Big brands get local to boost China sales

With the Beijing Olympics just four months away, set against the background of a rapidly expanding consumer market, major sportswear brands are locked in a design war to make their products appealing to Chinese consumers. Nike and Adidas are two of the biggest players innovating with new styles, motifs and marketing tools, such as Chinese characters, images, colors and celebrity endorsements, to find that special Chinese look.

Launched exclusively in China last June, the Nike Air Jordan 1 XQ China edition, with dragon-inspired patterns and red-silk accents, was the first Air Jordan shoe designed with Chinese characteristics.

In February Nike introduced a new line called 1984, which commemorates the first year China participated in the Olympics under the Communist government. Nike is also playing on nationalistic sentiment with its slogan of 起来前进 (”rise and advance”), a phrase frequently used to describe China’s development over the past 50 years. In terms of spokesmen, Nike’s face for the Olympics is Liu Xiang, the gold medal hurdler and one of the most familiar faces on the streets of Shanghai. Other sponsored athletes are the Milwaukee Bucks’ Yi Jianlian, tennis player Li An, and swimmer Wu Peng.

To appeal to Chinese consumers, companies like Adidas are wielding massive marketing budgets - and localizing their looks. Here, an Adidas hoodie mixes a traditional Chinese knowledge-tree design with the company’s signature stripes.

Adidas, which has spent more than US$80 million to become an official partner of the Olympics, is the official outfitter for China’s medal winners, and ran a competition to design the athletes’ attire. The director of the Adidas Creation Center in Shanghai, built three years ago, says that having a design center in mainland China “enables us to be closer to the Chinese consumer, to understand emerging trends within sports and to design and develop concepts on shorter timelines.”

This Nike Court Force High shoe in Olympic colors was inspired by Lang Ping, a star player on the women’s volleyball team that won the gold medal at the 1984 Olympic Games. The characters on the shoe mean “breakthrough”.

With sales over US$1 billion already this year, China is the biggest market after the US for both Adidas and Nike. According to market research firm Euromonitor International, sales of athletic apparel in China doubled by volume over the four year period from 2002 to 2006. Overall, sportswear sales are expected to grow at an annual rate of 20% over the next five years, and premium brands such as Nike and Adidas are projecting increases of 35 to 40%.

This Nike jacket, inspired by Chinese tennis player Li Na, features a phrase inspired by the Chinese national anthem: “Arise and advance!”

Going Chinese can be tricky for foreign brands, and many marketing campaigns have failed miserably in the past. European designers’ past experiments with chinoiserie such as Mandarin collars and floral embroidery have sold poorly in China, rejected as old-fashioned. In the late 1990s, Nike’s attempts to market a low-cost canvas “World Shoe” in China and elsewhere in the developing world met with little success among consumers who preferred the brand’s flashy American street styles.

Recent Olympic-themed advertising from Adidas featuring Chinese basketball star Sui Feifei.

Already, the Olympics are highlighting new enthusiasm for the nation’s fashion heritage. Last year, a group of more than 100 scholars petitioned the Beijing Olympic organizing committee to dress Olympic medal- and flag- bearers in Han Fu, a style of clothing with flowing robes that dates back more than two millennia. Copies of the scholars’ petition circulated on Chinese Web sites and drew tens of thousands of supporters.

Images and material taken from the Wall Street Journal

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