Views: 42 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2018-10-24 Origin: Site
Imagine the market ranking of sports brands as a talent show. The voting cycle of the audience has changed from the four years of the previous major sports events to one year or even six months.
On July 26th, German sports brand Puma and Curry sneaker sponsor Under Armour released the second quarter earnings on the same day. With revenues of $1.33 billion and operating profit of $58 million, Puma maintained its overtaking against Under Armour, which earned $1.2 billion and expanded its losses to $95.5 million.
It seems that Puma is more than Under Armour and has stabilized in the third place in the sports industry. Not only Puma, but now the fifth-ranked private sports brand, New Balance, also narrowed its gap with Under Armour to less than 10% last year.
Just three years ago, Under Armour was the "black horse that overtook Adidas in the United States and was ready to challenge Nike."
At the same time, Nike and Adidas have a higher market share than in the past. According to Euromonitor's data, the share of the two giants is 25.9%, compared with 40.3% for sports shoes, which is 22.2% and 35.6% in 2012.
This is not to say that the two giants grabbed the last few markets. The entire sports market is growing rapidly with the trend of sports and leisure. Skechers' revenue in 2017 increased 16.9% to US$4.16 billion, the first time the brand has broken through US$4 billion in 25 years; New Balance's revenue last year was US$4.5 billion, and CEO Chris Davis said that they are now “real global brands”.
According to Adidas putting Stan Smith on the T-station, sports and leisure have become mainstream, and the trend of sales decline in professional sports products has come to the 4th year. Various market data continue to prove this: American men's shoes sales catch up with women's shoes, sportswear is the only growth driver of the global apparel industry in 2016, and Adi beats Jordan, which sells basketball shoes, in the United States by casual running shoes...
From the market performance, all the brands that cater to, or happen to catch up with, this retro shoe trend seem to win for the time being, and vice versa.
This explanation is so simple that Vans, who insists on selling vintage skateboards, is now the illusion of being able to lie down and make money. This is the case now, and the performance of Vans over the past few quarters has proven to be staggering.
But when all participants learn to "retro", new differences will inevitably arise.
Those sports brands with annual incomes of between $3 billion and $5 billion, aiming to develop all categories and global markets, can no longer capture the mass market with professional sports shoes just like Nike.
Challengers in the second echelon must accept the new rules of the game. The main set of rules is Adidas, and the development time is mostly back to the March 2016 NMD release date.
Puma, who rose to third place, is undoubtedly the leader of the second echelon. The most popular style of retro sneakers that sell for $60-100 is Puma Suede (this year is Suede's 50th anniversary). After Rihanna, Puma also signed stars such as The Weeknd and Kylie Jenner, and these partnerships corresponded to the new shoes from Puma. Weeknd promoted Limitless and Jenner brought Puma Fierce.
Rihanna x Puma 2018
Puma's rapid growth over the past two years is also due to its selection of female consumers, a segment of Nike and Adidas that has not yet been fully developed. Nike's revenue from female customers is less than 1/4 in 2017. The good times are not long, and the distinctive positioning of Rihanna’s personal image has caused the brand to encounter resistance when entering the male market. At the same time, with the launch of the Jordan series designed specifically for women this spring, Nike has announced that there are more and more companies selling shoes to girls, including Skechers, Converse, New Balance and so on.
Over time, consumers can easily see through the routines. This model of star + sneakers has lost the mysterious charm of the original Kanye West as a legendary hip hop singer and sneaker designer.
For most companies that do not have the financial resources to invest in the huge amount of sneaker technology research and development, casual fashion shoes are a low growth opportunity and make the market competition more elusive. The first to put Stan Smith into Fashion Week to show people is Adidas. When the choice is more, this kind of success is more and more difficult to copy.
One evidence is that Vans, which is also priced at $60-100, is selling as much as possible.
Vans parent company VF Group released its latest financial report last week, showing that Vans grew 35% this quarter. Vans barely asked big-name stars to advertise, but it has become the kind of shoes that hip-hop singers will wear when they open concerts.
We wrote about the brand's history at the 50th anniversary of Vans and its ability to penetrate popular culture over the years. For consumers, changing a pair of Vans new shoes will remind them of their youthful time when they watch the first rock concert, or they may just be tired of seeing a logo that has appeared too recently.
Vans is now a popular brand at $60-100, meaning it's not just Puma's business, but also Adidas' largest casual shoe, Superstar. Foot Locker, the largest shoe retailer in the US, revealed last winter that Superstar's continued sales growth is slowing.
Of course, the sports shoe market is not a zero-sum game today, but the increase in competition year-on-year is the marketing cost. Puma's marketing spending in the past quarter has increased by another 10%, and its pre-tax profit margin excluding operating expenses is less than 5%. In the domestic market we are more familiar with, the traffic stars that can be found in the market have been almost divided by major sports brands. Another problem brought by this is that relying on a single spokesperson to launch new products will make it harder to get out of the fan circle.
In this context, Puma's share price fell 7.8% despite a 15% year-on-year increase in revenue.
“In the first six months of this year, there have been major changes in product trends and consumer demand, especially in footwear.” Puma’s CEO Bjorn Gulden’s words are basically the direct cause of the decline in share prices after the release of the quarterly earnings report.
He said that the company has quickly advanced the release time of the "old shoes" Puma Thunder to cope with the new trend. “The hasty response made this quarter very difficult. We had to speed up the procurement... I hope we can be a little faster.”
Puma Thunder Spectra?
It’s not another sports brand that makes Puma rush to respond to the old shoes.
Last summer, Under Armour designed Curry 3 for Curry. A gray color scheme was used as a “grandmother's shoe” because of its outdated style and ugliness. It also became the best example of people who attacked the brand without knowing fashion.
But Under Armour is probably not to be guessed. Almost the same number of "Dad Shoes" will sweep the market in a few months and become the most fashionable.
Driving this trend is to see sneakers as a luxury brand that captures new customer tools. This is a style with a large gimmick and a complex structure, called a sneaker but a fashion shoe. The name of the old shoes comes from the high similarity between it and the kind of jogging shoes that the daddy bought in the sports goods chain in 2000.
Luxury brands such as Balenciaga, Dior Homme, Gucci, Prada, Acne Studios have designed their own old shoe versions in the two fashion seasons of 2017. Among them, the Parisian family's Triple S, with its gorgeous and meaningless decoration, and a complete abandonment of comfort and practicality, became the most popular old shoes in the second half of 2017.
Triple S, such a heel is not likely to be comfortable
In April of this year, Italian fashion house Versace teamed up with Goat, a popular American limited-selling shoe resale app, to launch a Chain Reaction, a sneaker with rapper 2Chanz, for $920. It is RMB 6268) and sold out within 24 hours.
Designing this shoe for Versace is Salehe Bembury, who was originally a senior shoe designer at the Adidas Yeezy team. Last fall, through Linkedin, he conveyed to Versace the advice that you should sell sports shoes. The result of the cooperation between the two parties - "chain reaction" appeared in Milan Fashion Week in January this year, followed by the indiscriminate bombing of stars and celebrities in social media for more than three months.
This is no different from Kanye West's approach to selling Yeezy every season. In fact, Yeezy's main Yeezy 500 and Yeezy 700 are the design of the old shoes.
After the old shoes are on fire, the sports brands have come back to launch their own cheap versions in 2018, including Nike, Puma, Reebok, FILA, Anta, and even Li Ning who went to the Fashion Week show. As Puma CEO said, many people are caught off guard by this wave of pop.
Yeezy wave runner
Behind this is the change in the right to speak of “cool” in the sneaker industry. In sports-led industries such as basketball, football, and comprehensive training, the first-of-its-kind sports shoe technology represents the most cutting-edge fashion. Nike is the most successful company in this respect. AirMax's air-cushioned window is a combination of novel visual effects and material technology. Its design language still follows the idea of “form following function”.
When the reason for consumers to buy sports shoes is now to pursue fashion, the design of sports shoes needs to make every component have a law to follow? Luxury brands that are good at trending are the first to break this rule.
Some people say that old shoes are ugly. Stephen Bayley, author of "The Appreciation of Ugly: The Aesthetics of All Things," puts forward an interesting point. Ugly is not only a matter of taste but also an environmental issue. When the Bauhaus movement's minimalist goals are spread over the iPhone, basic clothing and solid color socks, the ugly and sophisticated old shoes become a symbol of resistance to boredom.
From the perspective of business, the explanation is relatively simple. The same uniforms of sock shoes have made the sports shoes market more homogenized. Nike first launched Flyknit knitted uppers in 2012. Today, all sports brands sell similar socks running shoes. Designers can The space that is being played is getting smaller and smaller.
Nike, the industry's No. 1 player, did not launch an old-fashioned shoe like Puma as the main character of the season. It just meant to take out a cross-training shoe Nike Air Monarch in his sneakers library, changed the color, and made several joint names. .
Nike M2K Tekno relaunched based on Nike Air Monarch
Nike now has Virgil Abloh and his The Ten series. The black designer who is now the creative director of LV menswear is Nike's “Kanye West”.
There are many articles explaining Virgil Abloh, but none of them will mention his close relationship with Kanye. After Virgil's first show for LV, it wasn't his design that made the headlines the fastest. It was a photo of him crying with Adidas darling Kanye West. But the difference between the two is that Kanye is more like a star with thousands of fans than a designer, and Virgil Abloh is in line with the contemporary image of a creative director of luxury brands.
The Ten series, designed by Nike, pioneered the deconstructive design of 10 Nike sneakers – the so-called deconstruction. In short, there is no essential difference between the results and the old shoes. In order to increase the non-functional decoration on the sneakers.
The Ten Collection
After a year of anti-adidas strikes, Nike, the industry's number one company, quickly copied the entire set of opponents. Virgil's benchmark is Kanye, and Paris Fashion Week launched six co-branded shoes in one breath to establish its own fashion position, and The Ten series is also stabilizing new and refreshing the list of resale shoes. Resources accumulated over the years have played a role.
Nike announced its new group strategy in October 2017. The main plan is to restructure dealer channels and increase investment in direct business (including e-commerce APP). After launching React, the running shoe against Adidas Boost in March 2018, Nike's business began to return to the right track, and the latest earnings report released at the end of June ushered in the first growth in sales in North America in the past four quarters. The 100 goals scored by the sponsors in the World Cup further fueled this momentum.
There are two lists that show Nike's full return to the entire sneaker market.
The first is the best-selling sneakers released by NPD Group in the first quarter of 2018. Top 10, 10 pairs are all from Nike, Jordan or Nike's Converse, the first is the basic running shoes Nike Tanjun.
In the 2017 edition, the only two non-Nike shoes selected for the second edition are Adidas' Superstar and Tubular Shadow. Regarding the disappearance of Adidas' list in the first quarter, NPD believes that this is because Adi is stepping up its launch of new shoes and enriching its product portfolio. This has always been the weakness of Adi, which has driven the growth of recent years. Group CEO Kasper R?rsted explained in the first quarter earnings report: "When you do it online, you need to publish it on different frequencies (products), and the past practice is to release a bunch of products at any time of the year. ."
This formulation failed to convince investors that Adidas's first-quarter earnings and profits in May were still rising, but the stock price fell 5.8%. Analysts believe that the growth of the brand in the North American market has slowed down. Adidas' market share is still far below Nike, but with NMD, Superstar and other explosions, Adi's momentum in the fourth quarter of last year is significantly better than Nike, the results are not half a year, the situation is reversed.
The second list also reflects this. From the shoe resale platform StockX's transaction record, reflecting the market demand for limited sports shoes, can also be understood as the fashion index. The list shows that there are 6 pairs of Nikes in the most popular 10 pairs of sneakers in the past 72 hours, and the other 4 pairs are Adi's Yeezy.
In the third quarter of 2016, Adidas surpassed Nike in the sneaker resale market for the first time. According to our report at the time, according to StockX's trading index, Adidas traded in the secondary market only about 1% of Nike two years ago. Now this ratio can reach 41%. But the latest Nike shoes in this list are newly launched, and Adi has not had a new topic for some time.
It is worth noting that the Nike React Element 87 white shoes, which have just fallen out of the top 10 of the resale list, were released on July 13, 2018. The retail price was $160, and a total of 3,639 pairs were resold, with an average transaction price of $353. The rate was 109.4%. In the first week of the sale, the transaction exceeded 2,000 pairs, and the premium did not fall.
Nike React Element 87?
Nike's React Element 87 has neither a star endorsement nor a joint name, and it is very rare in today's market environment. And a pair of Yeezy's new models can now fall to a premium of only about 50% in the weeks following the launch.
If you look carefully at the design and release path of the shoes: the first appearance in Paris Fashion Week; the vamp adds a decorative patch and bare car line (also "deconstructed"!); and the current luxury brands are the most The transparent material of love (the principle is that it can be paired with personalized socks, and the transparent handbag with flowers and Instagram is essentially the same) - obey all the rules of the game.
But most importantly, this is the first React shoe to be positioned casually by Nike's React sole technology. In other words, sports technology is not unimportant, but it must meet certain preconditions before it can be effective.
Some clues have already predicted the recovery of the functional side of sports shoes. British Shoe Retailer Size? Brand manager Luke Matthews? In the past few months, it has been found that brands such as Nike and FILA have a few pairs of small outdoor shoes (Hiking Footwear) that sell well. "People like these shoes because they end up in some way. Made for the purpose, the design contains functional factors."
“The popularity of outdoor aesthetics has stretched out the 'real' appeal of this unpredictable trend world.” Stuart Wells, global brand marketing director for Adidas Outdoors, said in an interview with trend media Highsnobiety, “Function is greater than form, especially that A kind of protection against uncertainty.” The translation is to provide consumers with a sense of superiority that does not follow the trend.
The latest forecast said that sports and leisure running shoes will continue to be the main force of industry growth in 2018, but this growth will appear to be stable in NPD Group analyst Matt Powell. "The image of modern runners is too common, sports industry Need a new image to boost sales."
Is this new image likely to be a cooler new age football youth?
On July 3rd in Paris, pop singer Justin Timberlake wore a coach coat on one of his concert tours this year, with the big Jordan logo and the words “Paris” and “Saint-Germain” on the back.
This is the first appearance of a collaboration between Nike's Jordan and Paris Saint-Germain Football Club, but Jordan is a basketball brand. Just three days ago, on June 30th, the St. Germain club signing player, 19-year-old French striker Mbape scored twice in the game against Argentina, kicking the key 3rd and 4th points and becoming famous overnight.
The French team won the World Cup championship all the way, and the young Mbape has also become the new face of Nike's European market advertising. After the game, Mbape's Instagram fans exceeded 15 million. His daily casual wear was also checked by the media. One of them is often missed. He loves to wear Virgil Abloh's World Cup co-branded series for Nike. Pair of shoes. Nike sent the shoes with the name Mbabe to him a few months before the start of the game.
Off-White and Nike's football cooperation series
The sport of football has begun to penetrate the way fashion shoes run. As the official sponsor of Adidas is the first action. At the beginning of 2017, Adi began to cooperate with Russian designer Gosha Rubchinskiy for a total of three seasons of football theme series. After that, Adi's joint cooperation with some trendy shops, such as Kith of New York, was also advertised as “inspired by football”.
Gosha's football theme series for adidas football, for three seasons
Adidas x Kith
Since then, up to the luxury brands to the sports brand, there are series of launches in this series, Versace, House of Holland, Vetements, Off-White, Stussy, Supreme... These costumes do not correspond to a real team, but borrow The style of football uniforms to show a lifestyle of the fans. During the men's fashion week of spring and summer 2018, these series broke out.
As a traditional sport in Europe, football has given a new inspiration to the nearly saturated American street fashion. "In addition to basketball and rugby, which requires giant height, the sport of football is the part of most 'ordinary people'." New Zealand national team's former midfielder and founder of the footwear brand Allbirds Tim Brown accepted GQ? Interviewed, "The football uniform is not like basketball football or baseball. It has a clear lineage, a recognized form of men's wear, such as T-shirts and Polo shirts."
Russia, where the World Cup is held, makes it easy to find creatives. Open the report of the trend website during the World Cup, you can find out about "How Moscow people wear Puma, party"; open YouTube, New Balance hired three net red uploaded them wearing New Balance jerseys, with the audience to experience Russian customs Travel show.
Not only football, but the basketball market has also been seen.
In the February NBA All-Star Weekend, Adidas hosted a festival full of events and parties in Los Angeles. In two days, a total of 14 limited-edition basketball shoes were released. The brand's all-star lineup - supermodel Karlie Kloss, fashion designer Alexander Wang and singer Pharrell Williams were all there, and the game was not an NBA player, but a Rapper basketball match between East and West.
Adidas X Pharrell Williams joint basketball shoes Crazy BYW
On June 20th, Puma, who collaborated with the Rihanna women's collection, signed two NBA rookies and appointed American legendary rapper Jay-Z as creative consultant for the basketball business, which is the first time the brand has returned to the basketball market 20 years later. Adam Petrick, Puma's global director of marketing and branding, said that they intend to use the "culture" as a starting point for the basketball business, taking into account its fashion, music and other attributes. According to the news of Sports Illustrated on July 24, New Balance also intends to re-launch the basketball business line.
At the same time, more and more NBA players appeared in Fashion Week, treating the latter as an opportunity to expose themselves; Angelique Gerber wearing Adidas X Palace joint sportswear won the Wimbledon title; New York high-end fashion brand Thom Browne and Barcelona The football club signed a three-year cooperation agreement, and Thom Browne said in an interview that it was a cooperation invitation from Barcelona.
After the success of the story of casual running shoes, the addictive sports industry wants to copy it and use marketing to package football and basketball into a new, cool lifestyle to promote.
These new things are very cool, and the radiation impact on the vast mass market is still a question.
Running shoes can become an added market because the clothing habits of the whole society become more casual, and running is a middle-class sport that everyone can practice. The participation of basketball football is much lower. If basketball and football just become the source of “inspiration”, the shoes designed in the end are essentially a pair of casual shoes, and the business does not necessarily become bigger.
However, the search for new growth is just beginning, the craze for running shoes will continue, and everyone is stepping up to launch the next shoe that may detonate the market.
Nike AirMax 720
Adidas P.O.D System
Puma Thunder Desert
Nike announced the upcoming new AirMax 720 partial map 3 days ago. Nike this year another pair of air cushion shoes new.
Adidas official website has been launched on the new page. The puzzling name P.O.D.Syetem, the same historical story as NMD, introduces the short film, designed to disassemble the sole (or should be said to "deconstruct"?) into three large pieces, which will be convenient for color change in the future.
Puma's "old shoes" Thunder series released a new color for the third time, I hope this time will not be too late.
