2019 July
Sportswear Market in China
Written by Andrew Sia
Introduction
We suggest you to refer to our article in the IAJ’s January 2019 under the title of “The Evolution of Activewear – Part 1” where we introduced the market of U.S., UK, and China. In the article, we also try to speak about the opportunity for the intimate apparel manufacturer to venture in this field for production. We continue to publish the article as “The Evolution of Activewear – Part 2” and we focused on the business In the U.S. as the world’s largest market.
In this issue, we introduce the business in the second largest market, China, and will use a lot of charts to explain the situation. The following chart shows you the market share of the ten largest markets.
In 2017 China’s sportswear market grew 12% to $31.5 billion or 212 billion yuan, and it is expected to grow at an annual rate of 11% to 2022 in according to Euromonitor International. At the moment 40% of the global sporting goods market is in the U.S. and China only accounts for 10%. But China has a population which is four times as many as the US and it is going to grow very fast.
With the world’s largest running-shoes and second largest in the sportswear market and dominance of big international sports brand, Nike and Adidas in China, it is a very important market in the sports arena. The chart shows you the ten best-selling brands
The local brands are also growing their market share following the heels of Nike and Adidas. You can find Li Ning in the third position and follow by Ante, at the fifth position. This is forcing Adidas, who is currently the market leader with the sales of almost $30 billion a year, to move to innovation. In its new Asian-Pacific headquarters in Shanghai’s Xuhui district is its digital hub with 50 dedicated staffs developing digital capabilities in China, and the new site can hold 1,500 employees.
Adidas launched its Yeezy footwear range, a collaboration with the US rapper Kanye West, with limited-edition collections that are going viral with the Chinese millennials who are willing to spend on premium consumer products. This year Adidas said that there will be 200 such launches, some in high volume and some in limited volume. Yeezy has the ready-to-wear which drew on military clothing and flesh-toned colors. It has a black market already with a pair of Yeezy sports shoes, without Adidas’s three-stripes trademark, gives the brand a fresh look.
Adidas is developing innovative products such as the using of 3D printing, products made out of ocean plastic which can be found in Adidas’s Parley or Yeezy line.
The luxury brands like Balenciaga’s Triple S sneaker, are in the market for the more affluent youths. Chinese consumers are favoring newness more than discounts in this sector.
From somewhere I read that the domestic brand, Ante, is doing the catching up and had an 8% market stake in 2017. I’ll get this verify from my counterpart in China.
We can find the market in the last six years, except for 2013 it dropped 3.2%, but from 2014 until 2018 China has been enjoying a healthy growth.
In 2016, you can find the sales breakdown of the different product categories, and the sports footwear and the outdoor footwear was representing 50% of the business. The other 50% was going to sports apparel, performance apparel, and outdoor apparel.
In terms of the sales revenue, in this year it will hit 253.2 billion yuan which is about $36.71 billion and in 2021 it will be 269.6 billion yuan which is $39.09 billion with an increase of almost 9%.
In China, Weibo is a microblogging service and it is the most visited web service. In that platform, the people are sharing their experience in almost everything.
The hottest brands are Nike and Adidas. Followed the rest of them as the local brands and the last one, Peak, should be the one from Finland. Please note that the numbers are in the millions.
The following chart has to do with the Chinese brands for the sportswear and sports footwear.
This chart is showing you the total number of stores for the various brands. Most of them are Chinese brands except Kappa, which is a German brand.
Fila is an Italian brand and Descente, which is a Japanese brand.
Then we can refer to the monthly sales share of international sportswear brands on Tmall, which is an Internet retailer in China and the figures are from 2014.
