(Original title:[Depth]Camping and frisbees are cold, and outdoor sports are on fire)
“I’ll send you a one-dollar red envelope, come and help me put together a head.” Before the interview started, Liu Yu sent a message to the reporter.
Liu Yu is 28 years old this year, works in the new media industry, and is a senior enthusiast who has participated in Frisbee sports for 5 years. In 2021, due to more and more Frisbee players around him, he established his own online Frisbee club FlyFresh, which specializes in gathering “individual visitors” who play Frisbee.
Unlike traditional clubs that recruit members, FlyFresh gathers online through social media platforms. Players only need to sign up for group buying through a specific mini program one week before the event day.
“We usually hold Frisbee activities two to three times a week. In 2022, it was particularly exaggerated. I lost my quota within half an hour of the mini program’s launch, and sometimes it disappeared in seconds on weekends and holidays,” Liu Yu said happily The excitement of FlyFresh last year, “When there are a lot of people, the venue and equipment don’t even cost money. People fancy the size of our club and offer to sponsor. We just need to be responsible for being there.”
However, in just one year, the popularity of Frisbee has cooled down.
Liu Yu showed the reporter a Sunday frisbee event he initiated at that time, “It’s Friday today, and there are less than 20 people signing up.”
And the middle-aged people who are keen on football also said that after the beginning of spring this year, there will be no beauties to grab the field.
The small program used by Liu Yu is called “Chu Men”, which is an online small program for making friends through cool sports such as Frisbee. The reporter found that in addition to the activities of the Frisbee Club, fans of various sports such as flag football and free fall will also call for “boarding” on the homepage of this small program.
The event initiated by Liu Yu was sponsored by a local Frisbee dealer in Shanghai. Although only a few dollars are required from people who “carpool” to pay, very few people sign up.
Other campaigns that cost more to “carpool” on the homepage are even worse than FlyFresh, with only single-digit participation.
“This is the situation now. Few people play Frisbee anymore. We are already cold. Maybe this club will say goodbye at the end of the year.” Liu Yu told Jiemian News.
(Photo source: Jiemian News/Kuangda)
The frisbee is not the only outdoor activity that is cool.
Unlike the “Chumen” applet, which is still struggling to operate, in March this year, the camping-focused app Minye Camp directly announced the suspension of service. Shi Jianqing, the founder of Minye Camp, revealed that the reason for the suspension of the service of Minye Camp was not only the failure of financing, but also the difficulty of making profits on the platform.
Founded in April 2021, Minye Camp mainly provides camping enthusiasts with the service of booking camping sites. The app has been in operation for nearly two years until the service was discontinued. According to public data, there were more than 2,000 cooperative campsites of Minye Camp at one time. In the first year of its launch, the number of registered users of Minye Camp exceeded 600,000.
Huang Yan, a 50-year-old camping enthusiast, is from Guangdong. She has used Minye Camp many times to choose camping sites. She was a little surprised by the closure of Minye Camp, but it is not a pity.
“I haven’t gone camping this year, not only me, but my sisters don’t go camping either.” Huang Yan told Jiemian News, “Now that everyone is busy traveling and shopping, there are more choices, and camping may even be a waste of time. Time’s second choice doesn’t even count.”
The WeChat index shows that the keyword index of “camping” is generally in a downward trend. As of the date of publication, this keyword is still declining day-to-day, down 14.14%.
Jiemian News contacted Lao Liang, the person in charge of a campsite in Nanning, Guangxi. His campsite is located in a scenic spot in the urban area of Nanning, with an excellent geographical location. .
He also noticed the slump in camping this year: “When there are fewer people, my wife is very worried that I will lose money. To be honest, I won’t lose money. My old customers are still ‘turning back’ to take care of my business. It’s just that there are fewer people joining in the fun and camping, and I don’t earn as much as last year.”
Liu Yu also attributed the main reason for the decline in the popularity of Frisbee sports to “the loss of newcomers”: “Although last year was lively, I was still very confused as a manager. Especially many new faces I met once and never saw again, but his Member information is still here.”
In addition to the reduction in the number of new players following the trend, the recovery of other sports has also squeezed the living space of these outdoor sports.
Taking Shanghai as an example, in 2023, Shanghai plans to host 121 international and domestic sports events, including 38 international events and 83 national competitions, involving 43 sports.
Liu Yu himself signed up for the Shanghai Half Marathon in April: “Everyone has more choices this year, and there are more such mass events. People are mobile. People who we can’t keep with Frisbee will naturally go for it. Go elsewhere.”
In March of this year, Tmall released the “TS100” list of “Chasing New” in the sports and outdoor industry for the first time.
In the list, Tmall divides brands into several subdivisions such as fitness, outdoor, skiing, street fashion, running, basketball, etc., based on brand sales power (business volume, business growth rate), pioneer innovation power (pioneer crowd Proportion, search popularity, live broadcast innovation), circle influence (circle penetration rate, number of active members, functional technology) three screening indicators to select leading brands in each segment.
It is worth mentioning that when the double 11 battle report was released last year, due to the rapid growth of industry consumption, Tmall called the sports outdoor and trendy toys, pets and jewelry industries as the “new four diamonds”.
Another e-commerce giant, JD.com, also experienced an explosion in the sales data of its sports and outdoor categories last year: last year’s Double 11, the turnover of over 1,500 sports and outdoor brands such as Adidas, FILA, Arc’teryx, Timberland, and 361° increased by 100% year-on-year , the turnover of trending categories such as down insulation, skiing sports, and professional running all increased by more than 200% year-on-year, and orders for sports protection services increased by more than 10 times year-on-year.
A research report by NPD Group, an American market research organization, shows that the growth performance of sports brands focusing on sub-categories such as running, outdoor hiking, and yoga is more prominent than that of comprehensive sports brands.
Judging from the financial report data released by various brands, brands that focus on subdivision are indeed ushering in a period of rapid growth.
On September 15, 2021, Angpao was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange. (Source: Visual China)
For example, on the running shoe track, the Swiss running shoe brand On (Angpao), a Swiss running shoe brand owned by tennis king Federer, will increase its brand sales by 68.7% year-on-year in 2022 to 1.222 billion Swiss francs (about 7 billion yuan), with a gross profit margin of 56%.
The French running shoe brand HOKA ONE ONE, also from Europe, performed very well. The brand’s latest performance shows that the brand’s sales in the third quarter of fiscal year 2023 rose by 90.8% year-on-year to 352 million US dollars (about 2.418 billion yuan), and it has become the best-selling brand under the parent company Deckers Brands.
In terms of outdoor, The North Face (North Face), which became the “school uniform” of young consumers last winter with its explosive down jacket, has been booming in revenue. In the latest fiscal quarter, its revenue was US$1 billion, an increase of 8% year-on-year, surpassing the company’s “ten thousand “Big old”, the American street fashion brand Vans, has become the sales engine of the parent company VF Corporation.
Anta, a domestic sports brand giant, has also benefited a lot from its investment in outdoor tracks.
The 2022 financial report released by Anta Group in March this year shows that the two high-end brands of the group’s outdoor sports brands DESCENTE and KOLON SPORT have achieved high growth. The yuan rose 26.1% year-on-year.
Amer Sports, which belonged to the Arc’teryx brand that was quite popular last year and became one of the “three treasures of the middle age”, also reported the best performance in history this fiscal year. In 2022, its revenue will increase by 21.8% year-on-year and achieve profitability, surpassing Anta Group Expectations of the “Five 1 Billion Euro Strategies” formulated in 2019.
It can be said that outdoor sports are growing into the third growth curve of Anta Group besides Anta’s main brand and FILA.
(Image source: Tmall)
Overall, the outdoor sports market will continue to be hot in 2023, while the decline in camping and Frisbee is just a “partial cooling” after the big boom.
McKinsey’s “2023 Global Sporting Goods Industry Report” pointed out that although the sporting goods industry has experienced multiple challenges such as the global economic downturn and supply chain crisis in the past year, the industry has maintained steady growth, even exceeding the level before the epidemic.
Among them, the performance of the outdoor field is particularly prominent. From 2016 to 2021, a total of 161 investment transactions occurred in the field of outdoor sports, including the acquisition of Amer by Anta Group.
However, China’s outdoor sports market still has great potential.
According to the in-depth research report data of CITIC Securities, the total retail sales of China’s outdoor products industry will be 25.36 billion yuan in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 3.4%. It is estimated that by 2035, the market size of China’s outdoor sports will exceed 100 billion.
It is worth mentioning that the current penetration rate of outdoor sports in China is 28.3%, which is still far from the penetration rate of over 50% overseas, and there is still a lot of room for improvement.
According to the data of Tmall New Life Research Institute, in 2022, there will be 6 new consumer markets around “outdoor” with a turnover exceeding 10 billion. With the rise of various new waves with the concept of “outdoor +”, the outdoor market is also showing a comprehensive hurricane mode of numerous new markets with a transaction scale of one billion and a scale of tens of billions.
Luca, head of Tmall’s outdoor shoes and clothing category operations, told Jiemian News that she believes that the outdoor category will continue to grow at a high rate in the next few years: “The compound growth rate of outdoor shoes and clothing has exceeded 20% for two consecutive years starting from 2021. The growth rate of jackets and sun protection clothing is even around 50%.”
In the next few years, more outdoor scenes and routes at home and abroad will be developed, and consumers’ needs for shoes and clothing in terms of wearing, scene-based, and professional functions will also change from time to time.
From the perspective of Tmall, this will attract more and more brands to enter this subdivision track and do brand building in this respect.
(At the request of the interviewee, all the names in the text are pseudonyms)