Specialist
Former commerce manager at Under Armour.
Agenda
- International sports brands in China – 2021 sales review and 2022 outlook, highlighting market share, core competitive advantages, sales volume and growth rate of leading brands including Under Armour (NYSE: UAA), Nike (NYSE: NKE) and Adidas (ETR: ADS)
- Under Armour’s development dynamics in China – revenue scale and changing trends, strategic planning and the model of cooperation with Baozun (NASDAQ: BZUN)
- Under Armour’s online sales system development – sales dynamics, sales proportions, changing trends and development potential across channels including Tmall, JD.com (NASDAQ: JD) and Vipshop (NYSE: VIPS)
Questions
1.
What are the development dynamics of international sports brands in China’s market? What are the impacts of the 2021 Xinjiang cotton incident on international brands such as Under Armour, Nike, Adidas and Lululemon?
2.
According to your observation, the changes in international brands’ traffic and consumer preferences do well to the development of domestic brands. How long can this situation last as far as you see?
3.
Data shows that Nike held the lead and occupied a relatively large share in the China’s domestic sportswear market in 2019-20. In the context of the situation and the change in consumer awareness you just mentioned, how will the competitive landscape of the domestic market change in the future? What about the market shares of various players in the future?
4.
The Xinjiang cotton incident occurred nearly one year ago. According to your observation, what countermeasures have international brands including Under Armour, Nike and Adidas taken? What improvements have these brands made to their products, channels and marketing strategies? How did they cope with the competition from Li-Ning, Anta and other domestic brands?
5.
Can you share with us some cases where brands increase the price range?
6.
As you said, some international brands have increased the price range for their products. How much have they increased the price range? Whether does the move of these brands exert some impacts on domestic brands?
7.
Given the market dynamics in China you just talked about, what adjustments has Under Armour made to its strategies?
8.
Does it plan to invest more money in marketing in the domestic market?
9.
Do you mean all international brands or just Under Armour?
10.
You took charge of Under Armour’s e-commerce. As you said, it has faced a bottleneck in its traffic from the whole market or the online market. What are its strategy and plan for its online segment?
11.
Why has the company eased the policy on offline distributors’ opening online stores? Is it not afraid of affecting the sales of its directly operated stores?
12.
Does it allow distributors to open stores on all platforms including Tmall, JD.com and Vipshop or some channels?
13.
What about the sales of Under Armour’s directly operated stores on Tmall, JD.com and Vipshop?
14.
Has Under Armour made adjustments to its strategies for different platforms?
15.
Under Armour makes different strategies for different e-commerce platforms. How big is the difference in ROIs brought by different platforms? What have been the changes to the ROIs over the past two years?
16.
When did Under Armour penetrate the channel of Douyin? Have not any of its competitors set foot in the channel?
17.
As far as I know, Douyin’s users are mainly from lower-tier markets. Does this match up with Under Armour’s positioning?
18.
What will be the changes to the ranking of e-commerce platforms in terms of their contributions to Under Armour’s revenue and ROI?
19.
Why will it be difficult for the ROI from Tmall to rise greatly?
20.
Under Armour, Nike and Adidas have similar consumer groups. Could you please compare the quality of the consumer groups on different platforms?
21.
Nike, Adidas and other brands are also active on e-commerce platforms, including Tmall. Do they adopt superior strategies and offer better prices, benefits and discounts to consumers than Under Armour?
22.
You mentioned many brands start to raise the price range in 2022. The management of Under Armour once said traffic for full-price products hasn’t recovered. What’s the reason behind this?
23.
Is there is a contradiction between the price range expansion and traffic shortage?
24.
Is Under Armour raising product prices? Does its price system in China change significantly?
25.
How soon will Under Armour raise the price range, for example, by 10%?
26.
Under Armour conducts offline business through distributors to improve the sales of full-price products. Can you elaborate on the cooperation model between Under Armour and Baozun and the overall cooperation orientation over the past few years?
27.
Why? Did Under Armour terminate the cooperation with Baozun on other aspects because it wants to develop direct-to-customer brands?
28.
What’s the sales revenue target of Under Armour in China?
29.
Does Under Armour cooperate with domestic distributors vigorously to expand its offline or wholesale channels?
30.
Will this impact Under Armour’s online channels?
31.
Does Under Armour fit the former or latter circumstance?
32.
Do you have information that is not covered by this interview to share with us?
