Champion China's Upgrade: A Brand's "Circle Expansion" and "Deep Cultivation"

Stock News
09/25

The key step in brand upgrading lies in transforming brand narrative into market momentum and user resonance. In September 2025, Belle Fashion Group, China's leading fashion footwear and apparel company, partnered with Tmall Super Brand Day to launch the spectacular "Starlight District." Champion, one of its flagship brands, quickly gained prominence with its iconic hoodie products and new Flying Wing footwear series, achieving instant sellouts across multiple products, 143% year-over-year growth in online sales, 150% month-over-month increase in brand search popularity, 69% month-over-month growth in new customers, and widespread discussion on social media platforms.

The newly renovated Champion Chengdu Yingjia flagship store opened simultaneously, attracting numerous young consumers with its "immersive landmark" spatial narrative. The store features a super-sized hoodie wall incorporating urban culture, a century-long logo evolution display area, and a DIY Workshop, not only enhancing the shopping experience but also serving as a social gathering destination.

In recent years, Champion has accelerated its expansion in the Chinese market, advancing store renovations in key cities including Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou, gradually building an experiential network that combines classic DNA with local culture. From the short-term explosion of Super Brand Day to the long-term deepening of channel deployment, from comprehensive product upgrades to increased brand marketing investments, Champion is continuously expanding its brand capability boundaries with "trendy sports" as its anchor point.

The underlying "expansion + cultivation" strategy not only reflects Belle Fashion Group's profound insights into the Chinese market but also provides an innovative paradigm worth emulating for multi-brand group operations in segmented markets.

**Strategic Positioning: Entering Blue Ocean Markets, Creating New Trendy Sports Engines**

China's sports consumption market is undergoing structural transformation. According to the General Administration of Sport of China, China's sports population exceeded 500 million in 2024, and iiMedia Research predicts that China's sports footwear and apparel market will reach 598.9 billion yuan in 2025.

As market scale expands, consumer demand continues to diversify, with increasingly evident trends toward daily wear and diversification of sports apparel. Today, consumers' demands for sports apparel are no longer limited to functionality and comfort but increasingly focus on style expression and cultural identity. This shift has revealed strong growth potential in the trendy sports segment that combines athletic and design elements.

Champion, with its century-old brand DNA as the inventor of hooded sweatshirts and originator of Ivy League campus style, naturally possesses dual attributes of sports and fashion, providing unique advantages for entering this market. Based on this characteristic, Champion has become a key component of Belle Fashion Group's expansion into the sports leisure sector.

Since Belle Fashion Group began operating its China business in 2019, Champion has achieved rapid growth. In early 2025, Belle Fashion Group established a joint venture with global brand management giant Authentic Brands Group, comprehensively upgrading Champion's Greater China business and completing multi-category expansion from footwear and accessories to apparel.

This strategic move not only demonstrates the group's firm confidence in the growth potential of the trendy sports sector but also propels Champion into a new development phase—currently operating over 300 physical stores nationwide, multiple official online stores, and over 6 million omnichannel members.

The recent Super Brand Day event epitomized the brand upgrade. Champion, with the theme "Classic Freedom, I Create," officially announced young actor Ding Yuxi as its Greater China brand ambassador. His image, combining retro temperament with contemporary spirit, highly aligns with the brand and effectively connects with young consumer groups.

During the campaign, landmark advertisements launched simultaneously in multiple cities nationwide, triggering fan check-ins and topic discussions. The hashtag #DingYuxiShootsAdsLikeMagazines climbed to Weibo trending topics, achieving dual TOP1 positions on Weibo's Star Brand Rankings on the announcement day.

The online flagship store experienced explosive transactions, with the ambassador's same-style Champion hoodie and Champion racing shoes becoming TOP1 in Tmall's men's hoodie and men's shoe categories respectively, sparking a wave of same-style sharing on social platforms.

"To support my idol and because the product design is genuinely attractive, my friends and I all purchased the same styles," one consumer stated. This achievement not only demonstrates the brand's market appeal but also validates Belle Fashion's precise grasp of the trendy sports sector.

**Three-Dimensional Cultivation: Differentiated Combination Strategy of Product, Space, and Mindset**

After successfully positioning in the new sector, building sustainable competitive advantages became Champion's core challenge. The brand employs trendy culture as its main thread, implementing deep operations across three dimensions—product, space, and mindset—to deliver a differentiated combination strategy.

Champion deeply understands brand asset value, implementing a dual-track strategy of "classic recreation" and "classic creation" for product innovation. In "classic recreation," the brand deeply reshapes its iconic hoodie category, such as launching the HYPEBEAST 20th Anniversary limited edition collaborative hoodie, reinterpreting classic styles through modern design language.

In "classic creation," the brand's recently launched Flying Wing footwear series combines retro sports aesthetics with new-generation user demands, maintaining American retro elements while considering Asian consumers' physical characteristics and aesthetic preferences.

This product strategy not only consolidates core category advantages but also achieves creative integration between the international brand's century-old classic DNA and Chinese local market demands, driving continuous growth in footwear category sales proportion and establishing it as the brand's second growth curve.

Offline stores are viewed as core venues for brand experience. Champion's space renovation extends beyond sales enhancement to conveying brand attitude and deepening user connections. The recently renovated Chengdu Yingjia flagship store combines street style with retro collegiate elements, creating an immersive "brand archive" that transforms retail space into a trendy cultural landmark.

The store features a hoodie customization area where consumers can create personalized items, strengthening interactive experiences and emotional resonance. This offline renovation complements the online Super Brand Day, achieving closed-loop circulation of online and offline traffic.

Champion accelerates brand mindset building through celebrity strategy. The recent announcement of young actor Ding Yuxi as Greater China brand ambassador represents a crucial initiative to reach young customer segments. Through nationwide landmark advertising coverage and other methods, the brand rapidly promotes cross-circle brand information dissemination, achieving critical transition from niche to mass recognition.

This multi-level, three-dimensional communication strategy not only enhances brand awareness but also deepens consumer emotional identification.

Professor Wang Xiaoyi, a digital marketing expert and doctoral supervisor at Zhejiang University's School of Management, states: "Excellent brands are evolving from pursuing 'being liked' to 'being recognized.' To continuously win the market, brands must transcend the products themselves and establish emotional resonance and cultural connections with consumers."

**Group Empowerment: Innovative Practices in Resource Synergy and Localized Operations**

International brands entering the Chinese market often face "acclimatization" challenges. Champion's rapid establishment is inseparable from Belle Fashion Group's powerful platform empowerment.

Using Super Brand Day as an example, Belle Fashion Group coordinated multiple brands to achieve resource synergy: unified thematic planning, concentrated resource deployment, and differentiated brand interpretation, achieving efficient conversion from voice to sales volume. This is supported by platform capabilities including supply chain and channel management, ensuring rapid response of products and services to match China's market pace.

During localization, Champion achieves deep integration between international DNA and the Chinese market through signing brand ambassadors, comprehensively upgrading products, and creating urban flagship stores. This isn't simple adaptation but creative integration—maintaining brand tone while infusing Chinese cultural elements to achieve upgraded localized brand operations.

Belle Fashion Group provides solid support for brand development through profound consumer insights, omnichannel customer operations comprising over 8,000 directly-operated stores and online stores, rapid and precise full value chain from merchandise planning to retail terminals, and digitally-driven intelligent operations.

As the "expand sectors + differentiation" strategy continues deepening, brands under the group continuously strengthen core advantages in their respective segments. Champion's renewal journey represents not only a single brand's upgrade but also a successful example of footwear and apparel groups expanding capability boundaries.

Through Champion's expansion into the "trendy sports" sector, Belle Fashion Group leverages differentiated positioning and refined operations to carve new growth paths in competition, providing the industry with a complete methodology from strategic positioning to operational implementation.

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