Anta'S Brand Value Ranking Topped &Nbsp; How To Go In The Future?

After being a follower of more than ten years, Anta came to the taste of leading in advance.

This proves again that it is sometimes more important for an enterprise not to fall down than to run faster.

In September 15th, Anta's "2011 China brand value list", which was selected by Interbrand, an internationally renowned brand strategy consultancy, announced that it rose 4 places last year, ranking seventeenth, becoming the highest ranking local sports brand.

And last year, this distinction still belonged to Lining.

The pcendence of this brand value lies in the pcendence of commercial value.

According to the goal set by Anta in 2009 -- to surpass Lining in 2013 to become the top ranked sports brand in the country, however, according to the half year report this year, Anta's revenue increased 28.9% from last year to 4 billion 450 million yuan, and surpassed Lining in one move, and became the first place in the local sports brand.

Lining semi annual report shows that in the first half of this year, Lining's revenue was 4 billion 290 million yuan, down 4.8%.

Taking into account Lining's ongoing reform of the channel, if there is no accident, Anta will surpass Lining this year.

This is an unexpected lead. Is Anta ready?

Ahead of time

From followers to leaders, Anta has been walking for nearly 20 years.

In fact, Anta executives admit that if it weren't for Lining's successive defeats last year, Anta would hardly be able to surpass Lining in the current node.

After all, in 2010, Lining's revenue reached 9 billion 400 million yuan, an increase of 13% over the previous year, while Anta had a 26% growth, but the revenue of 7 billion 400 million yuan and Lining still had a gap of about 2 billion yuan.

Last year, Lining carried out a very radical brand remoulding, from the business concept to the corporate logo, completely changing the blood, and through the cooperation with the famous sports products retailer Champs, to enter the US market.

The reason for making such a choice is the shadow left by Lining in the past.

Before 2000, Lining was a well deserved native king. Even Nike and Adidas could not shake Lining's hegemony.

However, after 2000, with the development of international brands, Lining was surpassed by Nike and Adidas. This is a painful memory that can not be forgotten in the development of Li Ning Co.

Until then, Lining has always been the pride of Chinese people.

High quality products and affordable prices have always been popular among consumers.

However, with the massive invasion of foreign brands, Lining continued to fail in the domestic market and lost vast territory, especially the most valuable high-end consumer groups.

This bitter experience made Lining aware of the gap between the international brand and the brand. This gap is not only a product level gap, but also a brand gap.

Therefore, after 2004, Lining had been trying hard to find a chance to fight back.

In 2009, Lining finally waited for this opportunity to take back second of the domestic market.

At this time, Lining, who savor the taste of victory, decided to win the chase and upgrade the brand.

Lessons from the past tell Lining that it is not enough to make a cheap and popular brand. Only by building a brand that is enough to compete with Nike and Adidas can we really strengthen our position.

Although Lining's pformation is hard to succeed, it is more tactical failure, such as the channel turbulence at the business level, the improper signing of the marketing level endorser and so on.

But there is no problem in pursuing brand upgrading at the strategic level.

For Lining, before the invasion of international brands, he has always been a well deserved king in the domestic market. Therefore, Lining is not satisfied with the reality of its mass market, and has always looked forward to becoming an international brand like Nike and Adidas.

Anta has been playing the role of followers for more than 10 years.

For Anta, Lining is his most practical example and goal.

Therefore, Anta has formed the brand positioning of "serving the mass market".

In an interview with this reporter in September 2009, Zheng Jie, vice president of Anta, once said, "we do not think Nike and Adidas are Anta's competitors.

To them, Anta is just a benchmark for the industry to learn.

The different location determines the great difference between the two companies in positioning and mentality.

Now, Anta is no longer the role of "attendant" in the past.

As a new industry leader, it must have a long-term plan.

Anta's first place is more like a "catch" first.

This is like Anta in the background rehearsal, suddenly pushed to the center of the stage, for Anta, preparations have not yet been completed, no matter the change of mentality, or the layout of the business.

Lining's sudden fall undoubtedly disrupted Anta's previous plan.

Rushing Anta will soon face an extremely cruel competition environment. The key to Anta's survival in the competition is the timely completion of the role change from followers to leaders.

"Anta will continue to provide affordable sports products for Chinese consumers in the future."

When asked about the next step of the company's planning, Zhang Tao, vice president of Anta, said so.

Zhang Tao also revealed that Anta's position in the mass market will not change in the future. The company will continue to "consolidate the foundation" and will not consider large-scale entry into the overseas market for the time being.

With Lining's warning, Anta is very cautious about its next step.

At present, the competition of domestic sports brands is becoming more and more intense. Nike and Adidas are working hard to expand the three or four tier city market, which is precisely Anta's dominant position.

When it is still the second local brand, Anta does not have to face up to the international brand, because this arduous task has always been the commitment of big brother Lining.

Lining's fall means that whether Anta is willing to see Nike and Adidas as its rivals, it has become the next goal of the international brand.

As a matter of fact, Anta will soon embrace the close touch with international brands in its three or four tier city market base.

At the same time, Lining, who has fallen off the hook, will surely learn from his mistakes, adjust his strategy and prepare to catch up.

Therefore, although Anta has won the top spot of local brands, the market structure it faces is even more dangerous.

Behind the soundness

In sports goods market, sometimes it is more important to keep up with oneself than to do one thing.

In 2008, Adidas's excessive bet on the backlog caused by the Olympic Games gave Lining the chance to fight against overruns. Last year, Lining's radical brand remolding made it lose its first place in the mainland. The recent Nike quality scandal has seriously damaged its image.

Compared with these rivals, you can hardly find any obvious mistakes that Anta has made in the past few years.

Behind the steady development of Anta, on the one hand, is its accurate positioning of its own capabilities, with a steady pursuit of followers' mentality, and the operation of enterprises has been hung in the right "stalls".

On the other hand, it is an accurate judgement of the law of industrial development.

Ahead of schedule, today's accident can also be seen as a bonus.

For example, because of the high cost of raw materials such as cotton and labor costs, several brands are under tremendous cost pressure.

Looking at the earnings reports in recent years, the price of orders will rise to a certain extent every quarter. Lining's latest quarterly product has a price rise of about 10%, and Nike has also recently announced that it will substantially raise the price of products next year.

By contrast, Anta, the "heavy asset", has a much higher price per quarter than its rivals.

This is a collective hit wall which was once regarded as a textbook style "light asset" mode.

Although 3 years ago, enterprises including Lining became more and more aware of the problems and began to make themselves "heavy", but it was too late.

Anta has always insisted on "heavy mode" with its own consideration.

For example, large-scale collectivization procurement can help enterprises to solve the pressure of rising raw materials, and control the factory in hand can also control the significant increase in labor costs in the short term; in addition, it can control production flexibly.

When participating in the bid of the Chinese Olympic Committee in 2008, the Organizing Committee hoped that the brand participating in the competition could sponsor the first world intellectual games held in Beijing in October.

Faced with this proposal, only Anta readily agreed.

A very important reason is that the "light assets" brand does not grasp the production link. Even if they are interested, they are unable to make timely market reaction, which gives Anta the opportunity.

The "light assets" mode is no longer the golden rule in today's sports market.

With Anta as the representative, Jinjiang brands, which rely on foundry workers, have created a new model by controlling the manufacturing process. Instead of advocating "light", they have maintained their "weight" moderately. This will be the key to the success of Anta in the future.

In marketing and promotion, Anta is not superstitious about the star effect, but according to its own mass market positioning, it chooses a promotion mode mainly sponsored by events.

Last year, Anta made full use of its cooperation with the Chinese Olympic Committee to make a difference in the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and signed Garnett to enhance its professionalism as a CBA partner.

When asked about Garnett's promotion of Anta sales, although Zhang Tao did not provide specific figures, he said frankly, "it is really selling money."

In the past two years, we have seen that Anta has been moving steadily on this track, and its revenue growth has been kept at close to 30%.

When the stars in the industry are on the stage, Anta is making money behind it.

In Lining's most spectacular 2009 (Lining's revenue grew by 25% to 8 billion 400 million yuan in 2009), sales of the company still maintained a strong growth of 27%.

In 2010, Anta's profit reached 1 billion 700 million yuan and became the most profitable sports brand in China.

And Anta's products are unknowingly begun to be accepted by more and more high-end people.

"We launched a $600 elastic rubber shock shoes a while ago, and finally sold the goods."

Zhang Tao said, "this result is even a surprise to the company".

Another interesting detail is that nearly two years ago, almost all the foreign players wore CBA brand basketball shoes.

Now, foreign aid has begun to play in Anta's basketball shoes. The most famous one is Quincy, Dolby, the most powerful Xinjiang player in last season's season.

The little guard from the NBA kings of Sacramento was the most valuable player in last season's CBA all star game.

From these details, we can see the continuous improvement of Anta brand.

Today, it is the critical moment to test Anta.

In the past, the right way of playing is likely to be no longer applicable in the new market environment.

If Anta wants to continue its steady development without making mistakes, it must make adjustments in its playing style.

From second tier star Scola to superstar Garnett, Anta needs to see that the promotion of brand image does not mean a departure from the mass market, and the two are actually not contradictory.

Although Nike is regarded as a high-end brand in China, Nike is also a popular brand in the United States.

Unlike Anta, Nike can fully cover the low end to high-end consumers through reasonable product planning and price setting.

Lining's experience in the past year can undoubtedly provide a good reference for Anta's brand upgrading in the future.

For Anta, consolidating the foundation means continuing to provide consumers with extremely high cost performance products, without blindly seeking the premium of brands like Lining.

On the other hand, we began to build a more high-end brand image to compete with international brands.

On the previous point, Anta, the only state-level sports laboratory in the country, undoubtedly knows more about the characteristics of domestic consumers than the international brands, which can help them design and produce products that are more suitable for domestic consumers. Now, Anta needs to be more daring.

In fact, today's sports industry has been on the eve of reform, and the large-scale enclosure mode has been difficult to continue.

Last year, Lining took the initiative to carry out channel integration and eliminate inefficient distributors. Zhang Tao also told reporters that Anta will expand its future and value the growth of single store efficiency.

The industrial structure of local sports brands is becoming more and more stable, with the annual income approaching Anta and Lining two, which belong to the first tier. The 5 billion tier XTEP, PEAK, 31st degree and Kappa belong to the second tier, and the small brands in the third tier are very difficult to be bigger and bigger.

After 2000, in the highly competitive North American market, Nike acquired CONVERSE and Adidas bought Reebok, which basically laid the industry pattern of the top two in the global market today. Since then, Nike and Adidas have made great efforts to pform the acquired products and products, leaving only a few professional and functional sports products for the middle and low end market, while the whole brand is changing to the direction of sports and leisure.

In the future, similar industrial changes are likely to be staged in China.

This actually provides another possibility for Anta's future brand to go to the high end.

In the future, Anta can incorporate some low-end brands to further enhance their brand and further expand their low-end market.

At the same time, this way eliminates the threat of followers to themselves, just as Nike did to CONVERSE.

Whether Anta has just established its own dynasty will tell us everything.