Lining's Brand Positioning Is Unclear, Diversification Strategy Has Little Effect And Anta Gap Will Widen Again?

Lining's revenue reached 8 billion 874 million last year, a step away from 9 billion 479 million at its peak in 2010.

However, brand positioning is unclear, diversification strategy has little effect, and the gap with Anta is further widened.

Lining's return made the company named after the founder go out of the mire of losses for 3 consecutive years and return to the normal track of development.

According to Lining's 2017 earnings report, the group's annual revenue growth of 11%, reaching 8 billion 874 million yuan, and other indicators are also pleased to better.

7 years later, the scale of revenue finally approached Lining's 9 billion 479 million yuan at the peak of 2010, a step away from the dream of billions of revenue in the past.

Not only that, but at the beginning of this year, the banner of "China Lining" was displayed in the fashion week of New York.

Li Ning Co's share price also rose sharply under various favorable conditions, and its market value soared by HK $6 billion in one month.

Lining seems to have recovered the 7 years he had been stolen and relived the scenery of the leading brand of the former domestic sports brand.

However, behind Lining's brilliant performance is the blowout growth of the entire domestic sporting goods market.

A brutal fact lay before Lining: it took Lining 7 years to get back to the level near 2010, but the old Anta was already on the dust.

Anta's revenue reached 16 billion 690 million yuan in 2017, almost two times that of Lining, and Anta has been earning more than 10 billion in three consecutive years, and the gap between them is widening.

In addition, Anta has a market value of over 110 billion Hong Kong dollars and ranks among the world's top four sports brands. Compared with Lining, its market value is less than 20 billion Hong Kong dollars.

In addition, whether from the scale of revenue growth, gross profit margin, net interest rate and other financial data, or inventory turnover days and other operational efficiency, Anta is better than Lining, and the gap between them is constantly widening.

At the beginning of this year, the news of Lining landing in New York fashion week was overwhelming. At one time, the movement of Chinese elements combined with the fashion profile triggered the upsurge of social media discussions.

The excellent design of eyeball has made many people exclaim, "made in China" can also create such a sense of design.

The style of elements.

Although the products of Lining's understanding also have the suspicion that the popular elements stack up and imitate other tide cards, in general, the products of the enlightened Dao show much higher design standards than before. Especially the nostalgia and retro style show the historical accumulation of Lining well.

But this does not prove that Lining's overall design capability has improved significantly, especially as a sponsor of CBA and WCBA. Lining's products have been questioned by many fans and Tucao.

This year, Liaoning men's basketball team won the CBA Championship for the first time, and Lining designed the champion T-shirt for him.

This is a good opportunity for Lining to show his sponsors' identity and design level, but when the players wear a simple, crude, and aesthetic T-shirt with no sense of beauty, the appearance of a T-shirt is causing a lot of Tucao.

There are fans and even sharp criticism: "Lining's design, the designer is smashing the brand! My Liao is not easy to get a champion, for the wool hat so ugly." even the famous basketball commentator Zhu Yanshuo also couldn't help Tucao: "if the champion T's" first "changed to" no two, "I would even like to wear out.

If the champion of Liaoning

The design level is different from each other. After all, everyone has different aesthetics, but the WCBA Beijing women's Basketball Championship T-shirt has misspelling on the English alphabet and can not be forced to explain.

From the pictures circulated online, we can see that the Beijing women's basketball team won the title of T-shirt, the two words "Queen" are very domineering, and printed with the words "2018" and "champion" in English.

But it is embarrassing that the champion's English should be "CHAMPIONS", but the T-shirt is "CHAMOPIONS", more than one letter "O", there are very low-level mistakes.

It also shows that a successful marketing campaign can not save a company that is not stable at all.

To some extent, the enigmatic design ability exposes Lining's confusion at the management level. The overall level of design is uneven, and some low-level mistakes make the word-of-mouth which is hard to win instantly vanished.

Apart from the design ability of mystery, Lining's brand positioning is still unclear.

Aside from the design ability, it is obvious that Lining is playing the fashion card from the recent series of actions. It is a clear signal to appear in New York fashion week.

For sports brand, identifying the brand positioning is the prerequisite for formulating strategic development plan.

Unclear positioning is likely to lead to confusion in management, swinging around and precise positioning helps to achieve counterattack.

Among them, XTEP, which originated in Jinjiang, Fujian, has entered the sporting goods industry since 2001.

At that time, XTEP took advantage of the differentiated marketing mode and promoted entertainment products with Nicholas Tse and other entertainment stars. XTEP emerged from many domestic sports brands and became a famous brand of sporting goods in China.

Since 2015, in response to the changes in the domestic sports market, XTEP has adjusted its brand strategy, announcing that it will pform the brand of fashion sports into a sport dominated by running and fashion as a supplement.

Brand.

As we all know, Lining is a brand that integrates sports into genes. Its founder is a famous gymnast Olympic champion in China. Professional sports are also born with brand tonality.

But since last year, Lining first sold the custom shoes "Le fogu" with rap company GOSH, and then signed hip-hop singer GAI. The two sides jointly launched the joint shoe "GAI is perfect". While appearing in New York fashion week, it is hoped to further strengthen the fashion label of the brand.

In this regard, Adidas is the forerunner of the fashion line. Nowadays, Neo, Y3 sports and leisure sub brand revenue has more than 3. Adidas and the famous American rap singer Kanye West (Chinese nickname "kan Ye") launched the sports shoes brand Yeezy, it is known as the valuation of more than 1 billion dollars.

For Lining, it might be a good try to add fashion labels to the brand, which is also consistent with Lining's idea of embracing young consumers.

However, whether we can grasp the balance between professionalism and fashion sense is a big test for the brand. In the past, Puma is also immersed in the fashion trend.

For sports brand, identifying the brand positioning is a prerequisite for formulating a strategic development plan. If the positioning is not clear, it may lead to confusion in business operation.

Lining is a brand that integrates professional attributes into genes. Its founder is a legendary figure in Chinese sports history. The famous gymnast Prince endows the brand with unique congenital advantages.

If Lining really intends to pform carefully, he must balance the sense of professionalism and fashion.

Objectively speaking, Lining's move is not only a sign of initiative, but also a step away from the current market environment.

At present, several major sports brands compete fiercely in sports marketing resources.

Anta will be the core of the Olympic Games resources, and the cooperation with the Chinese Olympic Committee has been extended to 2024. It is foreseeable that Anta will have unlimited scenery at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, and the news of Anta's cooperation with International Olympic Committee will also be booming. At the same time, Anta is still playing basketball market (signing Clay Thompson), ice and snow (Winter Olympics), football (sponsoring Hangzhou green city), running (Spartan warriors), boxing (Pacquiao, Zou Shiming) and so on.

After the pformation, XTEP focused on deep ploughing and running, and sponsored dozens of large marathon events in China.

Lining from the professional league to lay a heavy layout of basketball, become a CBA sponsor (super long monopoly by Nike), and Wade and other NBA stars cooperation.

The reason why brands compete for sports marketing resources so fiercely is mainly because of the limited quality resources. It is indispensable to declare the professionalism and brand strength of products with the influence of top sports IP.

Therefore, once Lining fails to deal with the balance between fashion and professionalism, it will probably lead to the loss of existing consumer customers and the brand.

As long as we look at the earnings data of Lining and Anta, we can see that in fact, the two reasons for such a big gap are due to the different achievements of the two in promoting diversification strategy.

In fact, Lining has laid a solid foundation in promoting diversification of business.

In 2003, Lining took the Kappa's agent in mainland China and Macao. In 2008, he bought 57.5% of the shares of red double happiness. Besides, Lining group also had Lining's children's wear brand Lining kids, Lotto, Kaisen (Kason), and AI Gao (Aigle) and so on, but these businesses made little contribution to the group and even became a drag.

Lining's main brand accounted for more than 99% of the company's revenue. Last year, its brand revenue was only around 55 million yuan, which was nearly 40% less than that of the 89 million 850 thousand yuan in 2016. This undoubtedly caused great potential for the development of the enterprise, and also reduced the ceiling of the enterprise.

Therefore, Lining himself carried out a series of drastic reforms after his return.

In order to reverse the decline in the past few years, Lining had to concentrate on the main business Lining brand, and the diversification strategy was stagnant or even regressive.

After basically combing the main business, we have the energy to promote the development of diversified brands. In the 16 year, Lining officially began to redesign the future development strategy of the original Lining children's clothing brand Lining KIDS, build an independent children's wear department, launch a brand new Lining YOUNG, also launch the spring mark of the main leisure sports, and the American sports brand DANSKIN, which acquired the American women's dance and training.

But Lining's rhythm slowed down considerably.

Taking children's clothing as an example, Lining first adopted the mode of brand authorization and cooperation, and awarded the brand to the third party operation.

There are many problems in this mode, which leads to Lining.

Business is stagnant.

At present, some domestic sports brand children's clothing products earn less than 7, 800 million, 1 billion or even 2 billion yuan a year, and Lining KIDS has only 2 or 300 million income a year.

This is not only comparable to Anta's children's brand, but even less than 360 degrees, XTEP and so on. Lining had to regain brand authorization and operate independently.

Because missed the best strategic opportunity period, Lining wants to complete the difficulty of catching up. We can imagine that the new brands like DANSKIN need a long incubation period. It is hard to see the results in the short term.

In contrast, Anta has 4 brands such as Anta, Anta, FILA, FILA KIDS, DESCENTE, Kolon, Kingkow and so on.

From the public to the high-end, from functional to leisure sports products, Anta has completed a comprehensive brand matrix layout.

According to the first quarter data released by Anta in 2018, retail sales of other brands of Anta group (excluding brands added after January 1, 2017) increased by 80%-85% over the same period in 2017.

It is in such a successful "multi brand" strategy that Anta has the bottom line to achieve the goal of selling hundreds of millions of dollars in 2025.

Anta has also repeatedly publicly stated that it is still looking for potential acquisitions.

As a big brother who used to be a sports brand in China, Lining still has a deep foundation. We hope that he can go faster when he is steady, and more importantly, Lining can no longer make mistakes.