Why?
Over the years, challengers such as Adidas and Reebok tried to shake Nike's dominant position, but they all failed. The appearance of sports recruit Andema (UA) under the age of 20 makes Nike fidgety.
Founded in 1996, Andema has experienced amazing exponential growth since 20 14. Not only did its sales performance in North America surpass Adidas and become the second largest sports brand in the United States, but its performance also climbed all the way with its amazing expressive force.
In the fiscal year of 20 15, the total income of Andema was USD 3,963.3 million, an increase of 28.5% over the fiscal year of 20 14. Operating profit increased by 15.4% to USD 408.4 million, and net profit increased by 1 1.8% to USD 208 million.
The "youth" in the bones, technical control and restless internet genes in the body have become the basis for Andema to shake the traditional big-name status.
Product system from point to surface
Most people don't like the sticky feeling of sweat soaking clothes during exercise, and Kevin Planck, a former football player, knows this very well. After every training, Planck hates the feeling that his cotton T-shirt is soaked with sweat. "If you can have a dry and light functional sportswear, it should be very popular."
The most important characteristics of sporting goods are the needs of the scene, comfort and sportsmanship. Whether it is a sports enthusiast or an athlete, sportswear is their basic demand when doing sports, exercises or competitions. Different from the needs of athletes, some people like to feel energetic and positive after wearing sportswear.
Therefore, most sportswear manufacturers will create different sports concepts and deduce sports brands according to consumers' desires. For example, in 20 14, Adidas released a series of women's products with the concept of "sister weekend sports", just to encourage women to meet sister sports and enjoy sports happiness.
General sports fans' demands for clothing may come from emotional demands, but athletes are different. They not only want to win the competition with better equipment, but also want to show their muscle strength and bodybuilding figure by wearing professional equipment.
Andema's tights are mainly made of microfibers, which are breathable, quick-drying and comfortable, which can effectively reduce friction, assist muscle strength and help athletes improve their performance. Therefore, when Andema introduced the first high-performance tights, it quickly captured the hearts of many fitness enthusiasts and professional athletes, and opened the door to "functional sports products".
But it's not over yet. Through the continuous improvement and upgrading of tights, Andema has also derived different series. For example, there are "hot clothes", "four seasons clothes" and "cold clothes". Different series of products have different functions to meet the needs of different environments.
Hot clothes mainly accelerate heat dissipation, cold clothes mainly keep body temperature and dry, and clothes in four seasons can keep dry. The purpose is to ensure that athletes can play the highest level in any climate after wearing these tights. Today, Andema's tights have gone through more than 60 iterations and upgrades, with a market share of over 70%.
Although tights have become the symbol of Andema, it is still a market segment and easily saturated. In order to consolidate its market position, Andema has continuously enriched its product line and introduced more new products, including tighter sportswear, women's wear, basketball sports shoes and so on. And expand functional clothing to more fields.
According to different sports and climates, Andema has designed products with different functions, such as snow clothes, racing clothes, slimming clothes, fencing protective gloves, boxing shorts and so on. For example, the "hunter suit" is designed to meet the needs of the head, body, hands and feet. Made of high toughness fiber, it is not easy to break and wear, and has a variety of natural protective colors, which is completely suitable for the harsh environment of wild hunting. "Fishing clothes" are mainly light and simple, and the anti-ultraviolet material can effectively protect the skin. The quick-drying fiber fabric cooperates with the environment where fishing is easy to get wet. People don't have to worry about too strong ultraviolet rays burning their skin when they go fishing in such clothes.
Diversification of marketing methods
A rich product line is only the first step for brands to open the market. In order to continue to expand the market, in addition to products, we need strong marketing. When Andema first entered the market, Planck advocated word-of-mouth marketing, hoping to create the voice of public opinion through quality service. Let athletes know about the professional sports brand Andema in the way of spreading word by word.
There is a little story that can't be tested. It is said that a player lost his jersey the day before the game, and the team manager found many manufacturers to catch up with the goods, but he couldn't make it all day. Finally, it was Andema who helped him. Once this matter spread in the team, Andema's brand image and professionalism spread rapidly.
However, in order to make a qualitative change in scale, pure word-of-mouth marketing is not enough to expand the brand's popularity. Leveraging stars for marketing and social marketing has become the focus of Andema's promotion.
Using celebrity endorsements to promote sales has always been a common marketing tool for sports brands, because the stickiness between stars and fans is quite strong. At that time, Nike signed Jordan and launched the "Jordan Air Cushion Series". In one year, the sales of this series exceeded $654.38 billion, and in three years, the sales increased by three times.
In 20 13, the sneaker contract between Curry and Nike expired, and Andema immediately incorporated it into his own team, creating the exclusive sneaker for Curry.
2065438+September 2005, Curry appeared in Beijing with "UA Curry's second-generation boots" and started his three-day trip to China. From Beijing to Chongqing to Shanghai, wherever Curry went, the scene was extremely hot. Many fans come from all over the world, just to see the true face of "Shen Meng" and observe his superb skills on the spot. In the interactive session with the fans, a female fan repeatedly missed in the shooting competition, and Curry even caddied for the fan herself.
Curry's trip to China not only strengthened the ties with fans, but also helped Andema land in China, laying the foundation for her to fully open the China market in the future.
There is no doubt that Andema's choice is correct.
After Curry led the Warriors to win the NBA championship in the 20 14/ 15 season and won the MVP this season, the sales volume of Andema's sneakers increased by 754%, surpassing Adidas to become the second in the North American sneaker market, second only to Nike.
65438+1On October 29th, Andema's share price rose by 23%, up by 15.49 USD per share, reaching 84.07 USD. In the fourth quarter of 20 15, the sales of Andema sports shoes reached $654.38+66.88 million, almost twice the sales of $85.8 million in the same period of 20 14. Sales of sportswear increased by 22.2% to $864.8 million, and sales of accessories increased by 23% to $97100000. Among them, the biggest driving force of profit is sneakers, and its sales volume has increased by 95%, which mainly comes from Curry's signature basketball shoes series and expanded running shoes business. Compared with last year, Curry's jersey sales increased by nearly 600%.
In addition, Andema also cooperated with Marvel Comics and DC to launch "Body of Steel" tights and superhero series clothing in due course. In Captain America 2, watching the supporting falcon in Nike costume stand in front of Captain America in Andema tights, a sense of sight arises spontaneously. When Transformers 4 was released in 20 14, Andema also introduced theme tights with Optimus Prime and Bumblebee as patterns.
Challenge Nike+ with Community+.
"I noticed that when people interviewed me now, the theme was no longer focused on sportswear and began to talk about technology." Planck once said this.
Indeed, Andema, who is less than 20 years old, has adapted well to this Internet age. Whether in social platforms or digital technology, people have seen its wolf-like Internet technology gene.
"It is normal for a company that makes products to want to make hardware. They know about distribution channels, sales and promotion. But when they really started to set foot in this field, they found that the ultimate driving force of sports digital products was still in the community (composed of sports enthusiasts). " This may be the most real reason for Andema to build digital business.
On the one hand, the big data brought by the huge user base in the community can provide the driving force for the whole chain from product research and development to promotion to sales. On the other hand, although Andema maintains a strong growth momentum at present, there is still a big gap to shake Nike's position in the sports market. Nike has been in the digital field for 10 years, but it still hasn't built a platform to get through all products. If Andema can take the lead in building a healthy sports ecology, it may become another weapon for him to besiege Nike.
In the past two years, Andema has invested $7,654,380,000 in various fitness and nutrition apps. First, in 2065,438+03, she bought an exercise and fitness app to map my fitness. Last year, it acquired MyFitnessPal, a health and nutrition tracking application, and Endomondo, a social sports tracking software. Thus, a digital sports health community with 65.438+600 million users has been established, which is the largest in the world.
In order to further realize their ambitions and improve the community ecosystem, in June of this year, 5438+ 10, Andema and IBM jointly developed an app that integrates sports and health management-UA Record 3.0, and officially marked Nike+.
Along with the software iteration, there are a series of hardware devices, including-UA Health Box, which is an Internet fitness system jointly released with HTC at ces this year to monitor and manage a series of factors that affect people's health. At the same time, there are three wearable devices, namely, the smart bracelet UA Band, the heart rate band UA Heart Rate and the smart weighing scale UA Scale, which can be used together with the previously launched UA Speed form Gemini2 sports shoes.
With the combination of software and hardware in the field of sports health, Andema's sports health community has begun to take shape. From entry-level users (satisfied with software recording) to heavy users (using software and hardware together), from front-end hardware support to back-end software analysis, from sports, fitness to health management, Andema has a layout.