安踏CEO徐阳将辞任 原因或为品牌业绩不达预期

This article centers on the departure of Anta Brand CEO Xu Yang, and organizes key practical insights from Xu’s tenure at the company:

1. Core personnel update: In July 2026, Anta confirmed that Xu stepped down as CEO of Anta Brand for personal and family reasons. His resignation has been approved, and he will take on a new role within the group. Lai Shixian, executive director and co-CEO of Anta Group, will serve as acting CEO to oversee all brand operations.

2. Xu Yang’s successful track record: With nearly 20 years at Anta, Xu took charge of Arc’teryx’s China business starting in 2019. Under his leadership, Arc’teryx China’s revenue grew from 800 million yuan to nearly 3 billion yuan, and its membership base expanded from 14,000 to 1.7 million. His key reforms included shifting distribution to a direct-to-consumer (DTC) model, opening premium stores in core commercial districts, and building refined member community systems, all of which offer valuable reference for industry practitioners.

3. Anta main brand transformation: After Xu was appointed CEO of the core Anta main brand in 2023, he launched full-scale reforms across product, distribution and marketing to drive the brand’s premium transformation. To date, however, the transformation has not met performance expectations, and some new store formats have been scaled back.

This article shares extensive first-hand insights into premium transformation and distribution reform for sportswear brands, offering valuable reference for brand operators. Key takeaways:

1. Actionable lessons for local operation of acquired premium brands: After acquiring an overseas premium brand, companies can implement structural distribution reform by abandoning the wholesale model to shift to DTC retail, closing underperforming stores, focusing on opening premium locations in core commercial districts, and building a refined member community system to shape a premium brand image. Arc’teryx’s success in China validates the effectiveness of this approach.

2. Transformation pathways for mass-market brands seeking premium positioning: On the product side, brands can co-create IP-driven new products with top athletes and high-traffic celebrities, and use hunger marketing to build product scarcity. On the distribution side, brands can move beyond one-size-fits-all store formats by launching differentiated store concepts targeting specific consumer segments to match diverse demand.

3. Risk warning: Anta’s full-scale transformation has so far failed to meet performance targets, and its original goal of 10%-15% compound annual growth has not been achieved, with some new store formats already scaled back. This shows brands must balance transformation progress and performance growth, avoid blind store expansion, and prioritize improving per-store efficiency.

This article discloses transformation updates from a leading sportswear brand, offering valuable reference for sellers in the sportswear sector. Key takeaways:

1. Industry opportunity and direction: The overall sportswear industry is trending toward premiumization and refined segmented consumer operation. DTC transformation cannot stop at simply increasing the share of direct sales; its core goal must be improving per-store efficiency. On the product side, brands should pursue differentiated, IP-driven positioning; on the distribution side, they should deploy segmented store networks matching target consumer groups to align with shifting consumer demand.

2. Risk warning: The multi-format store expansion led by Xu Yang underperformed expectations, with multiple new store formats already scaled back. Anta’s "Super Anta" initiative has halted rapid expansion, and its SV business unit has been integrated. This shows that blindly following the trend of segmented store formats and reckless expansion creates performance pressure. Sellers should control expansion pace and validate new models before scaling.

3. Operational best practices to adopt: Brands can collaborate with top athletes and high-traffic celebrities to build exclusive IP products, use "four-limit" hunger marketing to boost product scarcity, and build a refined member community system to improve user stickiness and repeat purchases.

This article discloses the latest transformation direction of leading sportswear brand Anta, offering valuable insights for sportswear contract manufacturers and production-side enterprises. Key takeaways:

1. Shifts in product production and design demand: Leading brands are now pushing forward premium transformation focused on IP-driven, differentiated new products, and building product scarcity through hunger marketing. This requires production support for multiple SKUs in small batches, raising the bar for supply chain flexibility. Product development also needs to align with brands’ IP collaboration requirements and respond quickly to design adjustments.

2. New business opportunities: Following brands’ distribution reform, different store formats carry differentiated product lines, requiring supply chains to support small-batch, multi-batch production. Factories that upgrade their flexible production capabilities early will secure more cooperation opportunities and larger order volumes from leading brands.

3. Implications for digital transformation: Leading brands are setting increasingly high requirements for per-store efficiency and product turnover. Factories need to advance digital upgrading to improve production efficiency and response speed, to adapt to brands’ post-DTC transformation needs and keep up with industry changes.

This article outlines industry trends and client pain points emerging during sportswear brand transformation, offering reference for brand service providers. Key takeaways:

1. Industry development trends: China’s sportswear industry has entered a new phase of premium transformation and deepening DTC reform. Brands have shifted their focus from past scale expansion and increasing direct sales share to improving per-store efficiency and operating segmented consumer groups, driving growing demand for refined operation services.

2. Core client pain points: Many brands fail to hit performance targets after launching full-scale transformation. Challenges including multi-format store operation, IP product marketing, refined member management and per-store efficiency improvement are difficult to implement, as brands lack mature methodologies and tool support, leading to high transformation risk.

3. New business opportunities: Service providers can develop targeted service products addressing these transformation pain points, covering per-store efficiency improvement, multi-format operation management, member community operation, and IP product marketing execution. These offerings help brands reduce transformation risk and boost success rates, allowing providers to capture growing demand from the industry-wide transformation wave.

This article discloses the latest transformation updates of a leading Chinese sportswear brand, offering insights for operations and merchant recruitment for offline retail platforms and e-commerce marketplaces. Key takeaways:

1. Core brand demands from platforms: As brands advance segmented distribution reform by opening differentiated stores targeting distinct consumer groups with tailored product offerings, they require platforms to provide customized location and traffic resources to match the needs of different store formats, and help brands reach their target customers.

2. Directions for operations and management optimization: When recruiting brands, platforms should not only focus on brand expansion speed and scale, but also guide brands to prioritize per-store efficiency and pursue high-quality growth. Platforms should also roll out differentiated operational support policies for brand stores of different positioning to help brands improve per-store profitability.

3. Guidance for risk mitigation: Many brands’ segmented store format reforms have underperformed, leading to rollbacks after blind expansion. When partnering with brands to launch new store formats, platforms should guard against the risk of resource waste caused by reckless expansion, make plans in advance, validate models first before scaling gradually, and reduce cooperation risk.

This article presents the latest developments in China’s sportswear industry transformation and provides real-world research cases. Key insights:

1. New industry trends: Leading Chinese sportswear brands have entered a new transformation phase, shifting from early-stage scale expansion and DTC model building to a focus on quality improvement, efficiency gains and premium transformation. DTC reform has moved beyond increasing direct sales share to deepening per-store efficiency improvement; distribution has shifted from uniform store formats to segmented multi-format operation targeting distinct consumer groups; and product strategy has shifted from volume sales to IP-driven, scarcity-focused positioning.

2. New research questions: As a leading brand, Anta’s full-scale premium transformation has failed to meet performance expectations, raising a number of important new research questions: What are the core barriers to premium transformation for mass-market sportswear brands? What conditions are required for successful multi-format store expansion? How should brands balance scale growth and per-store efficiency improvement during the deepening phase of DTC reform? How should transformation pace be managed?

3. Research materials for business model studies: This article provides two contrasting transformation cases: the successful direct-sales-plus-member-community model Xu Yang implemented to grow Arc’teryx’s premium positioning, and the ongoing premium transformation attempt of Anta’s main brand. Both offer first-hand, real-world case material for industry research.