Guirenniao used to be the leading brand of sports shoes and clothing in China, and it was also the national pride of Quanzhou City. Its founder, Lin Tianfu, became the richest man in Quanzhou with a net worth of 19 billion yuan. However, the good times did not last long, and while Guirenniao was expanding wildly, it also accumulated huge debts and risks. Since 2018, Guirenniao has suffered continuous losses, and the stock price has been the best, and finally on March 4, 2024, the fate of "1 yuan delisting" was locked in advance. Its chairman Li Zhihua was also investigated by the China Securities Regulatory Commission on suspicion of illegal information disclosure.
The rise and decline of Guirenniao reflects the development process of China's sports shoes and apparel industry, and also exposes the governance problems of some listed companies. This article will reveal the rise and fall of the Guirenniao brand for everyone.
In the mid-to-late 90s, China's vigorous reform, since then the economy has slowly driven on the right track, people's income has been rising, aiming at China's huge sports brand consumer market Adidas, Nike and other international brands have entered China to conquer the city, they with unique design of goods, mature brand marketing strategy, quickly opened the Chinese market 20 years ago, and carved up most of the market share and profits, all of which let a Fujian businessman named Lin Tianfu see in the eyes.
This man from Chendai Town, Jinjiang, Quanzhou, China's shoe capital, also silently planted the seeds of taking the road of independent sports brands in his heart. At that time, there was a sneaker OEM king in Jinjiang who was also surnamed Lin, called Lin Tuqiu, Lao Lin took 80,000 yuan from his brother who worked in Hong Kong, found some relatives and neighbors to raise money, and made up 14** East with 2,000 yuan a share of shares, and took 100,000 start-up funds to establish the first joint-stock township enterprise in Jinjiang, Yangdai Shoes and Hats Factory. After many years of hard work, Lin Tu became a famous local shoe king, and later the sheep shoes and hats factory changed its name to crocodile wright, when the foreign brand devoured the Chinese market, the Lin family hoped to build a domestic brand to fight against it, around 2000, a domestic brand emerged in Jinjiang. Anta Peak, Delhui Company. Many foundries have turned to their own brands, and Lin Tianfu, who has also opened factories for many years, followed suit and seized the tail of this wave in 2004 and founded Guirenniao.
This seemingly inconspicuous company at the moment, but in that era, together with a number of domestic brands, staged a number of anti-encirclement campaigns against foreign brands, how did the noble bird led by Lin Tianfu break through?
At that time, Lin Tianfu made a decision, independent innovation, take the road of independent brand, in addition, in the marketing strategy, learn the Hong Kong-style marketing concept, he boldly introduced the concept of foreign production line and plant planning, the use of modern company management mode, and strive to build Guirenniao into a sporting goods company integrating research and development, production and marketing, and at the same time adhere to independent research and development in product research and development. To this end, we continue to enrich the product line, give the R & D department colleagues great design autonomy, and adopt the strategy of only communication and non-interference, just when Guirenniao has gradually grown into the most representative modern shoe factory in Quanzhou by virtue of its innovative advantages, Lin Tianfu has made a decision, and it is this move that makes Guirenniao go out of Jinjiang and become popular all over the country, becoming the first A-share sports brand.
At the beginning of the 21st century, when the overwhelming advertising of sports brands and sports stars was flying all over the sky, Lin Tianfu's idea of going off the rails made him stand out in the chaos of new domestic forces such as Nike, Adi and other foreign brands, and then Anta, Li Ning, Hongxing Erke and other domestic new forces, and successfully created a more fashionable sports brand than others. What did he do? Lin Tianfu bypassed the inherent old way of sports brand endorsement by sports stars, and chose the then superstar Andy Lau and the queen Cecilia Cheung as the spokespersons of the brand image of Guirenniao, which quickly enhanced the cross-border brand awareness of Guirenniao, and successfully made the image of Guirenniao's fashion and sports brand deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In order to cooperate with this positioning, Lin Tianfu Hao invested a lot of money, and even let the basketball dream seven team gathered by NBA stars at that time also wear the equipment of the noble bird, this set of excellent marketing model combination boxing made the noble bird a hit, the product store covered 28 sales areas in Chinese mainland, and the sales volume of sports shoes exceeded 5 million pairs, becoming a recognized brand star and dark horse of the year at that time.
Next, let's take a look at the trademark layout of Guiren Bird, which was found after searching. Fujian Guiren Bird Sports Technology Co., Ltd. has applied for a total of 338 trademarks, including: Guiren Bird, Guiren Bird Youth, Guiren Bird Youth, Guiren Bird Sports, Guiren Bird Sportsman and other trademarks.
In addition, what is even more surprising is the sky-high trademark authorization incident of Guirenniao. 10 million in 10 years. According to the third quarter report of 2023 released by Guirenniao on October 27 last year, it is mentioned that it intends to authorize the "Guirenniao" brand held by it to Quanzhou Rongshun Shoes in the form of an exclusive license for a fee of 1 million yuan for a year, with an authorization period of 10 years, from November 1, 2023 to October 31, 2033.
According to the announcement, Guirenniao and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Fujian Guirenniao Sports Technology, as the licensor, signed the "Guirenniao Registered Trademark Authorization Agreement" with Quanzhou Rongshun Shoes, and intend to authorize the "Guirenniao" brand to the licensee for use.
Licensed trademarks include those now owned or owned at any time in the future and displayed in any style, design and/or font"Noble birds"words and"grn"All trademarks and logos displayed or identified by the specimen, and any similarity, inclusion or derivation thereof"Noble birds"All trademarks derived from the brand. With such a sky-high licensing fee, what is the role of trademark licensing?
Definition and types of trademark licensesTrademark licensing, also known as trademark licensing, refers to the trademark registrant licensing others to use its registered trademark by signing a trademark license contract. According to the authority of trademark licensing, it can be divided into three types: general license, exclusive license, and exclusive license. A general license is a license for the licensor to use the registered trademark within the scope agreed in the contract, while the licensor reserves the right to use the registered trademark within the specified scope and to sublicense a third party to use the registered trademark.
Exclusive license means that in addition to the right granted by the licensor to the licensee to use its registered trademark, the licensee may also enjoy the right to exclude the use of the registered trademark, that is, the licensor may not give the same license to any third party, but the licensor retains the right to use the same registered trademark;
Exclusive license means that within the scope of the contract, the licensee has the exclusive right to use the licensed registered trademark, and the licensor shall not license the same trademark to a third party, and the licensor shall not use the trademark within the scope specified in the contract.
Conflict over the ownership of the right to use the trademark of "one mark for two purposes".As the licensee, Quanzhou Rongshun Shoes Co., Ltd. has chosen the third exclusive licensing method, that is, the one with the strongest exclusive effect, within the scope of the contract, the trademark registrant is not allowed to use, with a strong monopoly. However, in the actual use of trademarks, it is common to see that some trademark owners repeatedly license trademarks that have been exclusively or exclusively licensed to third parties in order to maximize their own interests, resulting in disputes over duplicate licenses of trademarks. Therefore, the ownership of the right to use the trademark due to duplicate trademark licensing often becomes the focus of disputes.
Article 43 of the Trademark Law: "Where a person is licensed to use his registered trademark, the licensor shall report the trademark license to the Trademark Office for the record, which shall make a public announcement." The trademark license shall not be used against a bona fide third party without filing. Here, "bona fide third party" refers to the relevant right holder who has unknowingly signed a trademark license contract with the trademark owner, resulting in a dispute over duplicate licensing of the trademark.
In other words, when there is a duplicate license of the trademark, if the licensee does not record the trademark license when licensing the trademark with the trademark owner, the licensee has no right to require other licensed bona fide third parties to stop using the trademark. The Trademark Law adopts the principle of record-filing adversarialism for trademark licensing, that is, there can be no confrontation without filing, and there is a confrontation with filing. Therefore, in actual scenarios, the following forms of dispute judgment are common for trademark duplicate licensing:
1. Handling when the licensee has not filed for the record:
When the licensees are all "bona fide third parties" and none of them have filed a trademark license, the principle of transaction security is generally used to allow different licensees to jointly enjoy the right to use the trademark. Of course, because the essence of the emergence of "one standard and two uses" is that the trademark owner violates the principle of good faith, the judgment of shared trademark rights makes the trademark owner liable for damages for breach of contract to both licensees, and the trademark owner suffers the most serious losses as a result.
2. Handling of bona fide third parties that have been filed:
According to the principle of "filing can be opposed", the right of a bona fide third party to license the use of a trademark has the effect against other persons, and it is a power with complete effect, and it can request other trademark licensees to stop using the relevant trademark. It should be noted that if the subsequent licensee first filed for the trademark office, it will also consider whether it did so in good faith. If the fact of prior licensing is already known or the filing is deliberately preempted after a dispute has arisen, the filing obtained by the prior licensee cannot be used against the prior licensee, and the prior licensee cannot be required to stop using the registered trademark.
Therefore, as a licensee, in addition to signing a trademark license contract with the trademark owner, the licensee should also request the trademark owner to report to the Trademark Office for permission for the record, so as to effectively protect its own rights and interests in the event of a dispute.
The emergence of trademark licensing essentially reflects the economic value of trademarks as intellectual property rights in today's society, as a licensee, although it can take advantage of the "east wind of other people's brands" to build momentum for its own products, but when carrying out trademark licensing, remember to actively carry out trademark licensing for the record, so that the trademark can be better used.