Brand Power of China Footwear Companies (E.g. Li Ning, Anta, Xtep)

[ikur1]

I'm currently looking thru this sector,

but I'm personally not aware of the brand perception of these companies

can anyone share their views on each brand?
which is strongest? weakest?
perception in terms of quality, price, target market of the brands?

Thankss

[Musicwhiz]

Hi, I've changed the title accordingly.

Regards.

[soros]

The leading footware brand may still be NIKE. The mainland companies such as Li Ning ( 02331.hk) , Xtep (01368.hk) and Anta (02020.hk) are normally viewed as "sports apparel companies" : including footware as part of their product range.

Li Ning seems to be lacking growth in recent years and was subject of bloomberg report :

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-17...mover.html

Anta and Xtep are the companies still able to report rising sales turnover.

[d.o.g.]

Anta and Xtep are the companies still able to report rising sales turnover.

Anta already announced that for 2012, orders at trade fairs are down by high single digits y-o-y in percentage terms.

Xtep announced that for 1Q FY13 its orders are down by 15-20%.

So they are not special compared with the rest of the industry i.e. everyone is seeing falling sales. All the players share the blame for overcapacity (expanding like crazy) and easy credit (extended payment terms).

Li Ning and Dongxiang have already been forced to buy back stock from their distributors. I doubt they are the only ones. The sportswear industry is going through a very tough period. Nike and Adidas will probably be the ultimate winners, with a couple of local brands sharing the crumbs. Who those brands might be is anyone's guess. You could buy them all... or just buy Nike and Adidas.

As a joke I made a slide a few years back using the logos of the various shoe companies. By distorting and flipping the Nike swoosh logo, I was able to recreate the logos for Anta, Li Ning, Xtep, Erke etc. The tongue-in-cheek conclusion was that all these guys were just Nike copycats and did not have a brand at all. All they were doing was helping to increase Nike's product awareness - eventually their customers would all migrate to the real deal.