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Interface News Reporter | Shi Yiying

Interface News Editor | Ren Xuesong

Li Ning's first SOFTLAND store opened in Guangzhou on August 15. This store sells all footwear products, mainly selling Li Ning's SOFT series shoes, and limited sales of SOFT GO 2 dopamine color shoes. The SOFT shoes featured in this store are Li Ning's best-selling single product in the first half of the year. According to Li Ning CEO Qian Wei, sales of SOFT comfortable walking shoes exceeded one million pairs in the first half of the year, a 40% increase year-on-year.

Different from the channel strategy of sports brands to build large offline flagship stores in the past few years, this year, while sports brands are opening large multi-storey flagship stores in the core business districts of super first-tier cities, they are also testing small stores for single categories or flagship stores for single product categories.

For example, in Beijing's core Sanlitun business district, after H&M's exit, the street-side store locations in the south district were divided up by FILA, a brand under Anta Group, and lululemon, a Canadian sports lifestyle brand. Both brands opened their largest stores in Beijing and North China. At the same time, in the first half of the year, Jordan, a brand under Nike Group, also opened its fourth World of Flight store in the world in the north district of Sanlitun. This five-story store is on par with the super-large stores of LV and DIOR in the north district.

Also in Sanlitun, the ANTA brand tried out a new store in the channel of shoe collection stores in the first half of this year, named ANTA SNEAKERVERSE, which is the first ANTA collection white label store. On the opening day, the limited color of Irving SV was officially released, and there was a queue in front of this small store.

This ANTA portfolio white-label store has created an interactive space for sneaker and shoe enthusiasts. This unique store image has expanded consumers' awareness of the ANTA brand and related footwear products.

To some extent, the trial of Li-Ning SOFTLAND stores is similar to this channel idea. The main product is a series in the footwear category, and SOFT is the footwear product IP that Li-Ning values. This series of products relies on COMFOAM soft-elastic foaming technology.

This type of single-product store meets the "single-store efficiency" that Li Ning Company values, because its cost investment is not as high as that of flagship stores. Once the sales of single-product products are good, it can drive consumers' interest in the entire brand. Multiple specific color combinations of a single product are also a common means for sports shoes to stimulate consumption.

At present, in addition to the large-scale stores of Li Ning's main brand, Li Ning also has China Li Ning stores, Li Ning 1990 stores, and Li Ning Young stores that focus on children's products. In the mid-term performance report, Qian Wei mentioned that "the average monthly sales of children's clothing stores is 130,000 yuan."

Overall, after two years of growth against the trend, the entire sports consumption market has also shown a clear trend of "consumption caution" this year. Facing the challenges of the market, the answer given by Li Ning is just like the first SOFTLAND store in China, "sound operation and risk control".

On August 16, 2024, Li Ning Company announced its financial report for the first half of 2024: half-year revenue was 14.35 billion yuan, up 2.3% year-on-year. Among them, the revenue of Li Ning's main brand fell by a low single digit.

In terms of stores, since Qian Wei took office, Li Ning has been emphasizing the "single store efficiency" of stores. At the half-year financial report meeting, Qian Wei said: "In the first half of the year, offline operations faced challenges. We further optimized the channel layout, and the core business entity occupancy rate remained stable at around 90%. We focused on the operating efficiency of high-end market stores and accelerated the construction of channels in emerging markets. In the first half of the year, more than 100 new stores were opened in emerging markets, and 80 stores were renovated. We accelerated the upgrade of store image. Currently, there are more than 450 9th-generation stores, with an average monthly store efficiency of about 450,000 yuan."

As of June 30, 2024, there are a total of 7,677 regular stores, flagship stores, China Li Ning Fashion Stores, LI-NING 1990 stores, factory stores, and brand collection stores, including the Li Ning brand and Li Ning YOUNG, a net increase of 9 from the end of last year; there are 44 dealer stores including the China Li Ning Fashion Store channel, a net decrease of 2 from the end of last year.

In the first half of the year, in Li Ning's "In My Name" themed marketing campaign, more than 4,200 stores introduced the campaign's theme visual design.