Nike, Adidas, Anta, Li Ning…
Are all chasing and intercepting.
In the field of sports shoes with a global market size of nearly 200 billion US dollars, a new player making women’s yoga pants has come.
Adidas was the first to feel the impact, and Simon Atkins, senior vice president and general manager of its basketball and U.S.
business, was poached.
Yes, lululemon started making running shoes.
Cong Lin, who works in Beijing international trade, is a heavy user of xiaohongshu.
She usually likes to learn cooking with xiaohongshu.
But recently, she found that xiaohongshu no longer pushed her food recipes, but every few strokes, she could brush a pair of running shoes, or pink and green colors, or all white and all black.
Conglin was a little puzzled at first.
Until she saw the words “lululemon, running shoes, for women…”, she found that lululemon, known as “Hermes Yoga Pants”, had started to build running shoes, and she had several “little black pants”.
In the cognition of most consumers, lululemon has always been equated with high-end yoga pants.
However, in recent years, lululemon has also been out of the circle frequently.
Especially at the opening ceremony of this year’s Beijing Winter Olympic Games, lululemon became popular again by sponsoring the team clothes of the Canadian Winter Olympic Games.
The latest “out of circle” action was last month.
Source: screenshot of xiaohongshu app on March 9, lululemon released a running shoe specially designed for women and announced its official entry into the shoe market.
Half a month later, running shoes blissfeel was first launched in North America, Chinese mainland and the United Kingdom.
A few days ago, lululemon announced a new personnel appointment with Simon Atkins as senior vice president of shoes.
As of April 10, lululemon’s market value was US $45.337 billion, 28 times higher than the US $1.6 billion when it was listed in 2007, and reached a peak of US $60 billion in November last year.
According to insiders, after the market value exceeded US $40 billion in 2020, lululemon became one of the international head sports brands.
“The competition between lululemon and sports brand giants such as Nike and Adidas is becoming more and more intense.
Both sides are going deep into each other’s hinterland.
Nike and Adidas are making yoga pants, while lululemon is making sports shoes.” Although the market scale of sports shoes is huge, there are many players.
If lululemon wants to run, it has to face not only the interception of Nike and Adidas, but also the containment of Anta, Li Ning and other Chinese brands.
Lululemon still relies on its gender business model, and sunchoe, its chief product officer, said in a statement, “we start with women because we see that running shoes are usually designed for men and then adjusted for women.
This is not suitable for us, and we prefer to give priority to women.” Lululemon’s “little black pants” cost 850 yuan a piece, and many female users are willing to pay for it, but its running shoes cost 1180 yuan.
How many fans are there? Lululemon, a shoe maker who has long planned to start with women’s Yoga Pants, was founded in Vancouver, Canada, in 1998.
However, domestic consumers are crazy about lululemon, which makes it difficult to imagine that it is a new brand that entered China at the end of 2016.
Also in this year, in the hit drama Ode to joy, Andy, the overseas returnee elite, wore the brand’s yoga clothes when running in the morning.
Source: visual China, however, the price of lululemon is not low.
Align yoga pants, the most sold in its tmall flagship store, costs 850 yuan.
Although the product price is on the high side, which is called IQ tax by netizens, many consumers, especially middle-class women, still pay for it.
According to the financial report, relying on a pair of yoga pants, lululemon achieved a revenue of more than $6 billion in 2021.
However, a pair of Yoga Pants does not seem to meet lululemon’s ambition, nor can it support lululemon’s current market value of more than $40 billion.
With the acceleration of lululemon’s international expansion, its product line has been more and more spread in recent years, including men’s clothing, beauty care products and clothing surroundings.
Therefore, it is not surprising that lululemon officials declared to make shoes.
In fact, as early as 2017, lululemon tried to cooperate with Los Angeles sneaker manufacturer athletic propulsionlabs (APL) to launch sneakers, but at that time, this sneaker did not surprise consumers except that the logo was lululemon, and then it was quietly off the shelves.
At that time, it was believed that this was a signal for lululemon to enter the footwear industry sooner or later.
After working with APL to launch running shoes, lululemon’s team began to develop their own shoe series.
In the same year, mark Olson, lululemon’s vice president of product creativity, and a small team opened an office in downtown Portland, basically developing shoe products with an entrepreneurial mentality.
It is understood that Portland is the gathering place of global sneaker brands.
The headquarters or some departments of international sports brand giants such as Nike and Adidas are located in Portland.
For lululemon, this geographical location is also convenient to dig people.
At the same time, according to the report of American media FOS, the designers of lululemon shoes have experience working in these international sports brands.
Two years after taking root in Portland, lululemon said for the first time that it would enter the footwear market..