Lining Announced &Nbsp Layoffs; Domestic Sports Brands Or Middle-Aged Crisis.

Just a few days after the Spring Festival, homemade Sports brand Li Ning Co, the leader of China's leading dragon, suddenly announced the news of layoffs. Lining The company's latest performance forecast is that the group's revenue in 2011 is expected to decline by 6% to 7% over 2010. Anta And a number of listed sporting goods companies such as XTEP also have bad news, which is the latest in 2012. Order-placing meeting Data, inventory backlog, planned new stores are all at the worst level in recent years.

A layoff order by Lining made people suddenly realize that the domestic sports brand is falling into a "midlife crisis".

The latest spring is on sale.

On Sunday, the reporter went to the Lining store in Gongzhufen's urban and rural trade center, though the billboard at the door showed the latest. Spring clothes On the market, but there are few customers in the shop, and two shop assistants are listless. "Usually no one at all, and there are not many guests at weekends." A salesperson admitted that the sales situation in the shop was not ideal, and few young customers patronized it. She told reporters that several salesmen had already walked away because of poor sales.

Business is gloomy. Not only this one, but there are few customers in Anta Suzhou bridge shop. Even if some customers come in, they rush out the door. "One morning, I sold a pair of shoes." Xiao Wu, a shop assistant, told reporters that although the spring clothes had been on sale at the beginning of the shelves, the retail situation was still bad, and the daily retail sales flow was only about 1000 yuan. A 361 degree store away from Anta has already closed shop, and the door is posted with "shop spanfer, rush!".

Reporter visits found that, in addition to Lining, all other domestic sports brand's spring clothes are on sale, the discount rate of many stores has even been reduced to 30 percent off, but still customers are scarce. A person in charge of Anta group complained to reporters, because the industry demand is slowing down, the market competition is intense, and sales data growth is weak, the company's inventory in recent months has been increasing.

The declining trend after crazy expansion

Li Ning Co is secretive about the forthcoming redundancies, but it can be seen from its performance report released in January this year. The report shows that the growth of the order is weak and the inventory of some dealers will be affected. In 2011, the group's revenue will drop by 7%, and the net interest rate will also drop from about 11% to about 4%, a drop of nearly 7 percentage points, while the net profit of Lining in 2010 is 1 billion 108 million yuan, and its net profit may only be about 400 million yuan in 2011, and it will drop more than 50%.

"Lining's layoffs are actually due to the adverse effects of the rapid expansion of the previous expansion, and this situation is almost all domestic sports brands." Galaxy Securities apparel industry analyst Mary told reporters that by the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, from 2007 to 2009, the domestic sports brand launched a stock market boom, and at the same time substantial expansion in the field of entities, the number of new stores has reached 2. But then, the negative impact of the crazy expansion began to appear. The excessive number of franchisee not only prolonged the supply chain of the enterprises, but also led to a decline in single store profits and high inventory, and also produced a series of problems.

At the same time, along with the market competition becoming more and more serious in recent years, the competition of product homogenization becomes more and more serious. The profit space of the domestic sports brand has been reduced step by step, and finally, it has to tighten up the front line and find a way out again. An industry insider told reporters that 2012 will be a very difficult year for domestic sports brands.

Differentiated competition is the ultimate way out

"If the domestic sports brand wants to be really strong, the expansion of sales channels is only one of the elements, but more importantly, the accurate positioning of the brand." Hong Tao, a business expert at Beijing Technology and Business University, said that taking Lining as an example, the original brand image is mainly suitable for the mature consumer group over 30 years old. In recent years, it has overemphasized the younger product, resulting in the loss of the old customers and the new consumers. This is the common fault of the domestic sports brand. At present, the shape and technology of the domestic sports brand products are very similar. There are no differences in market positioning and serious competition in homogenization.

Hong Tao pointed out that in the face of industry integration, the domestic sports brands must slow down and formulate their own brand strategies to avoid falling into internal competition while improving the added value of products and adjusting the growth mode, from "sales driven income" to "price driven income".