Explainer | Anta Sports and Li-Ning rival Nike and Adidas for sportswear sales in China, but are virtually unknown anywhere else
- Sportswear enthusiasts in China are boycotting foreign brands and pushing the sales of domestic sportswear brands Anta Sports and Li-Ning
- Despite their high domestic profile, supply of Chinese teams’ Olympics uniforms and participation in global fashion weeks, they are barely known outside China
Chinese consumers have turned to domestic sports apparel brands Anta Sports and Li-Ning amid a boycott of foreign brands that had announced they would cease using cotton from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about the possible use of forced labour in its production.
As the leading domestic sportswear brands, Anta Sports and Li-Ning had 15.4 per cent and 6.7 per cent shares respectively of China’s sportswear and athleisure market, according to Euromonitor International, a market research provider. They trailed only Adidas, which has 17.4 per cent of the market, and Nike with 25.6 per cent.
Anta Sports had footwear and apparel sales in China of 34.4 billion yuan (US$5.3 billion) and Li-Ning 13.7 billion in 2020.
Yet while both are ubiquitous in China, they are virtually unheard of beyond its borders – Anta Sports did not report any stores outside mainland China in its 2020 annual report, and only 1.5 per cent of Li-Ning’s revenue last year came from outside the country.
Both brands were launched at around the time a middle class was beginning to emerge in China and urbanites in the country were starting to spend more on sportswear and other lifestyle goods. International brands such as Nike thrived in the wealthier coastal cities, but domestic brands were more popular in the second- and third-tier inland cities.
