From Olympic Games to Paris Fashion Week: the rise of Li-Ning

The most attentive observers of Bella Hadid will not miss that for sure: the American model was photographed wearing Li-Ning sneakers (a pair of White Furious Rider Ace 1.5) two days before the men's show of the Chinese brand to be held at Center Pompidou on January 18, in the middle of the Parisian fashion week. The Fall/Winter 2020 collection will refer to vintage video games, Chinese porcelain and a series of urban characters, and most likely there will also be a mini-capsule in collaboration with the martial arts legend Jackie Chan.

After making his debut in the world of fashion with the collection unveiled on the Paris FW runway last season, Li-Ning is to be considered among the most awaited brands of Paris Fashion Week, as was during the Milanese one: certainly because of the debut of the collaboration with Neil Barrett (with whom two running sneakers were designed, the Lion Dance model and the Essence 2.3), but also for the footwear partnership with Random Identities, the brand founded in 2014 by the Italian designer Stefano Pilati with whom Li-Ning has already collaborated on a very colorful summer collection inspired by one of the traditional Chinese sports, ping-pong.

Together they developed the Aurora 2020, the cycling shoe inspired by a 2004 model to which an LED system has been applied on the upper that makes it futuristic. The arrival of the Chinese brand on the international fashion scene was the big goal declared a few years ago by Li-Ning, which closed 2019 with record numbers on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and a growth of 200% which attested to the brand's value at over $ 6 billion, the best performer in the MSCI Asia Pacific Index and the top gainer among clothing companies globally.

Li-Ning was founded in China in 1989 by the namesake gymnast, winner of 106 gold medals including 3 Olympic ones, soon becoming a common and reliable brand on the local market also thanks to the smart intuitions of the former athlete and a policy of very affordable prices. Li-Ning gained enormous popularity internationally during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games thanks to the opening ceremony, during which Li-Ning personally was chosen to complete the relay of the Olympic torch, in which he participated wearing rigorously the clothes of his brand while the event was broadcast worldwide. It was the time to try to go beyond national borders, and so the Chinese brand began its long process of expansion on the world stage, implementing a gradual aesthetic migration from sportswear to lifestyle to streetswear in order to increase its horizons in terms of target and popularity, but above all through an evolution of taste.

To conquer the Occidental scene (only the American one, for example, holds 40% of the sneaker market) there could be no better choice than to beat the basketball route: Li-Ning was the official marketing partner of the NBA and sponsor of the Argentine national team and already in 2006 he had managed to sign many deals with numerous NBA stars such as Shaquille O'Neal, Baron Davis, Josè Calderon, Evan Turner and James McCollum, while in 2012 the signature of Dwayne Wade arrived, who recently renewed his relationship with the Chinese brand by signing a lifetime deal that also allowed him to develop, within Li-Ning, his personal brand: Way of Wade. Despite the US-China diplomatic case that broke out in October 2019 and that concerned the Houston Rockets tour in Asia, Li-Ning has not lost his appeal in the American world at all but rather has emerged strengthened by these tensions, and could soon announce the last testimonial, Jimmy Butler.

The approach to the European and US market has been progressive, and has allowed Li-Ning to build an increasingly solid connection year after year, faster than other ambitious Asian brands such as Yonex, UNIQLO and Anta Sports. If in a 1998 Hill + Knowlton Strategies survey almost no Chinese interviewee considered the brands of their country to be 'cool' enough, today the native brands have the weapons to be able to try at least to compete with global giants such as Nike and adidas. This growth also took place thanks to the ability to 'detach' itself from the similarity of the L-logo with Nike's Swoosh, moving from the 2010 rebranding which actually increased the brand's certainties and self-esteem by reshaping its graphic identity, to finish the partnership with the Stefano Pilati brand that has contributed to perhaps definitively fill the gap that Li-Ning was missing in order to become an attractive reality even in the difficult world of streetwear. On the other hand, as stated in the slogan that stands out on the official website of the brand, 'Anything is Possible'.