File photo/Zhang Jian (NBD)

On March 8, Adidas announced its financial performance for Q4 2022 and the full year. For the full year, Adidas achieved a revenue of 22.511 billion euros, a growth of 6%, and a slight increase of only 1% year-on-year excluding exchange rate impact.

Not only Adidas, but another major international sports brand Nike is also facing challenges.

Compared with Nike and Adidas, as domestic sports brands rise, the technological gap between domestic and international brands is gradually narrowing, and Chinese consumers and local players are gradually moving towards the center stage.

This is more directly reflected in the financial reports of domestic sports brands. 

On March 21, Anta announced that its revenue in 2022 increased by 8.8% year-on-year to 53.651 billion yuan, breaking through the 50 billion yuan mark for the first time, which is a good performance among Chinese sports brands.

Earlier, Li Ning also released its 2022 performance report. In 2022, Li Ning's total revenue reached 25.803 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.3%; Xtep showed a full-year revenue of 12.93 billion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 29.1%; 361° disclosed its full-year performance in 2022, with a total revenue of 6.961 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.3%.

It should not be ignored that in recent years, domestic sports brands represented by Li Ning and Anta have shown strong growth momentum, attracting many Chinese consumers with labels such as new national trend and new technology, and even forming a situation of equal competition with Nike and Adidas in the Chinese market.

However, in 2022, domestic sports brands did not escape slowing revenue growth and declining profits, and still face many challenges.

More importantly, with the weakening of market demand and the lack of brand innovation, inventory clearance has become a common problem for sports brands.

In order to clear inventory, sports brands could only reduce prices and promote sales in the past year, at the cost of sacrificing profits. In the new year, how to balance inventory and profits is a challenge that players on the field need to face together.