What confronts Zhang Zhiyong now is Li Ning's uncertainty of the brand orientation and stratagem for its backbone products. Since 2003, Li Ning has be...
What confronts Zhang Zhiyong now is Li Ning's uncertainty of the brand orientation and stratagem for its backbone products. Since 2003,
Li Ning has been hesitating between the style of fashion and sports. But the other popular brands make a clear definition of is developing direction, for example, Anta focuses on equipments overall, Erke on tennis, while Peak on professional basketball arming, and Kappa, which grows up quickly by its perfect combination of fashion and sports. What's more, Nike and Adidas have been ready for exploiting markets for middle-level price products, Li Ning's situation now is not that optimistic.
The most valuable part of the rebranding last year was the attempt to position the brand spirit - fashion or sports. When the declaration was published that Li Ning would return to its profession of seeking the spirit of athletes, which meant a wind vane in professional sports brands, the other series for women and Lotto would accept the heavy task of making progress in fashion area. But a senior industry consultant told Global Entrepreneur that Li Ning unfortunately missed the opportunity to establish a close relationship with "China". At first, it's Adidas that successfully got the identity as the supporter of Beijing Olympics, then instead of Li Ning, Anta arrived at the contract for a four years of sponsor with Chinese Olympic Committee in 2009, the treatment claimed that it would keep providing sports suits for winners from Chinese athletes in any international competitions, but in the past, only Li Ning was vested the right of putting the logo on the national flag onto its sports suits.
There are two ways for Li Ning to get out, however, it's difficult for Li Ning to make a decision, in one aspect, it's impossible for Li Ning to invest a large sum of money only to get a large number of resources to establish a big sports resources pyramid, in another aspect, the situation Li Ning creates by itself in its variety of sports equipments and the other included brands brings Li Ning to a dilemma of investing on a target project. Li Ning is the first one who once chose basketball as developing items to sign with NBA stars amongst China sports companies, however, "Zhang Zhiyong underestimated the determination of its staff, it was wrong for him to believe that only by signing with few NBA players would he stay in a competitive position." An employee who worked for Li Ning in the sale department said. It's true that Peak and Anta which are the standard brands from Jinjiang win more of the resources from NBA players.
Good luck always seems to pass by Li Ning. Football was one of the sports items that Li Ning invested most, and it put the " into markets which had been a hit in 2004 In 2005, Li Ning intended to sign with several international baseball clubs, but Li failed due to the financial problems. And long before Xtep signed with Birmingham in July, 2010, Li Ning had contacted with him. Until 2006, Li had signed about 18 football stars, but the earlier strategy for football came to the end with the dome of the domestic football tournaments.
The most inevitable course for Zhang Zhiyong's mistake is that he doesn't comprehend the essence of sports very well. It concentrates too much on Marathon but not the one hundred meters sprint. Li Ning has always been standing out in running shoes, for example, the light running shoes had been subscribed for nearly one billion pairs, but the wrong step in running shoes has got it into trap in recent years.
