"If an eagle wants to be reborn, it must pluck its feathers and cut off its beak", Xtep has undergone several transformations to get to where it is today.Text: "Chinese Entrepreneur" reporter Tan LipingEdited by Mina
Header photo by Deng Pan
On the day of the meeting, Ding Shuibo, chairman and CEO of Xtep Group, was dressed simply and casually: a black tennis T-shirt, a pair of white slacks, and a pair of green running shoes on his feet - of course, not an exaggerated green, a light green transition from white, and a touch of yellow. It doesn't look like it's deliberately dressed.,Of course, you're wearing your own products-.Despite the need to face the camera, he is more in pursuit of a comfortable state.
"Comfortable" is a high-frequency word in Ding Shuibo's interview. Describing a pair of shoes, he stresses that its most important quality is comfort. Light, soft, elastic, and enveloping, are indicators to evaluate the comfort of a pair of shoes. He told an experience at the beginning of his business, because "the comfort of shoes is better than others", so he won the favor of old customers, and would rather spend more **, but also get "order priority", and the number of orders has increased from dozens of pairs to hundreds of pairs.
Photo: Deng Pan's emphasis on comfort may have something to do with his experience as a shoemaker. In the footwear and apparel industry,The customer's tolerance for the size of the clothes can vary by one yard, with an error of about 5cm, but the tolerance for shoes is only 025cm- The shoes are half a size apart, and the feet will definitely be uncomfortable.
However, in many strategic decisions of the company, Ding Shuibo often jumped out of the "comfort zone". In the 90s of the last century, in order to realize the transformation from "OEM" to "independent brand", he turned the "bow" 180 degrees, abandoned the overseas market of more than 40 countries, and turned to domestic salesAt the beginning of the establishment of the Xtep brand, he took entertainment and fashion as a breakthrough in the traditional route of sports brands to focus on sports, and completed the initial brand out of the circleAt a time when the fashion circle was "booming", Ding Shuibo began to return to the "roots" of sports and make running shoes.
When the comfort zone becomes less and less comfortable, is it time to jump out of the comfort zone and open up another world?At the time of a transformation, Ding Shuibo thought so.
As a "craftsman", the pursuit of product comfort is a characteristic engraved into his bone marrowBut as a manager, he must step out of his "comfort zone" at the right time. The two are not opposites, the comfort of shoes and clothing is the requirement of professionalism, and timely change is the vision and wisdom of managers, which are also important factors for Xtep to stand out from the highly homogeneous footwear competition in the past.
If you turn the time back to 1987, 17-year-old Ding Shuibo founded Sanxing Shoe Factory in Chendai Town, Jinjiang, with the goal of becoming a "10,000 yuan household" and bringing his family to live a good life. As a result, the goal was achieved the next year - at that time, in this world-famous "shoe capital", almost "all people make shoes", the sound of knocking on the soles of shoes was heard, and the rapid expansion of the industry lasted for more than ten years.
But then, the industry went through a reshuffle, some companies disappeared, and in the end, only the best remained at the table.
Xtep's choice is a microcosm of the ups and downs of China's sports brands over the decades. In 2007, Xtep transformed into a deep field of running, and by the first half of 2023, a total of 42 runners in the top 100 men's marathons in China wore Xtep running shoes to complete the race, surpassing many international brands and ranking first among all sports brands. In 2022, Xtep has further identified "Xtep China's Running Shoes China" as a new brand strategic positioning.
From making a pair of comfortable shoes, to making a pair of Chinese brand shoes, to "racing running shoes suitable for Chinese foot shapes", and then to making "world-class Chinese running shoes", there is no lack of determination and tenacity.
Ding Shuibo was born as a shoemaker, and his emphasis on professionalism and products was the "key to entrepreneurial success" he first learned.
Ding Shuibo was born in an ordinary rural family in Jinjiang, as the eldest in the family, in order to supplement the family, he helped the family to do a small business very early, selling fritters in the morning and popsicles in the evening. After graduating from school in 1985, Ding Shuibo chose to become an apprentice in a shoe factory run by a relative, starting from the simplest process, and mastering the entire process of shoemaking in two years.
In 1987, Ding Shuibo started his own business - making and selling his own shoes. At first, it was to make a few pairs and sell a few pairs, but after about 5 months, the business took a turn for the better - a shoe seller from the north took a fancy to Ding Shuibo's shoes and was willing to pay an advance payment higher than the market ** and give priority to the order. This is the first time that Ding Shuibo deeply felt that "a good product is in short supply".
At that time, in the footwear market, a pair of "travel shoes" was suitable for all sports scenes, and consumers did not care about the brand, thinking that "as long as it is cheap and easy to wear", it is a good pair of shoes. Ding Shuibo, who maintains high requirements for shoe quality, has achieved a production of 10 pairs of shoes a day to 10,000 pairs of shoes a day in just 4 years - the scale has increased by thousands of times.
Until now, product strength is still the core value point of Xtep.
At the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou this year, the news that Chinese player He Jie won the gold medal in the men's marathon event is exciting, which is the first Asian Games gold medal for the Chinese men's marathon. In this competition, what attracted the attention of runners in the circle was the running shoes He Jie wore that day, which were Xtep's 160x series running shoes. This series is regarded as Xtep's "champion running shoe family", which means to help many runners on the road to the championship.
*: Visual China "China has the most runners in the world, but the results are not ranked in Asia", Ding Shuibo told "Chinese Entrepreneur" about the original intention of making this shoe - Xtep has been deeply involved in running since 2007, and through years of market research, it has been found that domestic racing running shoes are very different from international brands in terms of performance and technology"Chinese lack a pair of racing shoes that suit them."
Chinese have high insteps and small sizes, while foreigners have larger feet and low insteps. Ding Shuibo explained that the foot shape of Chinese is very different from that of foreigners, and foreign shoes are mainly designed for locals and are not suitable for Chinese.
Therefore, for a long time, "making a pair of racing running shoes suitable for Chinese foot shapes" has become Ding Shuibo's goal. In order to make the running shoes light and soft enough, but also to rebound quickly, the Xtep team has tried for 5 years, and even transformed a 1,700-square-meter floor into a research and development center, paving the runway into the office building.
One of the biggest challenges in developing professional running shoes is that data is difficult to collect. It is understood that a suitable running shoe needs to record the athlete's running data and real experience every time, including analyzing and evaluating the performance of the shoe in rebound, cushioning, propulsion, grip, durability, etc., and then quantify these data and feedback to each small parameter to accumulate for the optimization and adjustment of subsequent running shoes. The process also requires a lot of validation and adjustments, which is a daunting experience for many athletes.
Hundreds of sets of molds have been developed, and each pair of shoes has to be tested by athletes for more than half a year and at least 5,000 kilometers. Ding Shuibo said that it was not until 2019 that the 160x was able to come out.
We have helped 73 athletes win more than 320 championships. Ding Shuibo said that in the past four years, Xtep has become a common "figure" in large and small marathons.
This is also what Ding Shuibo expected, through the development of professional running shoes, to the mass movement.
Today, Xtep's headquarters is located in a coastal resort near Guanyin Mountain on Xiamen Island in Fujian Province, facing the sea. A number of sports brands such as Anta and Hongxing Erke also gathered here. If it weren't for the familiar logos hanging outside the building, it would look more like an urban high-tech zone——Obviously, these sports brands have reshaped the image of Chinese sports brands through their own different paths.
Xtep was finally able to rely on "running shoes" to find its comfort zone at this stage, and the process has undergone several transformations. The most prominent manifestation of this is in the choice of globalization.
In 1991, Ding Shuibo started the road of export from Russia. At that time, Russia's light industry was weak, and the first-class ports such as Manzhouli, Heihe, and Suifenhe on the Sino-Russian border bartered frequently, and Ding Shuibo was also among them. He described that "the market at that time was really unlimited", and when the exchanges were the closest, he also co-founded a hotel with people at the Heihe port to facilitate the reception of customers.
Soon, Sanxing expanded globally. Headquartered in Hong Kong, it has four production bases in Madrid in Europe, Los Angeles in North America, Chile in South America, and Dubai in the Middle East – "globalization has been achieved since the 90s."
In the decade of 1991 and 2000, Ding Shuibo focused all his energy on foreign trade.
But the problem also arises, there is no independent brand of shoes exported from China, "the competition is very fierce, the cost of raw materials, manpower and other costs are rising, but the price of shoes is decreasing" - this greatly compresses profits. At the same time, he noticed that with the improvement of Chinese people's living standards, consumers have also begun to pay attention to brands.
It's time to get out of the 'safe zone'. He realized.
So,In 2001, 31-year-old Ding Shuibo established the Xtep brand, and in a year and a half, it was all exported to all domestic sales. This "180-degree turn" has caused great controversy internally. Dante Shuibo has a resolute attitude, "If the eagle wants to be reborn, it must pluck its feathers and cut off its beak."
*: After the establishment of the Xtep brand, Ding Shuibo has never been limited to some "fixed formats" in strategic decision-making.
He started with a differentiated style of play. For example, the first advertisement that Xtep played on the TV station was, "The tick is not necessarily right" - in foreign countries, filling in the blanks is different from the Chinese painting" "but playing" Ding Shuibo hopes to use such a sense of contrast to attract topics and arouse everyone's attention to the Xtep brand. He said, "Those who come after must innovate, and follow will never come out." ”
In addition, Xtep did not choose to find sports stars to endorse or sponsor the sports meeting, but "found another way" to find celebrity endorsements and sponsorship concerts.
This strategy of positioning fashion and sports also allowed Xtep to quickly "run" out of the circle from a number of sports brands - the pair of "Wind and Fire Generation" sneakers designed by Nicholas Tse sold 1.2 million pairs at that time, setting a sales record for a single sneaker that no one could break at that time.
And after becoming an instant hit, Ding Shuibo did not stop thinking. In 2006, Ding Shuibo began to reflect that if a sports brand only relies on fashion to get out of the circle, it has no "roots", and "to do sports, you have to return to sports".
Playing basketball, people think of Nike, Adidas represents football, so what does Xtep stand for?Ding Shuibo focused his attention on running. This core track continues to this day.
Looking back on the ups and downs of the past 30 years, Ding Shuibo believes that when an enterprise reaches a certain stage, it must transform, "you have to go over the mountains and mountains to reach another world." Within the enterprise, he has regarded "hard work, innovation, integrity, and win-win" as the corporate values for 20 years.
As Ding Shuibo said, if you want to climb the peak, you need to climb enough mountains.
From 2004 to 2009, Li Ning, Hongxing Erke, Anta, Xtep, 361 Degrees and Peak were listed in succession.
But with the end of the dividend, ushered in an inventory crisis, and led to the industry in 2012 collectively into the "cold winter". After the initial exploration and adjustment, in 2015, Xtep launched a three-year transformation and reform, and more firmly returned to the essence of sports as a sports brand dominated by fashion and entertainment, and paid more attention to the attributes of sports in addition to entertainment and fashion. The transformation involves product design, brand marketing and sales channels.
In addition to focusing on running shoes, in 2019, Xtep also broke the original pattern and began to change from a single brand to a multi-brand, from localization to globalization.
This year, Xtep acquired four new brands, forming five major product matrices: the main brand Xtep is positioned in the mass market;Saucony and Merrell are mainly professional sportsK-Swiss and Palladium are positioned as fashion sports.
In fact, since 2018, Ding Shuibo has begun to embrace globalization again. Still, he saidThis "brand globalization" and 20 years ago "products going out" are two sets of logic- A seller of physical strength;One sells brainpower. Ding Shuibo said frankly that in the past, it was to make profits from the shoes themselves, but now they rely on culture and management to sell added value.
The way of brand globalization is achieved through "product brands going out" and "introducing world-renowned brands". In September 2022, Xtep officially announced the brand's new strategy "World Running Shoes China Xtep";In the first half of this year, Saucony became the first new brand to achieve profitability, and Ding Shuibo believes that the four new brands will also open the second growth curve for Xtep.
To make a 10 billion enterprise, Xtep took 10 years, Ding Shuibo plan, and then it will take less than 20 years to make Xtep a 100 billion enterprise.
Where is the faith?The reporter asked. Ding Shuibo thought for a while and replied, "I am familiar with the industry;The market space is also very large. The consumption of Chinese sporting goods is currently only one-tenth of that of the United States, and with the gradual improvement of the quality of life of Chinese, the future is worth imagining. ”
He also talked about some of the past, when he was an apprentice, living in a factory, with shoes piled up at the head of his bed, but his heart was full of joy;After that, every time he went to a country, he would definitely look down at the shoes of passers-by, and the "scenic spots" that he must visit were also local shoe stores. Perhaps, some seeds were planted at that time.
News**&Submission email: [email protected]