Sales of the Running Shoe Brands in the Second Quarter of This Year Perform Well
In August 2022, major sports brands successively announced their interim results. Among them, it is worth noting that the running shoe brands have outstanding performance.
In the first half of this year, the transaction volume of the French brand HOKA ONE ONE, increased by an astonishing 3606%. The sales volume of the brand in the last fiscal year was as high as 892 million US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 56.1%.
The Swiss sneaker brand On, also from Europe, announced its 2022 second-quarter financial report this month. In the second quarter, its revenue increased by 66.6% year-on-year, reaching $307.3 million, a record high for the brand. Of which, $295.7 million is footwear income, accounting for 96%.
New Zealand running shoe brand Allbirds released its financial report for the second quarter of 2022, showing that the company’s second-quarter revenue was $78.2 million, an increase of 15% over the same period last year.
The NPD Group, an American market research organization, pointed out that since the epidemic began in 2020, the sales performance of the running shoe has been significantly better than that of other types of sports shoes. Sports brands focusing on running, hiking, and walking will be the biggest winners in 2021.
In fact, in the field of running shoes, the Japanese sportswear brand Asics is in the first echelon of the running shoe track in terms of reputation and market share. The rise of new running shoe brands has brought great pressure to Asics.
In mid-August, Asics announced its financial report for the first half of 2022: revenue increased by 7.4% to 225 billion yen; operating profit fell 4.8% to 19.1 billion yen; gross profit increased 5.7% to 111.5 billion yen.
In the financial report, Asics pointed out that the strong growth in the first half of the year was mainly due to the hot sales of functional running shoes. The sales of the running shoe business in the first half of the year reached 123.2 billion yen, a year-on-year increase of 13.5%, accounting for nearly 60% of the brand's total revenue.
Asics is aware of the escalating competition in the running shoe market. Therefore, while developing the core running shoe business, it is also striving to build a diversified product layout.
From the perspective of business segmentation, Asics’s business is divided into five segments: running shoes, core sports (tennis, volleyball, table tennis, badminton, etc.), sports fashion, clothing and equipment, and Onitsuka Tiger.
In the first half of 2022, the revenue of core sports, sports fashion, clothing and equipment, and Onitsuka Tiger were 23.5 billion yen, 18.5 billion yen, 17.1 billion yen, and 19.6 billion yen, respectively. Overall, sales of all categories, except Onitsuka Tiger, increased compared to the same period last year.
At the same time, Asics also has positionings for the advantageous areas of different products and makes targeted layouts. For example, the running product is more popular in Europe and North America; the core sports product is more popular in the Japanese market; the Chinese market has been the core market of Onitsuka Tiger in recent years - in the last fiscal year, nearly 60% of its sales were from Greater China. Judging from the data of recent fiscal years, the Chinese market has become Asics's fourth largest market in the world after Europe, North America, and Japan.
In 2016, Asics published its "2020 Growth Plan", which listed running shoes, China, and digitization as the priority development areas. Not long ago, Arthur once again stated in its 2030 vision: "we will continue to set becoming the head brand of functional running shoes and accelerating the expansion of Greater China as our priority strategy, and accelerate the digital transformation and carry out diversified layout."
According to Asics's latest full-year forecast, the brand is expected to have a year-on-year growth of 13.8% to 460 billion yen and revenue growth of 23% to 27 billion yen in 2022.