Lining’s Brand Strategy

Lining's new brand strategy is to fight with Nike and Adidas in Chinese market. With a terrific 20 years old birthday ceremony, Lining, a Chinese sporting equipment brand, Hong Kong quoted company began to use a fire-new brand tactic in late June. twenty years ago, the enterprise which was established by a Chinese well-known gymnast, Lining, is being carried out big actions of brand and image restyling in full swing. Last year, Lining Enterprise's sales revenue was 8.4 RMB, i.e. 1.2 billion dollars, which was the runner-up in the market of domestic sports goods. Brand restyling shouldn't be altered overnight for any bigger sized enterprise. For this brands highly sensitive market, old customers may be uncomfortable to the new image, and meanwhile, new customers pursued by other companies haven't sheered off yet, thus this is a big gamble.
Nevertheless gambling is never this young enterprise's style, because Lining company has prepared for three years for this new marketing tactic. On June 30, the brand restyling plan was held and Lining declared a fire-new company logo and slogan. The original slogan "Anything is possible" was taken over by the new one "Make the change". Almost overnight, all kinds of media were flooded with Lining brand's slogan, like, televisions, subway ads, internet and retail stores.
Meanwhile Lining targets at Chinese younger generation born after 1990, and is trying to mold more fashionable and more charming brand image. The company's chief executive officer, Mr. Zhang, who is 41 years old recently said in public: "Lining Brand is becoming a clever, humorous and frank young man full of curiosity and creativity".
Like other Chinese native brands, this is a young people who experienced many changes. Even though, several years ago, a famous western advertisement company's president commented that there is no genuine brand in China, but nowadays, this perspective needs to be revised. Lining is one of a few successful brands that grew up in native China and brand remodeling plan is just a part of its natural developing process. Stephen Hoch who is a marketing professor in Wharton Business School said that: "this is only a start, and with China economy's progression, we will see more this kind of examples.
According the ranking list of "China's best brands in 2010" which was issued by Inter brand, Lining brand's value is 5.77 billion RMB, which ranked NO. 19 in comprehensive rankings, and ranked the first place in sporting brands. Shaun Rein, who is the general manager of China Market Research Company stated that: "some westerners criticized that Chinese companies didn't know how to mold brand in the past, however, at present this is not the fact and Chinese companies not only contend with price, but also brand is being contained.
The CAGR of Lining Company's sales income is 35% from 2004 to 2009 and they have spread fierce competition with western sporting goods giants, Nike and Adidas in chasing market share in Chinese market. A Chinese Adidas Company's business director said that: "we didn't deem Lining to be our straightforward rivals before, but at present, when Lining refers to its rivals, we tend to be neglected". "Now we are paying much attention to Lining Company's tendencies. They could make key decisions quickly and their responses to the market are more swift, so we must speed up our steps".