The Road to Success of A Shoe King

To build a brand, advertising is not enough, we must have our marketing channels. After his success in advertising, Ding Zhizhong immediately set about expanding his marketing network across the country. He made further concessions to dealers, encouraging more dealers to join his marketing team.

A rural boy, who had not yet graduated from junior high school, was running a small shoe-making workshop in a small town on the coast of Jinjiang, Fujian Province. More than 20 years later, the small workshop became Anta (China) Co., LTD., a listed company in Hong Kong. The owner of the workshop became the president of Anta (China) Co., LTD. He was Ding Zhizhong.

Chennai town in Jinjiang City, Fujian province, was a remote coastal town more than 20 years ago. People here earn their living by traditional means of fishing and going out to sea. Many expatriates who earn their living abroad invest their money in manufacturing industries back home, and also provide a large number of business orders to their hometown. Shoemaking is one of the earliest industries to emerge in Jinjiang, and several shoe workshops have also sprung up in Chennai Town.

In 1985, Ding Huamu, a farmer in Chennai Town, participated in the establishment of a shoe factory in the village. He not only gained the experience of running a factory, and the technology of making shoes but also accumulated a certain amount of capital. The more farsighted Ding and wood knew that to do a more prosperous shoe factory, we must find a way to open up a broad sales market. In 1987, Ding Hemu handed over 10,000 yuan to his son Ding Zhizhong, along with 600 pairs of good shoes he had bought from various shoe factories in the town, and asked him to consign them to Beijing for sale. Ding and Mu wanted their son to set up a sales market for Jinjiang shoes in Beijing. This year, Ding Zhizhong was only 17 years old and had not yet graduated from junior high school.

After arriving in Beijing, Ding soon entered the city's "Dakang Shoe City", rented a counter, and started his career selling shoes. At that time, the shoe market in Beijing was monopolized by shoe traders in Jinjiang. To open the sales situation, Ding Zhizhong spared no effort to sell his products door to door. With diligence, honesty, and trustworthiness, Ding Zhizhong established himself in Beijing. It took only two years for Ding Zhizhong to move his shoe cabinet into Beijing's Wangfujing shopping mall. Due to the good quality of Jinjiang shoes, sales in Beijing are also very hot, which also earned Ding Zhizhong his first bucket of gold. Selling shoes while pondering the marketing skills of shoes, studying what kind of shoes consumers like. Hit struggle in Beijing for many years, Ding Zhizhong became the marketing expert in the shoe industry.

When Ding Zhizhong opened the Jinjiang Shoe shop in Beijing, the business was very successful, Ding and Mu thought they should open a shoe factory alone because they make shoes, and their son can sell shoes in Beijing, this kind of cooperation should be very ideal. At the beginning of 1991, Ding Hemu with the help of close friends, raise 50, 60 thousand yuan fund, he established a shoe-making factory alone, together with another son Ding Jia and daughter Ding Yali. Ding and Wood's idea is very simple, he founded the shoe factory for his children to have a career of their own.

In 1994, Ding Zhizhong returned to Jinjiang with the 400,000 yuan he earned from selling shoes in Beijing. The 400,000 yuan that year is a huge sum of money. Ding Zhizhong took this money to return to his hometown to further expand the production scale of his shoe factory and create his brand to expand the broader market. Ding Zhizhong discussed with his father and brother that the shoe factory should be renamed "Anta Shoe Factory", and he became the deputy general manager in charge of marketing. After years of traveling abroad, Ding Zhizhong was very familiar with shoe marketing. Therefore, he fully demonstrated his talent in sales and further expanded the sales market of the shoe factory. Ding and wood see son Ding Zhizhong in management are very talented, and the factory to manage in good order, so simply put the plant at the helm of the task Ding Zhizhong.

After taking over the Anta shoe factory, Ding Zhizhong began to run a factory according to his management philosophy. He remembered that when he sold shoes in Beijing, the quality of shoes in Jinjiang was not bad, but the price was always the lowest, less than 20 yuan for a pair of shoes, while the prices of domestic "Qingdao Double Star" and "Shanghai Wolf brand" were all around 100 yuan, and a considerable part of these shoes was produced in Jinjiang. Ding Zhizhong knows that Jinjiang shoes can not sell at the starting price, the main is not to form their brand. Creating their famous brand has become Ding Zhizhong's biggest desire.

At that time, the Jinjiang shoe factory is almost in South America, Eastern Europe, and other places of overseas orders, do is to stick brand products. After careful consideration, Ding Zhizhong found that although there were certain markets overseas, the total number of overseas markets could not match China's domestic market. So, he decided to create his marketing network in China, open Anta stores, build his brand, and occupy the domestic low-end market.

In 1998, when Ding Zhizhong was struggling to find a way to build a brand, Ye Shuangquan, an account director from an advertising planning company, came to Ding Zhizhong's door. He and DING Zhizhong especially CONformed TO each other. He strongly suggested Ding Zhizhong build his brand by the way of sports stars' endorsement, and told world-class brands such as Nike and Adidas to invite world-class sports stars as spokesmen for their products. Ding chose world table tennis champion Kong Linghui as the spokesperson of his brand after consideration. When Ding Zhizhong announced that he would use Kong Linghui as the image spokesman with an annual endorsement fee of 800,000 yuan and invest in CCTV-5 with an annual advertising fee of 3 million yuan, many people in the company objected. Because of these two huge investments, almost two-thirds of Anta's annual profits, many people think Ding Zhizhong gambled too much. Thanks to Ding Zhizhong's insistence, the plan was finally implemented.

When Kong Linghui shouted Anta's slogan "I choose, I like" on CCTV-5, the market response was not as good as expected, and it even had no effect within two months. When Ding Zhizhong felt a little uneasy, two months later, merchants from all over the country rushed to the Jinjiang Anta factory to demand orders. Anta's sales department was flooded with customers almost every day. In 2000, Ding Zhizhong's Anta became a national brand after Kong Linghui won the men's table tennis singles title at the Olympic Games. Choosing Kong Linghui as the product spokesperson was Ding Zhizhong's most successful step. Anta's sales revenue was only 100 million yuan in 2001 but reached 1.25 billion yuan in 2006.

To build a brand, advertising is not enough, we must have our marketing channels. After his success in advertising, Ding Zhizhong immediately set about expanding his marketing network across the country. He made further concessions to dealers, encouraging more dealers to join his marketing team. By June 2010, Anta had more than 7,500 stores, covering the main streets of the country's third-tier cities.

Ding Zhizhong's success has led a large number of shoe manufacturers in Jinjiang to follow his example and hire sports stars as spokesmen for their products. For a time, CCTV-5 became a special channel for Jinjiang sports shoes. By this time, Ding Zhizhong had already been a sports star and turned into a major event sponsor. He began investing 40 million yuan a year to sponsor the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). Because at this time, Ding Zhizhong not only made sneakers, but also a series of sportswear.

Since Anta has been growing, the company has always been relatively rich, and there is no need to raise money from society. Therefore, Ding Zhizhong has always refused foreign investment. When Li Ning was listed in Hong Kong on June 28, 2004, Mr. Ding suddenly felt he should become a listed company too. It is an idea, but, after his aide's sufficient argumentation, being listed as a public company is good, not only to raise a large amount of money but also can regulate the company's governance structure, eliminate various disadvantages of the family business, expand the awareness of the company itself, to better attract all kinds of management talent. Ding Zhizhong decided to pursue a Hong Kong listing. So it brought in Mr. Kearney to do strategic planning, hired Horton to handle media advertising, hired KPMG to do accounting, outsourced brand management to JWT, and hired Morgan Stanley to sponsor the listing. A large number of the world's top institutions are doing preliminary work for the Anta listing.

On July 10, 2007, ANTA was successfully listed in Hong Kong, raising 3.17 billion Hong Kong dollars, far more than the 400 million yuan raised by Li Ning in Hong Kong. With sufficient funds, Ding is no longer limited to sponsoring domestic basketball leagues but has set his sights on the NBA in the United States. Houston Rockets owner Alexander invested HK $234 million for an 8.2 percent stake in Anta during the IPO. Listed in those years, Ding Zhizhong spent a huge sum of money to sign the rockets Francis, Scola, and Wells three players.

But Mr. Ding is proudest not of its successful listing in Hong Kong, but of Anta beating rivals Li Ning and Adidas to become a sports apparel sponsor for the Chinese National Olympic Committee in June 2009. This makes Chinese athletes from 2009 to 2012 in more than 10 major events, will wear Anta sportswear, galloping in the world's major venues.

The SUCCESSFUL OPERATION OF DING Zhizhong's brand STRATEGY and marketing STRATEGY HAS MADE ANTA sports shoes TOP the list in China for 8 consecutive years. In 2010, Anta's annual financial report said its turnover rose to 7.408 billion yuan and its net profit reached 1.551 billion yuan.