing other than socks.
Blind price increases will make the brand disconnected from the original positioning and consumer groups, and it is easy to push themselves into the embarrassing situation of "can't go up and down". If the price adjustment is within a reasonable range due to cost increases, and the corresponding design is more attentive, better quality and better after-sales service, it will naturally not be crowded out by consumers, and may even win more market share.
Decathlon, which has "upgraded its brand", will choose the former or the latter?