Sports Brands Force Overseas Markets, And The Market Is Surging.

In the second half of 2018, Anta Based Capital Group announced that it would buy nearly all the shares of Finland's famous sporting goods company amamin sporting goods at a price of nearly 40 billion yuan, of which Anta sports had a 57.95% stake in the joint venture company.

Maybe a lot of people are strange to the sports brand from Finland, but if we mention the brand of the original bird, we all have some ears.

It is understood that yamamin brand products are mainly exported to Europe and the United States, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific and many other countries and regions. It is understood that after the completion of all acquisition processes, amamfin will join Anta group as a sporting goods group. Anta executives said the acquisition is a very important step towards Anta's internationalization.

Anta's handwriting is not too bad. Once, the domestic sports brand is a cheap impression in the eyes of the Chinese people. With the development of sports fashion in China, domestic brands including Anta are showing the trend of accelerating catching up with the international giants.

According to insiders, Anta's acquisition of foreign brand amamfin has something to do with previous achievements in international brand operation. In 2009, Anta acquired the Italy sports brand, FIE, which is in a huge deficit from BELLE international. Through its strong brand operation capability and commodity upgrading capability in the Chinese market, the brand of fie brand has been booming in the market, and in recent years, the brand has maintained double-digit growth, which is also a huge driving force for Anta's rapid growth in recent years. Such a successful operation has undoubtedly accumulated Anta's strong capability in international brand operation.

Industry welcomes good opportunities for development

The big move of Anta's overseas acquisitions highlights the rising trend of domestic sports apparel industry.

The industry believes that as more and more young people love fitness, and the public's sports needs gradually increase, the sports apparel industry ushered in a better development opportunity. According to the "market outlook and strategic planning analysis report of China's sports apparel industry" released by the foresight Industry Research Institute, statistics show that over the past 2012-2017 years, the market scale of China's sports apparel industry has been expanding, with an average annual compound growth rate of 6.5%. In 2017, the market scale of China's sportswear industry exceeded 100 billion yuan, which was 104 billion 500 million yuan, an increase of 9.77% over the same period last year. According to preliminary estimates, the market scale of China's sports apparel industry will reach 114 billion 700 million yuan in 2018, an increase of 9.76% over the same period last year.

Sports are becoming a trend in China, especially when many young people from the 1980s to the 1990s prefer to invite friends and colleagues to do exercises together. Sportswear enterprises seize the opportunity to develop products targeted at young consumer groups, accelerate the layout of online and offline businesses, and upgrade their stores online, and enter large shopping centers with a good sense of experience, hoping to gain more market share.

Miss Zheng, who works in Fujian, is a post-90s. Because in yoga and running, she goes to the shopping center's store every season to choose clothes that can be used for yoga and running for herself and her family. Young people like her now prefer this dress, not only for their fitness, but also for their casual friends.

"The buying behavior of young consumers has changed. They like to shop from now to now and like to visit CBD and shopping malls. In recent two years, urban integration has been accelerated. In many three or four line cities or even second tier cities, large shopping centers are everywhere, and the number of shops opened in large shopping centers has far exceeded the layout of other channels." A sports apparel brand executives said.

Some sportswear manufacturers are keen to capture changes in consumer trends and focus on designing products for young people. At the same time, they are upgrading their stores to large shopping centers in order to satisfy consumers' comprehensive experience of product quality, shopping environment and services. It is understood that over the past two years, the number of XTEP brand stores in shopping malls has increased by more than 100%.

In addition to the layout line, many sportswear enterprises also continue to increase their investment in e-commerce, hoping to gain more market share, according to the characteristics that young groups favor buying products online. It is understood that the electricity business unit of Anta group has been growing rapidly in recent two years, maintaining high double-digit growth, and the proportion of electricity providers has gradually increased, occupying about 20% of the group business.

Enhance R & D and enhance core competitiveness

In recent years, consumers not only attach importance to the function of sportswear, but also pay more attention to the beauty of clothing. With the combination of fashion and sports, fashion apparel has gradually become a trend. Some powerful sports apparel enterprises have set up a design team led by international designers. The designers and R & D departments have worked together to develop sportswear, which has both functional function and fashion sense of daily travel. Some strong sports apparel enterprises also try to grasp the trend of market consumption, increase investment in research and development, design sportswear with sports function and fashion elements, which will enable enterprises to have more core competitiveness.

The 31st degree international professional running shoes is a brand that runs much in the circle of runners. At the end of December 2018, the company launched a series of running shoes of the chestnut bee tiger bird series, which sold thousands of pairs, exceeding the company's expectations.

It is understood that the 360 degree running shoes, each sample production not only need to collect resilience, shock absorption and other kinds of data, but also carefully select the appropriate fabric, through the development team constantly repeated tests, meet the requirements before bulk to the market.

The chestnut bee bee is a bird with high flying skills and endurance, so its natural attributes are very much in line with our professional running shoes. This shoe, we are the fashion designer from the United States, integrating the fashionable elements of this bird into professional products. We will further integrate some IP at home and abroad on our professional products in the future. Lin Kebei, director of shoe products of 31st degree group, said.

In XTEP's R & D department, some of the subjects will wear running shoes in research and development, with reflective signs on them and running tests on professional runways. The R & D personnel use the infrared motion analysis system to detect the joint movement and stress of the subjects during running. The scientific data are obtained through analysis, so that the running shoes eventually developed have better functions of damping and rebound.

Force overseas market

With the promotion of national fitness and social interaction, China's sports apparel industry has entered a period of rapid development. The implementation of the "one belt and one road" initiative has brought new opportunities for sports apparel enterprises. Besides Anta, many other enterprises are targeting overseas markets.

In the process of opening up the South American market, the official identity of the Rio De Janeiro Olympic Games of the 31st degree group played a very important role. At present, Brazil has the largest overseas sales point in the world. According to the 2018 semi annual report released by 31st degree, 360 degrees have 1316, 986 and 518 outlets in Brazil, the United States and Europe respectively.

In fact, as early as four or five years ago, the group started the layout in advance. In 2014, they set up a special commodity team overseas to develop the top professional sports running shoes. Now their products have been fully stationed in Europe, South America, North America, Asia and even the Australian market. Recently, the group has reached a strategic cooperation agreement with Indonesia's sun department store, and the other side will become a very important distributor for the 31st degree product in Indonesia.

With the improvement of product quality, in recent years, emerging markets, especially in Southeast Asia, have gained more and more recognition of domestic sportswear. This has enabled some sports apparel enterprises to increase the intensity of the layout of emerging markets.

In the past three years, XTEP's sales growth in Southeast Asia has exceeded one hundred percent, and the momentum has been quite rapid. The top leaders of the group attribute it to the relatively high similarity of consumers and the intimacy of the so-called Asian brand.

Judging from the results of investors' concern, most of the leading sportswear companies are concentrated in the Hong Kong stock market. Apart from their substantial improvement in their performance, these sports brands have also gained favour in the capital market. According to ten thousand data, the overall market value of the main sports apparel listed companies rose by 17.59% from the beginning of 2018 to February 2019, while the Shanghai Composite Index fell 17.72% during the same period.

Hao Shuai, chief analyst of Guotai Junan Securities textile and garment industry, believes that there are several reasons for the promotion of sports apparel performance in China: first, from the national level, from national fitness to infrastructure construction to increase support for the sports industry; secondly, many domestic brands have made great efforts to build their own brand dynamics, including channels, products, quality and research and development. Hao Shuai believes that with the gradual development of domestic enterprises in the future, the competition strength of domestic brands will gradually be close to or even surpass those of foreign brands.

Industry analysts believe that sports apparel sector investment opportunities can be expected. Investors can focus on domestic leading enterprises that are at the same level as international first-line brands in product design, store display and management level. On the other hand, they can also pay attention to some fine industry leaders who perform well in sports, fashion and other subdivision tracks. These enterprises are growing faster and better in space and will bring greater flexibility to business performance.

Q & A: the gap between domestic brands and international brands is narrowed.

(Lv Ming, chief analyst of textile and apparel industry in Tianfeng securities)

Sports apparel industry has seen a rapid growth in recent years. What are the reasons for sustained growth?

In addition to the health concerns of the demand side, there are other reasons. In fact, the whole sport, including the sportswear industry, experienced a relatively large channel sinking process from 2001 to 2011, so at that time, the whole industry was developing rapidly. From 2012 to 2014, there was a high inventory and closing shop in the market. Many enterprises fell to a low level. Since 2015, the domestic sportswear companies have greatly improved through strengthening their management, including inventory and shop adjustment, and the performance of enterprises has recovered considerably. It can be said that there is a certain factor is the growth of recovery. At the end of supply, because the whole sportswear is a professional direction, in recent years, with the rise of sports fashion, the combination of professional sports and fashion has also created some new demands. Sportswear has become more popular, not just the needs of professional athletes. Sportswear usually worn out is very fashionable, and this demand also promotes the growth of the whole sports apparel industry.

How can we see the development of the overall sports apparel industry in 2019? What changes will the overall competition pattern bring?

Judging from the judgement of the sports apparel industry in 2019, I think it will continue to maintain a relatively good growth. We expect that in 2019, the sales scale of the whole sports apparel industry will still maintain more than 10% growth. The competition pattern of this industry will be obvious two points: first, the market concentration of the whole industry will be further improved. In the two years of 2017 and 2018, the market share of the top five companies in the industry has increased by two percentage points. We expect that the trend of industrial concentration will continue to increase in 2019. Second, I think the gap between the domestic sportswear brand and the international brand will gradually shrink.

Now, there are many overseas brands in domestic brands. Can it be understood that Chinese national brands are becoming more and more mature, and there will be more and more space in the future. Is there still a gap in comparison with foreign brands?

First of all, we must admit that there is still a certain gap between the domestic sportswear brand and the international brand. For example, according to the size of the shopping center store, the international brand can get bigger shop area and better position due to its greater influence. From a marketing point of view, global brands can sponsor global events or cooperate with global sports stars. In terms of product design, they are also leading the whole industry. But on the other hand, we also see that the gap between the whole domestic sports apparel brand and international brand is gradually shrinking. We are still talking about these three aspects. First of all, we can see that the leading brands in China are actively entering the shopping center. First of all, when we conducted market research in Beijing in 2018, we found that the new brands of domestic brands in the shopping center are not lost to international brands, whether in display of goods, in the image and lighting design of stores, or in the service quality of salespersons. On product design, we are very happy to see that many domestic brands are actively participating in the international fashion week, bringing the domestic brand series to the world, and then collaborate with global sports stars. So I believe this gap is narrowing. We judge that the future gap will be further narrowed.