Special Topic Of Shoe Industry: The Dream Road Of Chinese Shoes And Clothing Brands Today And In The Future

The last highlight moment of domestic shoes and clothing happened vaguely in 2008 when the Olympic Games was held.

At that time, the public's enthusiasm for sports was unprecedented, accompanied by a surge in demand for shoes and clothing. Domestic shoes and clothing brands took advantage of the situation and expanded their stores crazily. However, due to the lack of recognition of domestic shoes and clothing brands by consumers, most brands "died before leaving the school quickly" fell on the way.

After ten years of training and baptism, now the domestic footwear track is a new world.

　　 01、 New and old players busy buying

As an evergreen brand of domestic sports track, there is no doubt that Li Ning occupies half of the domestic footwear.

Li Ning, founded in 1990, was once the "leader" in China's sporting goods industry, relying on its founder Li Ning's ultra-high national popularity and close cooperation with the Olympic Committee. In 2009, it surpassed Adidas with an annual sales of 8.4 billion yuan, becoming the second largest sports brand in China after Nike.

However, the good times are not long. With the intensification of competition, more and more competitors enter the game, and the cake belonging to Li Ning is gradually eroded by other brands. In order to get rid of the predicament, Li Ning carried out radical reform, but this did not change the situation, on the contrary, let Li Ning fall into another difficult position - sales plummeted, year after year loss, closing stores into a tide.

Until 2018, "China's Li Ning" was on the Paris International Fashion Week, and successfully went out of the circle with the label of "national trend". Last year's "Xinjiang cotton" incident ignited the public's enthusiasm for domestic sports brands, and Li Ning enjoyed another wave of dividends.

According to the financial report, in 2021, Li Ning achieved an income of 22.572 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 56.13%, returning to the double-digit growth channel; The overall net profit was 4.011 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 136.14%. It is worth mentioning that this is the first time that Li Ning's brand revenue has exceeded 20 billion yuan.

On the same day of Li Ning's financial report, Anta also announced its performance in 2021. According to the financial report, Anta achieved revenue of 49.33 billion yuan in 2021, with a year-on-year increase of 38.9%; The net profit was 7.72 billion yuan, up 49.6% year on year. Although in terms of annual revenue and net profit, Li Ning's 22.572 billion yuan and 4.01 billion yuan were both higher than the expected 21.1 billion yuan and 3.63 billion yuan, compared with Anta, this achievement is still a little inadequate.

In many people's eyes, it seems that this should not have happened at all. But as long as you pay attention to their investment and acquisition path outside the main brand, you will find that all this has already been followed.

Although the fight is very lively, at least Li Ning and Anta have reached a consensus on the acquisition.

According to public information, Li Ning acquired sports and leisure brand Bao Shilong in 2020; In March 2021, it obtained the control right of Clarks, a British shoe brand; In November 2021, Li Ning played another chess game, won sitoy at, and collected Italian luxury leather brand "iron lion Tony".

Anta is also not willing to be outdone. In 2009, it acquired the Greater China business of Italian sports brand FILA. From 2015 to 2021, the revenue of FILA increased from 1.75 billion yuan to 21.822 billion yuan, once becoming the revenue pillar of Anta Group. Among them, the yield growth rate of FILA in 2019 was as high as 73.9%. After tasting the benefits, Anta has been on the road of buying and buying. It has successively acquired brands such as sprandi, Descente, KROHNE, Amer sports and Archaeopteryx, trying to replicate the success of FILA.

In addition to Li Ning Anta, there are more domestic brands on the road of wantonly purchasing.

In August 2019, Tebu invested $260 million to acquire three major sports brands, including K-Swiss, palladium and supra, of which gasway is the "killer mace" to fight Anta. However, it is obvious that gasway has failed to live up to TEP's expectations.

Nowadays, it seems to be the consensus of major brands to seize the market game by using multi brand matrix. Although each company has a "group army", except for FILA and Archaeopteryx of Anta, other acquisition actions are rarely known by consumers, and the combat effectiveness is not small.

　　 02、 Blind investment "noble" panic

In fact, it's not easy to recreate the success of FILA?

After the successful IPO of the noble bird, it started the crazy M & a mode. From 2014 to 2017, the investment map of the noble bird has spanned a number of fields, successively invested in dynamic capital industry fund, tiger puff, Spanish football brokerage company boy, cooperation with large and medium-sized Sports Association, etc., cutting into sports events, sports brokerage, sports games, sports insurance and other fields. According to incomplete statistics, the noble bird has made dozens of acquisitions and investments, and the total purchase amount is as high as several billion yuan.

But the big investment did not bring any benefits to the noble bird, but gradually brought down the performance.

In April 2016, Xiangan insurance, which invested 65 million yuan, was cancelled eight months later; The acquisition of B2C e-commerce website name shoes library, in addition to the ambition of the noble bird, is not much help to its business, more is psychological satisfaction.

In 2017, the net profit of guirenniao returning to its mother was 157 million yuan, down nearly 50% year on year. Performance and capital chain are tight, only two acquisitions this year, only one success, the acquisition of Weikang fitness eventually aborted, also led to a long-term suspension. Since 2018, the business form of the noble bird has changed dramatically, with a loss of 686 million yuan for the first time. At this time, the noble birds began to sell their assets to save themselves. According to the public data, the number of noble bird stores reached 5560 in 2013 and 2685 in 2019. Nearly 3000 stores were closed in six years, reducing by nearly half.

By 2020, two consecutive years of losses of the noble bird has hovered on the edge of delisting, once the most beautiful Quanzhou rich Lin Tianfu, also to limit the high end of the mess.

It's hard to say whether the capital has harmed the noble bird or the noble bird has ruined the capital, but at least it is obvious that the road of "acquisition" is not as easy as expected.

Looking back, Li Ning and Anta did not rely entirely on M & A. The premise of their expansion is that they have a considerable market share in China, the development of enterprises is relatively stable, and it is in urgent need of mergers and acquisitions to increase the business category and revenue of enterprises.

Although there are different opinions about Li Ning, the public can at least think of "Guochao" when it comes to Li Ning, and Anta has always been making efforts in R & D. The lack of core competitiveness may be the real reason why noble birds blindly follow their fellow villagers and finally step into the abyss.

　　03、 How can the sidelines grow?

In addition to the core business, domestic brands are still making efforts in the sideline business.

In January 2019, Feifan China, a Hong Kong listed company controlled by Li Ning, acquired snake, an E-sports team. It is said that Li Ning himself is also actively concerned about the e-sports industry and has joined the e-sports circle in 2019. It is obviously reasonable for Li Ning, who has been advocating "national trend" and is committed to embracing young people, to choose the layout of e-sports industry.

In addition to the sports field, there are also some fashion shoes and clothing brands in the investment field.

In 2021, Belle successively invested in the new domestic facial mask brand C coffee, pet care brand small shell cature, chain coffee brand nowwa Nova coffee and zero code data collaboration platform partner cloud through its Baili group consumption fund. All of these are not Bailey's main business, but according to Bailey's development strategy, this is probably just the beginning of the large-scale investment of "Belle group consumption fund".

As the first A-share listed women's shoe enterprises, Saturday's shoe industry has already drawn dividends from sidelines.

In 2014, 9 million yuan was invested in the development of women's games on Saturdays, and the operators were extremely active; In 2016, it invested 360 million yuan to acquire two media companies behind ONLYLADY women's blog and kimiss boudoir; In 2018, it spent 1.771 billion yuan to acquire 88.67% equity of Yuanwang network, a MCN institution. Investment in various fields was booming. According to the annual report of 2020, the revenue of Saturday's Internet advertising business is 1.486 billion yuan, accounting for 69.10%, which has far exceeded the original main business of clothing and footwear.

Throughout these shoes and clothing brands, although they are wantonly acquired, but the purpose is obviously not the same. Some of them are for the purpose of blood transfusion to the main business, while others are purely "power generation for love". For enterprises, every investment decided at the moment is the "best investment". It is difficult to judge what impact it will bring to the enterprise.

But it's easy to burn money, but it's hard to get into the game. For cross-border investment, unless it is the "leader" who has acquired this track, it is difficult for these investment businesses to help enterprises in the short term. I'm afraid there are few enterprises that still have the courage to put all their eggs in one basket.