The transformation of FILA: Will ANTA's "buy buy buy" strategy work?

Author: Li Jiaman

Editor: Yang Yong

ID: HQingXiaoFei

On April 30th, the grand opening of FILA ICONA flagship store took place. The spokesperson Yang Mi appeared at the event, wearing the new Versailles Palace collaboration. This event not only marked a simple "limited edition release" press conference, but also a significant milestone in the brand image upgrade of FILA.

FILA, the Italian sports brand with a century-old history, was once considered a "hot potato". However, it has now become a "cash cow" under ANTA.

ANTA's "buy buy buy" strategy has indeed achieved remarkable results in the short term.

But it is worth considering: Will frequent mergers and resource integrations also dilute the brand culture and blur consumer awareness?

Three-step Acquisition of FILA by ANTA

Looking at the positive aspects, ANTA "integrates" FILA in three steps.

Firstly, the acquisition and integration have shown effectiveness. The acquisition not only involves the exchange of funds, but also achieves deep integration of resources, culture, and markets. ANTA has maintained FILA's brand independence while injecting new vitality.

In 2009, ANTA acquired the Greater China business of the century-old Italian brand FILA for about 460 million yuan. At that time, FILA had not yet established a strong presence in the Chinese market, with annual revenue of less than one billion yuan and an annual loss of over 30 million yuan.

In just over a decade, FILA has undergone an amazing transformation in the Chinese market. From a loss-making state in 2009, to revenue exceeding 10 billion yuan in 2018, and surpassing 20 billion yuan in 2021, FILA has become an important growth engine under ANTA. According to ANTA Sports' financial report, FILA achieved an annual revenue of 25.1 billion yuan in 2023, exceeding expectations, with a year-on-year growth of 16.6%. The net profit was as high as 6.92 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 60.8%.

The FILA management also proposed a growth plan for the next three years: achieving an average annual compound growth rate of 10%-15% and reaching a sales revenue target of 40-50 billion yuan within three years.

Secondly, brand positioning upgrade. Under ANTA's operation, FILA has successfully transformed into a high-end sports fashion brand. Through activities such as limited edition new products and celebrity endorsements, the brand's influence continues to increase, maximizing brand value.

FILA, born in 1911 as an Italian brand, was initially just a family textile enterprise. However, starting from the 1970s, it gradually shifted to the production of sportswear and focused on the tennis apparel category. Over time, FILA has continuously developed new product series, covering almost all sports categories from golf, fitness to skiing, mountaineering, basketball, and more ANTA injected new vitality into FILA, explicitly proposing the strategic concept of "returning to fashion".

ANTA Group has initiated a local celebrity marketing strategy to leverage the influence of celebrities to enhance the brand's visibility and reputation. Meanwhile, FILA has also established a mature and efficient industrial chain, entering second and third-tier cities through direct operations while surrounding first-tier cities.

In terms of design innovation, ANTA fully utilizes FILA's design resources in Italy while also incorporating localized innovative designs. Especially for the trendy FILA FUSION line targeting young people, it is led by a Chinese team, skillfully blending Eastern and Western cultures to create uniquely stylish items. Yao Weixiong, President of FILA Greater China, revealed to the media that FILA China's design team regularly visits the FILA Museum in Biella, Italy for inspiration, closely collaborating with international designers to ensure the brand maintains a leading position in design.

Regarding product structure, FILA's development in the Chinese market is also strategic. The launch of the KIDS, FUSION, and ATHLETICS lines, targeting children's wear, young people, and the professional sports market respectively, has formed a clear product line structure. This not only brings FILA a broader market space but also sets it apart in a market environment crowded with sports giants. With the support of ANTA, FILA's channel expansion is also bold. Leveraging ANTA's traditional strengths, FILA successfully entered the lower-tier market, creating a significant gap with similar European sports fashion brands.

FILA's performance in the footwear business is particularly outstanding. The iterative upgrades of popular shoe styles such as cat claws, fish bones, and Mars have not only enhanced product performance but also led the fashion trend.

In terms of marketing strategy, FILA also flexibly responds to various challenges. For example, during the epidemic, FILA quickly formulated response plans and adopted a flexible dynamic management policy. At the same time, seizing the opportunity of online traffic, it built its own live broadcast matrix on Douyin platform, forming a very effective combination through current hot topics and celebrity endorsements.

In recent years, FILA has also focused on the commercial value of women's sports, officially launching the "FILA Latte Girl" program and announcing Zhang Juning as the fashion sports spokesperson.

It is worth mentioning that FILA has also collaborated with globally renowned luxury brands, emerging fashion luxury brands, and popular high-end outdoor trend brands in Asia, strengthening its positioning in high-end sports fashion and providing ample room for development in China.

Thirdly, technological innovation has played a role. FILA's introduction of cutting-edge fabrics and black technology has provided strong support for ANTA's research and development system and intellectual property barriers.

These measures have not only expanded the casual sports market but also found new support points for the brand's sustainable development, setting a "beautiful example" for other companies in terms of "acquiring" brands.

However, from a product innovation perspective, FILA's once popular "Dad shoes" have gradually lost market advantage, and subsequent new series have failed to ignite market enthusiasm. At the same time, FILA's investment in research and development is relatively limited, reflecting to some extent the research and development shortcomings of the ANTA Group Although ANTA has announced an annual investment of over 1 billion yuan in research and development innovation funds, its research and development investment ratio still needs to be increased compared to international big brands.

Can new growth points be found?

Looking at ANTA's financial data, the proportion of FILA is definitely encouraging. However, taking a closer look at the data, the performance can only be considered average.

Since 2015, FILA has gradually achieved a balance between profits and losses, and has become a growth engine for ANTA at one point. However, the good times did not last long. In the second half of 2021, the data shows that the current operating income reached 11 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.8%, but compared to the 25% growth in the second half of 2020, the speed has slowed significantly.

The main reason for the slowdown in revenue growth is that both offline stores and online channels have encountered bottlenecks. Although FILA has successfully increased the monthly store efficiency from 485,000 yuan/store in the first half of 2018 to 703,000 yuan/store in the second half of 2019 by continuously expanding stores and improving economies of scale, the risks of store expansion have sharply increased since 2020, leading FILA to slow down its expansion pace, with the total number of stores remaining basically the same.

Although optimizing the store structure by closing underperforming stores and opening new stores, the benefits of new stores have not been able to compensate for the losses of old stores. In the first half of 2021, after FILA's single-store monthly store efficiency increased to 91.17 thousand yuan, it began to decline.

At the same time, the performance of online channels is also poor. According to a report from Open Source Securities, in the second half of 2021, the year-on-year growth of GMV of sports shoes and apparel on FILA's Alibaba channel has significantly slowed down. For FILA, positioned as a high-end brand, the deeper issue lies in the difficulty of realizing brand assets. In the high-end sports brand market, consumers are usually willing to pay for product technology or brand culture, but FILA has obviously failed to impress consumers in this regard.

The data trend of FILA's "past and present" also exposes three "controversial shortcomings" of ANTA.

First, the high-end market is a double-edged sword.

Relying on the high-end market, like the two sides of a coin, excessive reliance on the high-end market may cause FILA to miss out on a broader consumer base.

FILA's high-end positioning has brought it a loyal consumer base and considerable profits. For example, in the golf sport, FILA has successfully created a series of high-end golf apparel by deeply understanding and professionally designing golf sports, winning market recognition. However, excessive reliance on the high-end market, FILA lacks a "profound cultural heritage" and cannot form a "luxury or aristocratic cultural barrier."

For example, with the gradual rise of golf sports in the Chinese market in recent years, becoming a fashion trend, FILA keenly captured this trend and viewed the golf business as a new growth point. By sponsoring professional events, signing well-known players, and other means, FILA successfully closely linked itself with golf sports, enhancing the brand's high-end image.

FILA also focuses on expanding and upgrading offline stores, enhancing the brand image by creating a high-end shopping experience. However, the threshold for golf sports is relatively high, which also limits the audience range of FILA Secondly, the expansion of offline stores requires huge capital investment and refined operational management.

Secondly, ANTA faces risks of resource dispersion. Through mergers and acquisitions as well as independent cultivation, ANTA has formed a multi-brand matrix. However, managing multiple brands may lead to resource dispersion, making it difficult to concentrate efforts on building core brands. FILA faces the dilemma of positioning within the ANTA Group. As ANTA continues to acquire high-end brands such as Descente and Salomon, FILA's positioning within the group gradually becomes blurred. Compared to the main brand, FILA lacks price advantages; compared to newly acquired high-end brands, its brand strength is insufficient.

ANTA's multi-brand operation methodology focuses on "building mental categories" and "excellent retail operations". Through the precise development of sports equipment, such as FILA's golf, tennis, and running gear. Through multi-brand layout and value creation, ANTA covers three core tracks, forming professional sports, fashion sports, and outdoor sports growth curves. This layout seems perfect, but each brand requires a significant amount of research and marketing resources. Will the dispersion of resources affect ANTA's investment and output in core brands?

Furthermore, although ANTA's multi-brand retail operation capabilities are strong, in today's increasingly competitive Chinese retail market, how to maintain and expand this advantage, while helping newly acquired brands quickly build competitiveness in niche areas and form their own growth engine, is also a major challenge. For example, MAIA ACTIVE, ANTA's latest acquisition, fills the gap in women's sports brands. However, how to successfully integrate it into ANTA's multi-brand matrix remains unknown.

Global operational and resource integration capabilities are another major advantage of ANTA. With a global sales network, research and design studios, and supplier network, ANTA has strong support. However, global operations also mean higher management costs and a more complex market environment.

Thirdly, there is pressure from "new" market competition.

As competition among domestic and international sports brands intensifies, can ANTA's multi-brand strategy continue to be effective? With the intensification of competition among domestic and international sports brands, FILA's growth in China has slowed down. Does this mean that its "fashion + sports" full coverage strategy has reached a ceiling? As the fourth five-year milestone approaches, how should FILA further advance its strategy?

The slowdown in FILA China's growth is not contrary to the general law of market development. In the increasingly mature and diversified Chinese consumer market system, new competitors continue to emerge in every niche track. However, these new entrants often bring innovative ideas and differentiated products, posing a significant threat to traditional brands.

Deepen research and advance together on the brand upgrade path

Of course, for now, ANTA's localization layout for FILA is basically a "template", already maximizing the "brand value". Reviewing the localization of FILA, a brand originating from the town of Biella, Italy in 1911, after experiencing a hundred years of vicissitudes, ANTA, in collaboration with many trendy brands, has jointly created a series of high-quality products The digital transformation for ANTA and FILA is not just a technological innovation, but a comprehensive reshaping of business models, market strategies, and consumer interactions. Through intelligent supply chain management, ANTA is able to optimize inventory and logistics to ensure products reach consumers quickly and accurately. Big data analysis helps ANTA to more accurately understand consumer needs and market trends, guiding product design, pricing, and promotional strategies.

In recent years, physical stores have faced significant challenges due to the impact of the pandemic. However, ANTA has successfully navigated through digital transformation by directing user traffic to private domains, enabling more communication and interaction with customers. This has not only increased consumer stickiness but also brought substantial profits to the company. Additionally, in response to the instability of the apparel industry supply chain, ANTA has implemented comprehensive digitization from customer demand to management and supply chain ends, enhancing operational efficiency through informational and intelligent technologies.

In terms of economic value added, the digital transformation of ANTA has led to positive changes in economic value added. In terms of innovation output, continuous research investment has brought ANTA numerous patents and core technologies, enhancing the company's core competitiveness. In terms of customer stickiness, ANTA has attracted traffic and built a private domain pool through digital means, increasing member stickiness, loyalty, and product repurchase rates.

As the domestic market becomes saturated and FILA enters, ANTA must "go out".

In recent years, ANTA has continuously enhanced its international visibility and influence through collaborations with internationally renowned sports brands and sponsoring international sports events. For example, the collaboration with NBA star Kyrie Irving led to the launch of the first signature basketball shoe, ANTAKAI1. Additionally, ANTA actively sponsors international sports events such as the Olympics and World Cup to further enhance the international recognition of the ANTA brand through event exposure and promotion.

However, the international market is highly competitive, with giants like Nike and Adidas dominating the market. ANTA needs to find its own differentiated competitive advantage. Furthermore, consumer demands and cultural differences vary significantly across different countries and regions, requiring ANTA to deeply understand and adapt to these differences.

[Conclusion]

With global consumers increasingly pursuing health, fashion, and quality, FILA's fashionable design and high-quality products are expected to help it "break through obstacles and ride the waves".

Furthermore, with the continuous advancement of technology and the rise of new media, ANTA can more accurately reach target consumers through digital means. By using big data analysis and online sales channels, ANTA can clearly identify consumer needs and promote sales through online platforms.

In the future, ANTA is likely to further deepen the internationalization strategy of its matrix brands. By deepening cooperation with internationally renowned brands, increasing investment in sports events and star athletes, and using digital means to enhance marketing efficiency, ANTA aims to further enhance its competitiveness in the international market.

In conclusion, the localization of "foreign goods" and ANTA's combination strategy are worth learning from