Chinese sportswear brands like Xtep and Anta have the chance to beat western giants such as Adidas and Nike. Anta has bought Finland-based conglomerate Amer Sports, which owns Wilson tennis racquets and other sports brands such as Arc’teryx. Anta plans to grow these brands in the Chinese market. Xtep has partnered with conglomerate Wolverine Worldwide to sell outdoor footwear brand Merrell and the running shoe brand Saucony in mainland China. The company will open 400 to 500 stores for each brand within the next five years.

By working with Amer Sports and Wolverine Worldwide, both Xtep and Anta are purchasing or partnering with premium international brands instead of building their own from scratch and targeting brands in niche categories where incumbents Nike and Adidas are not as strong.

This strategy makes sense. Competing with Nike and Adidas head-on in the general sportswear market is bound to be difficult. They have massive marketing budgets and years of global branding experience, so they dominate the premium end of the casual sportswear market.

China’s sportswear market grew by 12 per cent in 2017, making it the second largest sportswear market after the US. Chinese consumers are becoming more sophisticated and the market is fragmenting into different groups of customers.