Anta Pushes "Category System" To Arouse Young People's Sympathy Through Commodity Content.

In July 13th, there was a long queue at Anta store in Yu Garden, Shanghai. The fans rushed to buy Anta KT4- "reward" basketball shoes.

Although the price is 999 yuan (previously the KT series is selling at a price of 899 yuan), it is also not easy to get a pair of "reward" at the same time, which is sold at 66 Anta stores in more than 30 provinces and cities nationwide.

From 99 to 10000

It is reported that this sneaker is the spokesperson for Anta NBA. After Clay Thompson renewed his contract with the Jinzhou warriors for a maximum salary of 190 million dollars, he expressed his gratitude to the team and fans, especially the shoes that he had jointly launched with Anta.

"The vamp is written in Clay Thompson's endorsement newspaper EAST BAY TIMES (" East Bay times ") for his inspiration, his feet have an asymmetric mandarin duck design, left foot English version, right foot Chinese version. At the same time, the outsole is printed with his stadium photos, with the exposed golden TPU, "said Cai Zhiben, general manager of Anta basketball department.

It is Anta's way to convey the brand idea that the story is written into the shoe to let consumers perceive it.

"What we are constantly thinking about is what consumers buy a pair of Anta basketball shoes, what they have bought, they may buy the star effect, buy the products themselves, buy a very good value, buy the packaging, buy the experience of actually participating in the sale."

Li Ling, vice president of Anta group, believes that Anta sports goods carry a lot of things behind it, including social networking, marketing, story telling and shopping.

Undoubtedly, Anta is to arouse consumers' sympathy. At present, it seems that content links are fruitful.

In 2017, Anta launched its first limited amount of "GOLD BLOODED", which only made 99 pairs. At that time, Cai Zhi Ben was also very upset about whether it could be sold. By 2019, KT4 sales had already broken through 10 thousand pairs, and one shoe was hard to find.

From 99 to 1 million, not only is it easy to tell a good story, but CAI has done a lot of painstaking efforts. In the two days before the launch of KT4, Cai wrote a paragraph in her circle of friends: This is probably the strongest sale we have ever made in these years. From product, story, marketing, scale and management, there are two days. Ten thousand pairs of KT4 "reward" matching will be on sale at Anta shop, trend shop and electric store. A sale is the last part of the direct dialogue between the brand and the consumer, and it should also be the most powerful part of experience and ritual. All the details are the embodiment of brand operation ability. We check the quality of a pair of shoes and a pair of shoes in these 66 stores. Once a shoe box is damaged, it needs to be refilled. A paper bag and a sticker can not be reduced. A shop and a shop will do the display. Every store returns photos to confirm the effect. Each store has its own characteristics and a brand guide. This time, the sale of goods and sales has set up a working group of 500 people.

The surge in sales has convinced Anta of the accuracy of its content. "Next, there will be a series of promotion, called" Claire doctrine ", which will be done around Thompson to dig all the stories that consumers can perceive. I think what young consumers really want is to be close to their real stars," Cai Zhiben said.

After that, Anta will copy Thompson's success to Gordon Hayward, who signed last year, and planned his China trip activities. "First, increase his correlation with Anta brand, and second increase Chinese fans' interest in the stars."

On the one hand, the new star will be fry to form a new "star effect". Anta will launch the first generation of Gordon Hayward products in China on August 2nd -8 11. On the other hand, Anta also plans to launch KT5 this year, and increase the amount of money invested in the Chinese market.

　 Four categories

Cai revealed that in 2018, Anta ranked first in the Chinese market with the sales of 4 million pairs of basketball shoes. KT's sales of basketball shoes are expected to exceed 1 million pairs this year.

"As long as the consumer is right, everything is right." this is the biggest emotion that CAI has ever set up since the establishment of the basketball department. Although the basketball department was faced with various problems such as platform opening, team understanding and IP operation capability, Anta still decided to implement the category system. The success of the basketball division gave Anta a chance to segment the market.

In fact, from the end of last year, the Anta brand launched a structural adjustment internally. In the past, only basketball category was an independent business unit. Now, comprehensive training, running and sports life have also been upgraded to independent business units.

Through structural adjustment, what Anta needs to do is to upgrade its category to accurately control the change of consumer demand, really do consumer oriented, and create commodities, stories, marketing activities, scale of sale, and make bigger and stronger market segments.

Li Ling, vice president of Anta, said: "the biggest advantage of the category system is the business of the Department in its own category, from where it comes from, where to sell it, to whom it sells to, and its all-round grasp, so it is very beneficial for all categories to grasp the consumer groups to face.

Scientific and technological innovation will lead this category to be more professional in running category, and comprehensive training will attract more consumers who like daily fitness activities in the future. Sports life category is the most popular category this year.

In order to promote the four categories to go hand in hand, Anta's four major categories synergy with each other. In the first half of this year, cross-border cooperation with man Wei, Coca-Cola and the Imperial Palace has launched a number of hot products, which has received positive response from the market. Take Anta X winter special merchandise the Imperial Palace special edition shoes as an example, through the Imperial Palace IP's "overweight", let more consumers understand Anta's "overbearing" shoes series; in early May, combined with "hydrogen technology" released Anta Cola running shoes triggered a queuing craze in Sanlitun, Beijing, within a week of online and offline products were robbed; in June just concluded 2019Q4 order meeting, sports life category sales accounted for a significant increase.

"The four big categories will play a leading role in promoting the rapid development of the entire Anta brand, including building a real brand power around the value of consumers. The four major departments are now supporting the development of the whole brand as the four pillars of Anta's main brand," Li Ling said.

From the data point of view, in the first half year operation report released by Anta, the retail sales of Anta brand products (calculated at retail value) in the first half of 2019 compared with the same period in 2018, increased by 10%-20%, while other brands in the group increased by 60%-65% compared with the same period last year.

The nine generation of "soul"

In 2019, Anta opened ninth generations of shops in Chongqing, Shanghai and Nanjing. "Digitalization", "Youth" and "specialization" became the exclusive labels of the nine generation shops.

Liu Chong, deputy director of Anta retail management center, described the nine generation shop: "the seven or eight generation shops in the past are just image iterations and updates, but the ninth generation shops have souls". We have been wondering what kind of nine generation stores Anta needs, and what kind of nine generation shops the consumers need.

So how did Anta give the soul of the nine generation shop?

In Yu Garden shop in Shanghai, Anta set up a special experience area -- Taking the doll represented by Anta's core culture KT (Claire Thompson) as the starting point, and combining the original design style of FATKO, designing and producing a series of KT related derivative products, which has become a place for KT fans to exchange, attracting daily attendance of young people.

In fact, the Shanghai store is a collection of four cultures of Shanghai culture, Chinese culture, basketball culture and Anta culture. The other nine generation stores are also combining local cultural elements to create store images and exclusive products.

"At Yu Garden shop in Shanghai, we invite the artist named Zhu Jingyi, who is the most favorite artist after 90 years, to combine the" magic capital "this nickname and Anta basketball" Crazy "theme in the form of calligraphy splash ink, and inscribe the series of products that are" not mad but not survive ", and create exclusive series T-shirts and derivatives, combined with basketball culture.

Digitalization is a new attempt for Anta stores. The self service cash register system, cloud storage rack and mobile screen system are built. Anta hopes to increase intelligence and big data to standardize the product arrangement and store optimization.

As for the future layout of Anta stores, Liu Chong said that it will be divided according to the market level, store level and consumer level level. The eight generation stores and nine generation stores will co-exist and develop. From the data point of view, the eight generation stores will achieve the same store growth at 20%-30%, even higher than 40%-60%, and still have a good pull effect.