Chapter 24 Chapter 8 The World Is Flat (9)

"Li Ning" found that while the brand is internationalized, it needs to cater to the needs of these emerging consumers who have gradually internationalized.Fashion, becoming one of the main elements. At this time, Adidas has launched another brand in 2001, "Y-3", which specializes in sports and fashion brands.Nike has already launched "cool products".Integrating more fashion elements into the design of sports products is a trend in the international sporting goods industry. The article "Li Ning at the Crossroads" introduced, "In 2000, Nike took the lead in emphasizing in the industry that sporting goods should not only meet the professional needs of consumers not to be injured in sports, but also should become the choice of fashion and leisure for the public. Therefore, when other companies While struggling to draw the traditional lines between sport and fashion, Nike has transformed basketball shoes into a way for people to look stylish on and off the field, and then soccer shoes into fashion gear for football fans. Now, it is doing so through Integrate the technology and design of high-end sports equipment into high-end fashion to build a wide range of potential customers. The rules of the game in the entire sports industry have begun to change." "Li-Ning" products have also come to a time when they need to change.

"In the past, Li Ning's designers did not dare to change the design style easily because they were afraid of affecting market sales. They considered more about how to make it more in line with the aesthetic standards of the general public, because those products with simple design styles and lack of change are Li Ning's long-term At most, a backpack designer can design more than 100 products in a month." "But in fact, the taste of the market has already changed, and some dealers have begun to complain that Li Ning's designs have no concept products and are out of stock." over mediocrity. The result is that consumers in first-tier markets are defecting."

This is exactly what Zhang Zhiyong worries about.At the company's internal annual meeting in early 2006, Zhang Zhiyong admitted that Li Ning's design shortcomings were still prominent, and that product development and market integration were too rough and not refined enough. The importance of fashion-driven strategy began to be put on the agenda of Li Ning Company.In Zhang Zhiyong's view, this will be the best opportunity for this industry to maximize its commercial value in the future.And professionalism and fashion are not contradictory: being professional is more important to building a brand; being fashionable is to let all consumers choose sports brands, and it is a condition for getting business.

"Li Ning" began to change.Catering and guiding the tastes of the public this time is destined to be difficult. The difficulty is that it is not difficult to learn fashion concepts, but it is a difficult challenge to unify various design styles and form the characteristics of Li-Ning brand.If you can't grasp the balance between sports and leisure and form an ambiguous brand image, consumers may be at a loss. For the identified goals, Li Ning Company has always made the greatest efforts. In November 2006, Zhang Zhiyong led a high-level team to inspect South Korea's Samsung and Japan's Toyota, hoping to find some inspiration: how a backward company can catch up with its multinational counterparts and become a world-leading brand company.More importantly, as a company eager to adjust itself quickly, Li Ning Company once again used its trump card-inviting an airborne soldier with this skill to serve as the general manager of the brand.

This time, after layers of selection, the 43-year-old Taiwanese Le Shuyu was finally determined.Le Shuyu used to be the deputy general manager of Guangzhou Zhongwei Commodity Enterprise Co., Ltd., which mainly represented Benetton, Sisley, Disney and other clothing brands. She has rich experience in brand operation.According to the "Li Ning at the Crossroads" report: "Le Shuyu was promised a lot of money - it is said that the annual salary and stock options add up to more than 2 million yuan; moreover, her position is half a level higher than that of other company vice presidents - second only to CEO Zhang Zhiyong and CFO Chen Weicheng. Before joining Li Ning Company, she also accepted the personal interview of Li Ning, the founder of the company and the former Chinese gymnastics prince - for other vice presidents, this is not a necessary procedure." The determination of product remanufacturing.

Therefore, this highly anticipated figure who will be full of controversy within the company in the future parachuted to "Li Ning" and took up the post of general manager of the brand that Zhang Zhiyong had been holding concurrently before, in charge of products, production, operations and marketing. "Li Ning at the Crossroads" introduced Le Shuyu's fashion promotion process in Li Ning company in detail: "After the airborne, Le immediately started a brainwashing campaign of fashion concepts in Li Ning company, those who don't have much sense of fashion trends The product manager had to madly purchase a large number of fashion magazines and books to make up for it." At the same time, Le Shuyu began to integrate the overall design of "Li-Ning", simplifying the design process.The core of the fashion drive is color and style.Blue has long been the main color of Li-Ning's products, and Le Shuyu asked the designer to add bright and active colors to the color matching and incorporate fashion elements.