Nike challenger Anta faces fresh rivals in Chinese sportswear race

In 1987, a teenage Ding Shizhong boarded a train from the southern Chinese city of Fuzhou to Beijing, carrying leather shoes manufactured at his family’s factory in the coastal province of Fujian.

The 17-year-old managed to bargain his way into selling the shoes they made in the capital’s department stores. It marked the start of his company Anta’s evolution from being a little-known provincial shoemaker to last year overtaking Adidas to become the second-largest sportswear retailer in China behind Nike, with annual revenues of $7.8bn.

“Ding realised early on that the money is in the brand, not the making of the product,” said one person close to Anta’s management.

But after years of rapid growth, the company is now “at a crossroads,” according to Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group. “The Anta brand’s growth in China is slowing, and it’s unclear whether the group is well positioned to capture evolving Chinese trends in sportswear,” he said. Anta declined to comment.

It is one of several sportswear companies known as the “Fujian Tigers” that emerged in the 1980s and manufactured clothing and shoes for western brands, including Nike. After listing in Hong Kong in 2007, Anta has been snapping up foreign brands to target higher-spending consumers and, more recently, push into fast-growing niche sportswear categories.

In 2009, it bought the China rights for Italian sportswear company Fila and 10 years later, it led a €5.6bn takeover of Finland’s Amer Sports, which owns a portfolio of brands including Arc’teryx and Wilson tennis rackets.

“There is no possibility of creating an Arc’teryx or Wilson with the branding power of Chinese companies today. But it is possible to create this through an acquisition strategy and growing in the…