Xtep "entertainment + sports": forced out of the new road

On July 22, Ding Bo, president of Xtep (China) Co., Ltd., and Fernando Rogge, the president of Spain's Villarreal Club, jointly announced that they will formally join hands and Xtep will become exclusive equipment sponsor for the Villarreal Club 2011 ~ 2016 Business, official technology sponsor. With a distance less than a month, "sports special step fashion Geng heart - special steps to join Han cum 'Geng Girl' will meet the media" was held in Beijing Jing Park Art Center. In this conference, determined to build the first brand of China's fashion sports Xtep once again expand the spokesperson team, signed Han Geng, making it the latest brand spokesman after Nicholas Tse, Pan, Jolin Tsai and so on. When the brand is becoming more and more powerful, the sword took the Porsche by the same pace and began to test the world-class professional events. It also made its "entertainment + sports" dual-track marketing strategy more and more stable. Market cognition and influence on the brand is the source of life for sportswear enterprises. By sports like NBA, Football League and Tennis League and other famous sports events to spread their ideas, to expand brand influence, all sporting goods companies have dreamed of. However, for the special step of entering the domestic market in 2001, the reality is quite cruel. Nike, Adidas, Reebok and other well-known international brands have well-known layout of the various well-known sports events, including even the still in its infancy of the small league. This makes it very difficult for domestic brands like Xtep to find a breakthrough in sports events. "Contemporary young people like sports, but also like music, but also have their own idol." Ding Shuibo said. It was under the guidance of these words that Xtep found yet another way out to expand its influence. In order to avoid direct competition with tough opponents, Xtep chose a differentiated line of "making the difference." It also opened the door to differentiated marketing modes such as "entertainment marketing" and "entertainment + sports dual-track marketing" in the sporting goods industry. Since 2001, Nicholas Tse, Wilber Pan, Jolin Tsai, TWINS and other entertainment characters have become special spokesmen for Xtep, and to seize the market in China's second-tier cities made a contribution. The success of differentiated marketing seems to have left it from its original track: the comprehensive development, production and sale of sports shoes, clothing, bags, hats, socks, etc. based industry's major sporting goods business. In the upcoming 2011 ~ 2012 season, "yellow submarine" will be wearing Xtep Jerseys play La Liga. If the "yellow sub" successfully passed the Champions League, Xtep brand will also be the first time in the Champions League arena. As the exclusive equipment sponsor for the next five seasons, Xtep will use its own technical reserves and R & D capabilities with a high-end design team to create a new tournament shirt for the Villarreal team. In addition to sponsoring existing equipment, Xtep is currently actively developing Villarreal products and will be on sale in the fourth quarter of this year. At the same time, Xtep will also negotiate with the Villarreal Club to jointly run a series of football-related marketing activities including the China Friendship Tournament. The support for Villarreal club Xtep, in fact, is the 2010 signing of Premier League Club Birmingham, once again with the world's top football club join forces. As a latecomer to the domestic market in 2001, just eight years ago, Xtep quickly surpassed many competitors and marched into the top three in the national sales volume market. The growth rate surprised the industry. Data show that in 2004 Xtep sales only 300 million yuan in 2008, Xtep sales have exceeded 3.0 billion yuan, and gradually into the second-tier cities market, it is the successful use of capital markets to help it quickly become bigger and stronger. From 2007 to 2008, Carlyle Capital injected special steps twice, holding 9.5% of Xtep shares. In 2008, Xtep International officially landed in HKEx. Comprehensive step into the capital market Xtep further standardize and unify the management of the entire supply chain system, but also to provide the majority of suppliers a more fair and equitable benign competitive platform. They also introduced supplier management and assessment mechanism, cooperated with domestic and foreign outstanding enterprises, actively cooperated with new product development, and built a fast supply chain business model of Trinity (Marketing, Designing, R & D and Production) to improve product R & D and production capabilities, Speed ​​up the transfer of information, improve economic efficiency. In Dingshuibo, when the market competition is the most intense, the only difference is the brand. If you say "the choice of Nike, is to choose the American-style lifestyle; Adidas choice is the spirit of the choice of German chariot", then "choose special steps, is to choose the fashion movement."