Anta Sports Products could not entirely halt the decline in its sales last year, but the company said that its measures to improve its partnership with retailers had been efficient and that its performance was recovering.
The company's turnover reached 7,281.3 million yuan (€869.7m-$1,189.0m) last year, which was a decline of 4.5 percent. However, the drop is smaller than the sales slump of 14.4 percent suffered in 2012 and Anta should remain the largest Chinese sports group for the year.
Anta's footwear sales contracted by 7.7 percent to RMB 3,420.7 million (€408.6m-$558.6m) while apparel sales fell by 2.8 percent to RMB 3,574.5 million (€427.0m-$583.8m), but the group's turnover with accessories jumped by 19.5 percent.
The Chinese group's gross profit margin jumped by 3.7 percentage points to 41.7 percent for the year. The rise was most convincing in footwear, as the gross margin for this category jumped by 5.5 percentage points to 44.5 percent.
The operating profit margin inched up by 1.0 percentage points to 21.5 percent. The group still ended the year with a decline of 3.2 percent in profit attributable to shareholders, reaching RMB 1,314.8 million (€157.0m-$214.7m).
The Anta brand was sold in 7,757 stores at the end of last year, down from 8,075 at the end of 2012. The number of children's wear stores jumped from 833 to 881, with openings in key locations across the country. As for the Fila brand, for which the Anta group owns Chinese rights, its number of stores in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao expanded to 416, compared with more than 300 at the end of 2012.
The company said that it had focused on tightening relationships with distributors, with new systems in place to measure and share information on the performance of retailers. Anta also provided more precise order guidelines for retailers and strictly required them to follow its discounting policies.
The year was marked by the company's extension of its wide-ranging partnership with the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC) from 2013 to 2016, making Anta the Sportswear Partner of the COC. Anta supported the Olympic Day Run for the fifth year, with events held in 23 cities and attracting nearly 100,000 long-distance runners.
Another highlight was the company's launch of a new basketball campaign with the tagline Basketball is Priceless, targeting the mass market. Anta offered basketball shoes at just RMB 399 (€47.65-$65.16), marketed as National Basketball Shoes. They were named after two of the brand's endorsees, Kevin Garnett of the Brooklyn Nets and Rajon Rondo from the Boston Celtics.
The Olympic endorsement afforded some exposure at the Sochi Winter Olympics and Anta will provide outfits for Chinese teams at the Incheon Asian Games in September. The basketball campaign will be continued this year, with Chandler Parsons from the Houston Rockets joining Anta's roster this week.
The company expects the number of Anta stores to remain roughly stable at 7,700 to 7,800 stores this year, while the number of kids' stores should reach between 900 and 1,000 and there should be between 450 and 500 Fila stores in China by the end of the year. The group will also continue to work on improving merchandising and expanding online sales.
Anta's chairman, Ding Shizhong, acknowledged in a written statement that some sports brands faced unresolved inventory issues in China, leading to sharp price cuts, but the company's own measures to improve its performance have had an impact.
