I admire Li Ning Co. Ltd. very much.

Li Ning Co. Ltd. created a myth in the history of world gymnastics, winning 14 world championships and winning more than a hundred gold medals.

After announcing his retirement in 1988, Li Ning Co. Ltd. founded the "Li Ning Co. Ltd." sports brand after his name. Once became the first domestic sports brand.

Extraordinary achievements have been made in two completely different fields. How difficult it is, the key is that one depends on the limbs and the other on the brain. Generally speaking, the limbs are developed, the brain is generally not very bright, the brain is good, the body is generally weak. Especially on the one hand, the more extreme, the accumulation in other aspects will always be less.

I also admire the brand Li Ning Co. Ltd..

Founded in 1990, it became the first domestic sports brand in a very short time. Then experienced a trough, the stock price plummeted 90%, many executives left, but miraculously reborn, highly sought after, the fire was a mess. There are only a handful of companies that can come back from the dead in this way, looking at the world.

All this is because Li Ning Co. Ltd. owns Li Ning Co. Ltd..

Triple in a year

Because the national tide Li Ning Co. Ltd. has returned to everyone's field of vision. So I got to know Li Ning Co. Ltd..

I was shocked when I knew it.

Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's share price rose 179.93% in 2019, with the highest increase of more than 200%.

Since Li Ning Co. Ltd. himself returned to power by Li Ning Co. Ltd. in 2015, Li Ning Co. Ltd. turned a loss into a profit that year, with his net profit rising from 14 million yuan in 2015 to 715 million yuan in 2018. According to the consensus forecast of Wind, the profit in 2019 is estimated to reach 1.361 billion yuan. What kind of fairy operation is this?

Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's ups and downs

Looking back on the history of Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's development, just like a man with rich experience, he experienced the rise, the newborn calf grew rapidly, was young, was smug about the midlife crisis, and finally made a comeback.

At the beginning of its establishment, Li Ning Co. Ltd. quickly opened up the market through the popularity of founder Li Ning Co. Ltd., "Olympic champion" and "Gymnastics Prince". And successfully won the sponsorship of the 1990 Asian Games and the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games became the first local sports brand to sponsor the Chinese delegation. By sponsoring the Asian Games and the Olympic Games, the company has taken the lead in establishing a franchise marketing system throughout the country, and has rapidly grown into the first brand of sporting goods in China.

Benefiting from the rapid economic development and the huge impact of China's successful bid for the Olympic Games after 2001, Li Ning Co. Ltd. further expanded the influence of the brand through cooperation in international events; the channel expanded rapidly, from 1985 in 2003 to 7915 stores in 2010; Li Ning Co. Ltd. was successfully listed in Hong Kong in 2004, becoming the first domestic sports brand to be listed. And in 2009, it successfully surpassed Adidas, which has been ranked second in market share, and firmly occupied the dominant position of domestic sports brands.

After 2010, the industry environment has changed, the remaining temperature of the Olympic Games has receded, foreign brands have increased the Chinese market, Taobao and other e-commerce have risen, under this background, brands that used to expand blindly and suppress goods in the extensive wholesale mode in the past have encountered development bottlenecks-- decline in terminal retail same-store, high channel inventory, declining dealer profitability, sluggish turnover, weak pick-up, and account delay. Lead to brand revenue and profit growth pressure at the same time a significant slowdown in turnover. At this time, Li Ning Co. Ltd. made a radical misjudgment in the face of competition. Standard international brands on the one hand vigorously promote investment, on the other hand began to raise prices, target customer positioning post-90s, even used for many years of slogans have changed, want to transform as a whole. However, contrary to one's wishes, not only did not reap the post-90s young group, but also lost a large number of original consumer groups, into financial difficulties.

In 2012, TPG strategically bought a stake in Li Ning Co. Ltd.. In April of that year, Jin Zhenjun, a partner of TPG, as acting CEO, began to lead the reform of Li Ning Co. Ltd.. Although this stage was the most lossmaking stage in Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's history, a series of changes laid the foundation for the revival of the company 15 years later. However, due to Jin Zhenjun's introduction of a large number of external executives, which led to great turmoil in internal management, a series of senior executives such as COO Guo Jianxin and CMO Fang Shiwei left. Jin Zhenjun resigned as CEO in November 2014, and the reform ended in failure.

Li Ning Co. Ltd. returned in 2015 as acting chief executive, reviving the slogan "anything is possible" and reuniting people. Since then, Li Ning Co. Ltd. has moved towards recovery and is now in his heyday.

Looking back on the plight of Li Ning Co. Ltd., the lessons of strategic mistakes are deeply imprinted on my mind. At one point, share prices fell 90%, insiders were in a panic, and a number of senior executives left. How did Li Ning Co. Ltd. climb out of such a desperate situation and regain his former towering position?

Li Ning Co. Ltd. treats the disease

In the impression of the outside world, Li Ning Co. Ltd. had a strategic problem during Zhang Zhiyong's period, and then invited a Korean-American professional manager who graduated from Harvard and was famous for saving Daphne to treat the disease, but lost money for three consecutive years, totaling nearly 3 billion. Until founder Li Ning Co. Ltd. came back to turn the tide.

However, contrary to the fact that Jin Zhenjun's meritorious service is rarely mentioned by the outside world, Li Ning Co. Ltd. expressed more affirmation to him."after he arrived at the company, he took over the overall operation of the company, made a lot of efforts, made plans for transformation from retail, products, supply chain, and channels, and made a lot of planning and implementation. It should be said that some of his major directions are still very correct.Some of what we are doing now has been persisted from then to today.」

In fact, the change began with Jin Zhenjun. After he took over Li Ning Co. Ltd., he announced a number of plans:Focus on core (sporting goods), core market (Chinese market), core brand (Li Ning brand), channel revival, improvement of supply chain management, etc.From now on, it is really the operation of helping the building to tilt.

In 2014, Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's overall turnover increased by nearly 1 billion. From the second half of 2014, orders began to grow year-on-year, same-store sales turned positive in the third and fourth quarters of 2014, and recorded medium-unit growth in the fourth quarter of 2014-Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's business had begun to recover before Jin Zhenjun left office.

In an announcement to retire as acting chief executive in November 2014, Jin Zhenjun said: "We have achieved the expected goal of this phase of business restructuring." Such official terms were easily ignored in Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's poor performance at that time.

So Jin Zhenjun is a "firefighter". After prescribing a prescription, the mission will be over.

It takes a good blacksmith to make steel

Although Jin Zhenjun has the right strategy, his problem is that he has brought foreign teams to join senior executives and is too tough, leading to management instability and difficult implementation of a number of plans. With the return of founder Li Ning Co. Ltd. and the completion of Jin Zhenjun's mission, Li Ning Co. Ltd. reunited, and the management began to stabilize. Li Ning Co. Ltd. began to gradually implement the high-quality part of Jin Zhenjun's reform, and deepened the reform on this basis, paying special attention to independent design and R & D strength.

Different from other sub-categories of brand clothing, consumers have higher requirements for the functionality of sports shoes and clothing (such as shock absorption, wear resistance, windproof and waterproof, moisture absorption and perspiration, etc.), so the choice of products in addition to a more subjective sense of design, will take the more standardized and objective performance as an important reference.

Functional technology has been one of the key factors for international leading brands to maintain an absolute leading position in the professional market for a long time, which is their moat.There was also a storm in CBA in 2012 that players disliked Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's shoes that were difficult to wear. The company has been catching up with the leading forces in science and technology.

In the past ten years, the company's average annual expenditure on research and product development is close to 200 million yuan. Even in the context of reducing costs and improving efficiency, the company did not hesitate to invest in R & D, increasing from 130 million yuan in 2015 to 230 million yuan in 2018, maintaining a high share of revenue.

Since 2012, the company's material midsole technology began to accumulate and progress rapidly, and within two years, two leading technologies, DriveFoam and "Li Ningyi", have been developed one after another, and the two international leading technologies have been directly matched in the material process principle and performance, which have reached the first-class performance level of the whole industry in the test. at present, they are used in a small number of top sports shoes and get good feedback from professionals.

In terms of design, the company respects originality and designer culture. Founder Li Ning Co. Ltd. has always believed that originality is a cause worth sticking to and striving for. In 1998, the company established China's first clothing and shoe product design and R & D center. Since then, the company has set up design and R & D centers in Hong Kong, Portland, Beijing and other places to consolidate product design R & D capabilities.

Later, New York Fashion week also proved that Li Ning Co. Ltd. has the ability to make good products.

Mr. Li Ning Co. Ltd. said in an interview: "there is only one month to prepare for New York Fashion week, and nothing can be done in one month, that is to say, what you take out is what you have made in the past two or three years. "

It takes a good blacksmith to make good steel. Li Ning Co. Ltd., who trained gymnastics hard from an early age, knows this very well.

Enlightened Tao

A bit of luck is needed between a good Miaozi and a martial arts master.

China Li Ning Co. Ltd. series products made their debut at New York Fashion week in February 2018, and the new brand image and design style attracted phenomenal attention. In 2018, Li Ning Co. Ltd. appeared on the stage of International Fashion week for the first time with the help of Tmall China Day.Enlightened Tao"for the first time, the theme exposed the company's Chao brand series of products, China Li Ning Co. Ltd..

This is Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's journey of enlightenment.

Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's Wechat index soared 700% on the day the show ended, and tweets about Li Ning Co. Ltd. at New York Fashion week were exposed more than 15 million times in the three days after the show. Within 4 days of the end of the product exposure, "China Li Ning Co. Ltd." Weibo Corp topic discussion read 78 million, Weibo Corp a total of 6834 articles.

In 2018, China's Li Ning Co. Ltd. clothing series sold more than 5.5 million pieces, with a sales rate of more than 70%, and shoe series sold more than 50, 000 pieces, with a sales rate of more than 70%.

A phenomenal exposure was achieved.

After New York Fashion week, Li Ning Co. Ltd. tasted the sweetness, and the wind of the national tide has already blown. Li Ning Co. Ltd. seems to have realized that, like inadvertently getting the secret books of martial arts, he needs to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's performance is more mature and pays more attention to marketing. Social media (topics posted by Weibo Corp, instagram, Douyin, Xiao Hongshu, etc.), hunger marketing (limited edition of certain shoes and clothing), cross-border marketing (working with big IP, traffic stars, etc.), and community marketing (building communities with activities such as basketball games, marathons, etc.) have enriched traditional sports and athlete-sponsored marketing.

Since then, Li Ning Co. Ltd. of China has successively appeared in 2019 Paris Fashion week, 2019 New York Fashion week and 2020 Paris Fashion week, attracting strong attention from people in the fashion industry and consumers at home and abroad to the brand. And launch joint names with Red Flag Motor, People's Daily, etc., and cooperate with GAI and other traffic stars, with endless topics.

Mr. Li Ning Co. Ltd. said that he did not expect it to be so "crazy". He said: "in the past three years, we have actually made a lot of innovations in products, focusing on young people in sports such as basketball, running and badminton. So we've already created a lot of content. However, we do not have a special event and platform to suddenly and comprehensively communicate with you, and New York Fashion week has just become such an opportunity, of course, we did not expect such a result.

It's just that since BABA offered to have such an opportunity,Then we try to truly show our brand culture, our understanding of sports, Chinese sports spirit, and the product language of Chinese sports brand "Li Ning Co. Ltd." on this platform.That's what I thought at that time, but it was fun.」

The social topics and praise brought by Fashion week products provide an opportunity for Li Ning Co. Ltd. brand and company, which has experienced a low ebb and slowly recovered. They were once the glory of the first domestic sports brand and were able to shine again.

What the prepared Li Ning Co. Ltd. lacks is the east wind of exposure.

Looking back on all this in 2019, Li Ning Co. Ltd. stressedWhat he cares about is not how much sales sports fashion products can bring, but the new capabilities that Li Ning Co. Ltd. has accumulated in the past few years behind these recognized sports fashion products.

Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's weakness

Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's weakness is also a place where Li Ning Co. Ltd. can't rest assured.

Li Ning Co. Ltd. in the establishment of the brand at the beginning, the channel and supply chain has been using outsourcing model, so the channel and supply chain management is relatively weak. In 2012, channel revival and supply chain construction were carried out under Jin Zhenjun's strategy.

In addition to opening high-efficiency stores, closing and renovating inefficient stores and clearing inventory, since 2014, the company has completed the all-retail platform integrated by IT to be used in all self-operated stores and some dealer stores, with an information coverage of more than 90%, and constantly strengthen the construction of the platform to promote store standardization and management refinement. Li Ning Co. Ltd. continues to strengthen the business circle analysis of the business structure of the market at all levels, optimize the store image and category matrix combined with different consumer groups, and implement differentiated product coverage at different city levels, so as to refine the operation standards of various types of stores.

In addition, actively develop e-commerce, as of 2019 H1, e-commerce sales accounted for 21.7%.

In the aspect of supply chain, a retail-oriented and flexible supply chain system should be established.

Brands must fully grasp the dynamic information of the retail market, so as to guide various links such as dealer orders, bulk production, terminal sales, quick counter-replenishment, and so on. Therefore, on the production side, the large goods-oriented traditional supply chain no longer meets the requirements and needs to respond flexibly to short-term and diversified production needs; at the same time, the logistics system also needs to be upgraded to efficiently and accurately distribute products to various types of terminals, or even directly distribute consumers, so as to better grasp the demand dynamics and enhance consumer experience.

In order to improve the capability of its own supply chain, the company gradually started the integration of upstream resources and entered the production field: before, the company did not have its own factory, and the products were outsourced, and the supply chain is a link that the company still needs to work hard compared with the same industry. In May 2019, the supply base in Guangxi was officially launched and built its own factory for the first time. The goal is to gradually precipitate the core competencies in the industry in the Li Ning Co. Ltd. system, and to enhance the ability of own supply chain management and R & D technology application.

The construction of logistics support capacity has been continuously strengthened: the company has established an accurate and fast logistics support system. In 2016, the company completed the business process transformation and information upgrading of all regional logistics centers and national logistics centers. By 2018, it has realized the direct distribution of goods from the general warehouse to more than 800 stores across the country, and the weekly rolling replenishment of Evergreen to more than 1500 stores across the country.

Overall, it has continued to improve, but if you look at Anta, the brother next door, there is still a long way to go.

Post-Li Ning Co. Ltd. era

Li Ning Co. Ltd. Company was brought to the first place in China by Li Ning Co. Ltd.. After he left, Li Ning Co. Ltd. of the company fell into the abyss. When he came back, everything was all right again.

Relying so much on Li Ning Co. Ltd., is Li Ning Co. Ltd. inseparable from Li Ning Co. Ltd.?

Not to mention the achievements of gymnastics, it is no longer possible for ordinary people to be a listed company and then save a listed company.

Now Li Ning Co. Ltd. has become the light of the national tide, although Mr. Li Ning Co. Ltd. has always said that he is a sports brand, not a tide card. "the tide rises and falls too fast," he said. "having such a sense of crisis shows that we have indeed learned a profound lesson. Li Ning Co. Ltd. just took advantage of this national trend, stood up again, walked on two legs with his own sports brand, and consolidated his own basic system.

Li Ning Co. Ltd. has always hoped that the company Li Ning Co. Ltd. can operate on his own, and this time he came back to do a lot of infrastructure construction in order to make Li Ning Co. Ltd. no longer need Li Ning Co. Ltd..
Li Ning Co. Ltd. of the company is booming now, the foundation is much more solid, and Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's task is almost complete.

On September 2, 2019, founder Li Ning Co. Ltd. was transferred to Co-CEO and appointed former Uniqlo Global Executive Director, Uniqlo China COO and Uniqlo Korea CEO Takasaka Takeshi (Japanese Chinese, Chinese name Qian Wei) as Co-CEO. Takasaka Takeshi started as a clerk in Uniqlo and has experience in store, production, sales and management. From a career point of view, I am quite good at operation. And Uniqlo is known in the industry for its advanced supply chain management capabilities, which complement Li Ning Co. Ltd. 's needs.

Although it can be seen that Li Ning Co. Ltd. is willing to quit again, in order to avoid the turbulent situation of Jin Zhenjun's management at that time and learn from experience, Li Ning Co. Ltd., the company's spiritual leader, still served as joint chief executive and did not retire directly. It should wait until Takeshi Osaka is completely stable.

Li Ning Co. Ltd. should also grow up and learn to walk by himself, he will go further.