2017: A significant year for ANTA

After the recent Spring Festival celebrations, Chinese sportswear manufacturer ANTA Sports held a press conference on Feb 27 to present their annual results for 2017, a significant year for this 24-year-old brand. 

According to ANTA’s report, the brand’s revenue in 2017 was RMB 16.69bn, an 25.1% increase on last year. The profits attributable to ANTA’s shareholders grew 29.4% to a record RMB 3.09bn. 

The company saw a net profit of RMB 3.088bn by December 2017, an increase of 29.4% on the RMB 2.385bn seen the previous year meaning the Chinese brand has seen record annual net profits for a third straight year. 

As disclosed in the annual report, ANTA, with over 10,000 locations around the world, sold more than 60 million sports shoes and 80 million items of sports clothing in 2017, while directly providing 100,000 employment positions. Meanwhile, the market value of ANTA Sports broke the HK $100 billion mark, ranking it third in the global sports industry. 

What is worth mentioning is that 2017 marked the 10^th anniversary since ANTA was listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, a dramatic transformation from a traditional private company such as ANTA. 

Now let us have a quick look at what ANTA did in 2017, which helped the brand achieve these record-breaking results. 

Last year, ANTA established or enhanced its design centers in the U.S., Japan and South Korea, in order to keep up with the changing demands of their targeted consumers. Based on technology support, ANTA launched its star products such as A-Livefoam and A-Flashfoam series shoes, which were widely-welcomed by Chinese consumers. 

The company’s “Multi-brand” strategy is also one of its highlights. Based on its brand portfolio matrix including ANTA, ANTA KIDS, FILA, FILA KIDS, SPRANDI, DESCENTE and NBA, ANTA acquired Hong Kong-based KINGKOW, a children’s wear brand in September 2017. One month later, ANTA broadened its portfolio by setting up a joint venture company with the Korean outdoor activity brand KOLON SPORTS. 

In recent years, many sports brands have been forced to close their offline stores due to the impact brought by e-commerce. However ANTA kept opening new stores, locating them in shopping malls or department stores, upgrading them as concept stores. By the end of 2017, the total number of ANTA stores had reached 1,100. 

Regarding ANTA’s online selling campaign, ANTA’s Double 11 sales campaign may have been one of the biggest in 2017.

In November 2017, ANTA released their groundbreaking online sales figure for Double 11, hitting RMB 670 million, an increase of 66% from last year’s edition of the Chinese shopping festival. Reportedly, it took only 9 hours for ANTA to break the RMB 400 million record. One extraordinary fact is that in the first 8 minutes of the festival their sales figures reached over RMB 100 million, which took 30 minutes for ANTA to achieve on November 11, 2016. 

As for their plans for the future, ANTA launched a “2020 Strategy” in 2017. According to the strategy, ANTA expects to sell 100 million shoes and 130 million items of clothing, as well as having 11,000 stores in 2020. For the same year, 20% of their revenues is expected to be generated from online sales channels. 

At the ANTA annual results press conference, Ding Shizhong, Chairman and CEO of ANTA Sports, commented, that “Our Single-Focus, Multi-Brand, and Omni-Channel strategy has laid a solid and sound foundation. However, we are not satisfied with only being a leading multi-brand company in China. ” 

Ding also explained the group’s goal for 2018, “To that end, we are launching our globalization strategy in 2018. Through product innovation and R&D investment, we hope athletes will fight for glory in our sportswear and that the public will break through their limits with our products. We will tap into the global market with our best brands.” 

In conclusion, it is not hard to see that ANTA indeed delivered a great annual report in 2017. At the beginning of 2018, the sportswear giant provided official uniforms for China’s Winter Olympic Team for the Pyeongchang 2018 Games and two ANTA executives took part in the Torch Relay. ANTA’s strategy for the future could be reflected from these facts.

Proofread by Raymond Fitzpatrick