Local Sports Brands Pay Close Attention To "Retail".

Re grasp the retail terminal has become a common choice for domestic sports brands in the face of a great deal of achievements. The trend of China, which has just released its performance last year, shows that the proportion of self owned shops has exceeded 20%. Anta also attributed its performance recovery to the "transformation of retail channels".

In the industry view, the wholesale mode in sports industry has come to the end, sports brand to retail transformation into a trend. But managing five thousand or six thousand stores frequently is a new problem for branding companies.

"The company is on the right track and has successfully reversed its business decline, but the weak channel partners still face many challenges." Li Ning Co said in its earnings report that it has performed well in clearing channel inventory, but distributor business is still not improving. Li Ning Co's strategy is to "increase the number of proprietary shops and regular shops".

Data show that the Lining store increased by 46.8% to 926 from the end of 2012, and the number of dealer shops decreased by 14% to 4989 compared to the same period. At the same time, the latter accounted for 64.7% of the total sales revenue, while the share decreased by 10.9% compared to the same period last year, while the share of direct sales revenue increased by 10.6% to 32.6% over the same period of 631.

In the shoes and clothing industry, it seems that the sales of local brands depend on agents. The information flow of the whole industry chain is not smooth, and the best-selling products are out of stock. The backlog of mediocre products is a common phenomenon in the industry. Direct stores can learn more about the terminal market demand and provide the most direct feedback for brand operation.

Chen Yihong, founder of Chinese trend, has publicly pointed out that Chinese companies are large wholesale models, and brands do not control retail channels. The whole industry is facing the difficulties of "brand + wholesale" mode. "As long as you sell wholesale, the sales volume has already been formed for branding, it will not pay attention to the change of the retail side."

At present, all sports brands, including China's trend, are trying to get through the market's "governor's two pulse" from the retail end. China's trend last year's annual report shows that retail stores decreased by 826 compared with 2012, only 1183, the least listed among the six largest sporting goods companies. There are 272 self operated shops, accounting for 22.99%, accounting for the highest proportion among the six major sports brands, while the proportion of self operated sales has reached 18.7%.

Compared with brands such as Lining and China, Anta has tasted the sweetness of retail transformation. Although both revenues and profits were reduced last year, the number of orders for Q1, Q2 and Q3 increased for three consecutive quarters in 2014. Anta believes that the "retail oriented transformation" started in 2013 is taking effect gradually.

In the eyes of the industry, the sports brands that go deep into the retail terminals know more about the needs of the market and consumers, and are more and more differentiated. However, compared with the brands that are vigorously throwing money into the channels, the products that carry the brand image of the company are not strong enough.

A domestic brand regional agent told reporters that from the retail terminal, the product is more serious than the channel problem. From the risk considerations, the agent will slow down the shop speed even if the product style is not stable, and even withdraw from the market in some areas.