A bright outlook
For international winter sports brands, the issues of how to harness the energy around Beijing 2022 and grow market share in China are of standout importance. Particularly in the current, ever-changing, climate.
Even as the latest wave of covid-19 rolled around the globe, preparations for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, due to be held in and around Beijing during February and March, continued. “China will do its best to deliver a splendid, exceptional and extraordinary [Winter Games] for the world, making all participants feel spring-like warmth and injecting more solidarity, confidence and strength into the world,” underscored Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, in January.
All things relating to the running of the Winter Games may not be quite full steam ahead, at least not in terms of stakeholders’ original plans (Beijing was chosen to host the Winter Games back in 2015). For example, the Beijing 2022 organising committee, citing covid concerns, announced in January that tickets would not be sold to the general public for any event. Major sporting and winter technology trade shows Ispo Beijing and Alpitec China, were both still on course to go ahead in December at the China National Convention Center, but were postponed late in the day for the same reason. Brands that hoped to be there were perhaps able to console themselves with the following words, commonly attributed to the Chinese sage Confucius: “Happiness is not at the top of the mountain, but in how to climb”.
How to climb
The Beijing 2022 competitions will be broadcast by China Media Group (CMG) via 8K ultra-high-definition transmission, in addition to the Olympic Broadcasting Services and other rights-holding broadcasters. Known as China’s principal state media company for radio and television, CMG is home to leading enterprises including the China Central Television (CCTV) and China Global Television Network (CGTN), plus the China National Radio and China Radio International radio stations. Whereas, according to the International Olympic Committee, the Tokyo 2020 Games provided fans with more content on more screens than ever before via television, digital, apps and social media, one might reasonably conjecture that CMG’s state-sponsored broadcasting efforts, alone, will successfully reach the eyes and ears of a sizeable slice of China’s roughly 1.4 billion-strong population. Perhaps more so than ever before.
Compared to Japan’s population of around 125.8 million, combined with a palpable sense of national pride bound up with Beijing being the first-ever city to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics, this may not, in reality, be too much of a stretch for China. In a recent interview with news agency Xinhua, an unnamed spokesperson for the nation’s General Administration of Sport confirmed that a winter sports “culture” has been deliberately cultivated by the government via various media streams over the past several years. Yet, China’s engagement with winter sports since 2015 has exceeded even the state’s own expectations. More than 346 million Chinese people have now participated in winter sporting activities since 2015, according to the results of a survey released by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in early 2022. This figure represents a significant leapfrog past the state’s initial target of logging 300 million engaged citizens following its successful bid to host the Winter Olympics. As per NBS’ data, 37.3% of Chinese winter sports participants (82 million individuals) were aged between 18 and 30 years old, the largest demographic group.
All this is to say, despite any additional covid-related complications, China’s exposure to winter sports is not only set to further blossom and bloom under the magnifying lens of the Winter Games but so, too, in all likelihood, is its appetite for lively participation in this mode and manner of activity as the mood matures.
Cold to gold
Area sales manager for Slovenian skiwear and equipment brand Elan Skis, Tine Demec, agrees. Mr Demec tells WSA that Elan has been active in the Chinese market since the year 2000, but he attributes the business’ “notable” growth in China over the past five years to the upcoming Winter Games. In particular, he emphasises Beijing’s investment in raising the status and accessibility of winter sports in the run up to the Olympic and Paralympic competitions. Due to covid, Mr Demec’s company was last able to visit the Chinese capital for Ispo Beijing and Alpitec China in 2019 (it also attended the China International Import Expo in Shanghai the same year).
Further, in tune with many other businesses with a vested interest in the Chinese winter sports market, Elan was forced to abandon its plans to attend Beijing 2022 on account of the pandemic. “Nevertheless, we will cheer for our Elan athletes [from afar],” Mr Demec supplies. On the connection between the Winter Games and boosted brand revenues, he is similarly optimistic: “We are sure that the Olympic spirit will popularise the passion for winter sports [in China] even more and we anticipate greater sales in the territory in the future.”
Alpitec China’s brand manager, Geraldine Coccagna, shares in this positive sentiment, revealing that “most” of the trade show’s international exhibitors continue to do “very well” in China, despite the various competing forces that have inevitably shaped a climate of uncertainty around the world. She also tells us that the country was able to keep the majority of its ski resorts open during covid, which encouraged domestic ski tourism when travellers may more ordinarily have opted to partake of the Japanese slopes or ventured even further afield during snow season. Ms Coccagna envisions that Chinese ski resorts, especially, will maintain their growth (and investment) momentum even after the Winter Games have concluded. In his oft-cited “white book” on China’s ski industry during 2020, which also reports on how the Chinese ski season fared over fiscal 2020-2021, vice chairman of the Beijing Ski Association and chief executive of Beijing Carving Ski Sports Development Group, Wu Bin, does not dispute this.
Rather, Mr Wu rates the performance of China’s ski industry during the 2020-2021 season as “outstanding”, suggesting that the market more or less returned to 2018-2019 levels over the period. He uses consultant Laurent Vanat’s 2021 report on international snow and mountain tourism to throw the Chinese ski market into sharp relief to the rest of the world. (Mr Vanat’s findings suggested that 2018-2019 was the best snow season of the century so far across the globe, while 2019-2020 was, by contrast, the worst.) Skiing is not the only winter sport to have experienced something of a boom in China in recent years, however. According to NBS statistics, the country’s total number of standard-sized ice rinks has risen to 654, representing a 317% increase since 2015. As for ski resorts, these have also grown from 568 in 2015 to 803 today. This current winter alone, Chinese citizens are expected to make 305 million winter sports tourism-related trips, just over 50 million more trips than they made last year.
The snowball effect
China’s leading sportswear brand, Anta (an official sponsor of Beijing 2022), is one of several organisations, including the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology and fellow domestic brand Peak, to announce or unveil local activewear research centres in recent months. For its part, Anta has thus far opted to partner with major universities (Donghua in Shanghai and Tsinghua in Beijing) in doing so, while others have gone it alone. Ultra-thin and ultra-light thermal textile technologies and cooling fabrics have already been singled out as key areas for research and development for its joint venture with Donghua University. As former Swarovski executive and founder of winter sports consultancy SnowHow China, Hermann Winkler, has written, local enterprises such as Anta and e-commerce giant Alibaba already carry significant weight in terms of their investments and activities in the winter sports realm, but he also underscores the successful presence of French brand Rossignol and Helsinki-based Anta subsidiary Amer Sports, the owner of outdoor brands including Salomon and Arc’teryx, in the market.
To an observer, the time has perhaps never been better to be a winter sports brand operating in China. However, especially with travel restrictions still in place, foreign-operated firms seeking to take off in the market on the back of the Winter Games’ popularity will need a meticulous media strategy, capable of highlighting their own culture of innovation, to stand out. To cite Mr Winkler once again, it is likely that Beijing 2022 will not be remembered as “the beginning of the end” for winter sports in China, but rather “the end of the beginning”.
Although no tickets will be sold to the public, organisers have announced that covid-safe groups of spectators will be invited to be present during the Winter Games.
Credit: Klemen Razinger /Elan Skis
