Domestic Shoe Enterprises Promote Brand Awareness Through "Foreign Aid"

According to The Associated Press Beijing June 13th, the latest female tennis sponsor is a sporting goods manufacturer who has almost $500 million in assets but hardly heard of outside China.

PEAK announced this week the 5 year sponsorship agreement for Sony Ericsson International Women's Professional Tennis Association (WTA) tour.

This is the latest agreement by a well funded Chinese company to sponsor the Confederation of famous foreign players, teams and clubs.

Like other such agreements, the emphasis is on enhancing brand image in China.

In fact, PEAK, Lining, Anta and XTEP have rarely sold sports shoes and other products abroad.

These brands aim at the rapidly rising middle class in China. These people are more and more interested in leisure and sports, and their pockets are bulging.

These companies believe that Chinese consumers will be more optimistic about domestic brands and their international status when they see famous foreign stars wear their products.

Xu Zhihua, chief executive of PEAK, said: "we are learning from Nike.

We hope that one day we can catch up with and exceed Nike, which is our goal.

But we also have differences. Our products are more suitable for the Chinese market.

We can give customers other choices. "

According to the China Sports Federation, the value of China's sporting goods market is 6 billion US dollars and is expected to grow by 14% annually.

Although Nike is still the leader of the market, domestic brands are catching up.

They are particularly attractive to consumers in small cities, because they are novel, but their prices are much lower than those of foreign brands.

China's potential huge sports fans can not resist all kinds of club associations, and the sponsorship agreement allows them to have local sponsors in the market.

WTA pointed out that 130 million of the Chinese people like tennis and 10 million Chinese are involved in all kinds of recreational activities - this figure is two times that of the Old French market.

In China, the strategy of sponsoring foreign athletes to enhance their brand image was initiated by Li Ning Co. Its first sponsorship agreement was signed in 2006 with first class star Shaquille ONeil.

Today, the company, founded by Lining, a gold medalist in the Olympic Games, sponsors various sports teams, such as the Swedish Olympic delegation, the basketball team of Spain and Argentina, etc. but in these countries, Lining products are generally not seen.

Anta signed the sponsorship of athletes including famous women tennis players Zheng Jie and Jelena Jankovic; XTEP signed a sponsorship agreement with the British city Bermingham in the Premier League.

Many Chinese companies sign up with famous athletes, hoping to achieve the best results in investment.

Terry Roth, a former Nike director and currently managing former sharp (Shanghai) Business Consulting Co. Ltd., said: "(Chinese brands) want to minimize risks as far as they are concerned, this is a new field, and they do not want to damage the image."

The signing sponsor of China's famous NBA star Yao Ming is Reebok Co.

This highlights the inferior position of Chinese companies.