From camping to city walking, outdoor sports have become a trend. How can we enter the hottest trillion-dollar track?

This article first analyzes a "net celebrity sport" that appears every year, analyzes the common points of "net celebrity sports", then explains from the perspective of sports-related brands, and finally proposes how to enter the hottest track. This article is suitable for brand owners to read and learn how to link with mass sports.

Every year, a "net-famous sport" becomes popular. From camping, cycling, roller skating, paddle boarding, fishing, Frisbee, skiing to this year's city walk, outdoor sports have become a trendy lifestyle, replacing script-killing games and escape rooms, and becoming a "social currency" among young people.

With the Chengdu Universiade, the return of the China Open, and the upcoming Hangzhou Asian Games, large-scale events have ignited the enthusiasm of the whole nation to participate in sports. The growing group of players will further stimulate the sports consumption market.

The latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that the total scale (total output) of the national sports industry in 2021 was 3.1175 trillion yuan, and the added value was 1.2245 trillion yuan. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the development goal of the sports industry is to reach a total scale of 5 trillion yuan.

How can the popular "river tracing" this year tap into new entrepreneurial opportunities in the 5 trillion blue ocean market? Starting from August, E-commerce Online and the Blue Star Project jointly launched the Blue Star Vane New Business Growth Forum. As a new super new business growth plan launched by Taotian Group, the Blue Star Project aims to unite ecological partners to jointly discover cutting-edge brands and potential merchants. In this forum live broadcast, E-commerce Online interviewed Gu Di, general manager of the sports and outdoor industry of Taotian Group, Qiao En, the brand manager of Snow Line, and Wang Xiaojing, general manager of the digital center business unit of Shanghai Guxing E-commerce Co., Ltd., to jointly dismantle the new trends in the sports and outdoor industry in 2023.

1. Trend: Rapid growth of subcategories and opportunities for the “integration” track

In 2023, when the market supply is extremely abundant, outdoor sports will still be a strong category with a continuous influx of new customers.

This is closely related to the development of the big industry. According to the goals set in the Healthy China Action (2019-2030) released by the state in 2019, the proportion of people who regularly participate in physical exercise in my country will reach 37% and above of the total population in 2022 and 40% and above in 2030, respectively. Compared with North America and Europe, where the sports population is more developed, my country still has visible room for growth.

In this process, a rich variety of sub-segments have emerged in the sports consumer market, and many cutting-edge brands have been born.

In the past year, this has been one of the hottest entrepreneurial tracks: on Taobao and Tmall, 18 sports brands had annual sales of over 1 billion, 23 brands had sales exceeding 30 million during their growth, and 78 brands maintained double-digit high-speed growth. In 2022, Taobao and Tmall launched more than 3 million new sports and outdoor products. In the "TS100" list jointly released by Taobao and Tmall's sports and outdoor industry in March this year, 30% were domestically produced new products, and they were concentrated in new sports fields such as skateboarding, camping, cycling, and fishing.

New customers are pouring in, the industry is expanding, and new products are emerging, but finding the right entrepreneurial opportunities requires a clear direction.

At the live broadcast, Gu Di concluded that the entire sports outdoor industry has shown some distinct characteristics: universalization, circleization, technological advancement, and pan-fashionability - they are both ongoing industry consumption trends and opportunities for new businesses to start businesses. "First, universalization. With the strong support of national policies, the infrastructure of the entire national sports will become more and more complete, and the user range of the entire sports outdoor industry will cover a wider range; then there is circleization, and different subdivided scenarios are incubating different sports scenarios, such as camping, stream tracing, skiing, and rock climbing. The industry's circle and layering will be more obvious; technological advancement is easy to understand, the cushioning and rebound of basketball shoes, the focus of cross-country running shoes on anti-slip grip, the quick-drying and cooling of sports T-shirts, new technologies and fabrics, professionalism and functionality are always an important direction for businesses to research new product supplies."

In Gudi's view, pan-fashion is a major trend change in the past two years. Brands and products in the professional sports and outdoor lines are becoming more and more fashionable, while brands and products in the fashion lines are beginning to focus on the functionality of segmented scenes. Integration is the general trend. "Take the jacket as an example. The jacket was originally produced in a professional outdoor scene, but now in addition to functionality, its sense of fashion and technology are becoming stronger, and it has begun to enter the daily life and dressing scene."

2. Breakthrough: Consumer-centric approach to drive emerging brands to break through

Why are new and cutting-edge brands in the sports and outdoor industry emerging in large numbers on Tmall?

In 2014, Qiao En was not yet the manager of the Snowline brand. The first time she came into contact with skiing, she was impressed by the sport. The feeling of adrenaline rush made her quickly become a ski enthusiast. At that time, skiing was not so popular. The entire skiing industry really began to accelerate its development in 2015 when Beijing and Zhangjiakou successfully bid for the Winter Olympics.

Qiao En has been skiing for nearly ten years. At first, she mostly used foreign brands for her skateboards and clothing, but it was not because "foreign brands are more popular" but because there were not many choices at the time. "The longer I play, the more I feel that there is a big difference between foreign and domestic aesthetics in the choice of snow clothes. It is difficult to find snow clothes that meet Chinese aesthetics. In China, there is no aesthetic."

In 2019, Jon, who had been looking for a high-quality outdoor supply chain in the country, met Jiang Qijun.

Jiang Qijun's family runs a foreign trade factory. Previously, they have been doing OEM/ODM processing for ski/outdoor brands and have rich product experience. Jiang Qijun, who was born in the "second generation of the factory" and has been exposed to the ski industry since childhood, also has a "brand dream". He registered "Snowline" very early to lay out the layout for incubating the brand. It was not until 2019 that Jon joined and became the brand manager of "Snowline". The two hit it off and after repeated exchanges, they opened their first store on Tmall.

The development of the Snowline brand is actually not that easy.

In real life, skiing requires finding a good ski resort, which is often combined with a trip. It is more like a part of a lifestyle, and it requires consumers to "play" with it. This also means that this is an industry that requires a better understanding of consumers. "In the first year, we were very ignorant. We could only rely on ourselves to think about which products people might like. We didn't have data to support product development. We didn't know how to make a hit, so we could only rely on continuous experimentation." But gradually, Jon began to explore the path of operating a brand. She began to learn how to optimize detail pages, optimize stores, and use Tmall's tools.

For Jon at that time, Tmall was the best choice. As the most mature e-commerce platform on the market, Tmall has a rich variety of tools and a proven growth system to guide brands in doing business. Even merchants starting from scratch can follow the platform’s path and slowly find the business rhythm that suits them, pushing their brands to the next stage of growth.

In Jon's view, the digital consumer insights provided by Tmall have played an important role in the growth of "Snowline".

Snow suits are functional clothing, so functionality is very important, but unique aesthetics and visual communication are opportunities for the industry.

At that time, the snow suits on the market basically did not have much sense of design. Products with a sense of design were initially considered "niche". However, through Tmall, "Snow Line" found its own consumer group and gradually broke through the circle. "We began to collect consumer feedback and improve our products based on it. After this link was established, we watched the data on Tmall continue to grow, and slowly found the direction."

"This is actually a very complete path." Wang Xiaojing, general manager of the Digital Center Division of Guxing E-commerce, believes that the influx of new brands into Tmall is not surprising. "In the past few years, Tmall has actually completely shaped a consumer-oriented business logic for brands." She explained that on the one hand, Tmall has perfect tools to help brands find and understand consumers; on the other hand, based on the characteristics of consumers, brands can quickly gain insight into new consumption trends and improve new categories/goods at the supply level; and after enriching the "goods", Tmall's operation and delivery tools can help brands to open up the entire domain and strengthen brand awareness.

Especially for new brands, this business approach, which is based on consumer insights and then scientifically adjusts the product matrix and optimizes operational methods, is actually the most economical way to save the brand's initial investment and subsequent marketing resources.

3. Opportunities: Platform collaboration and industrial development, Tmall boosts experience upgrade

"Building a brand is not a hasty start. It actually takes a certain amount of time to accumulate and requires the brand to make medium- and long-term investments before it can achieve medium- and long-term, stable growth." Wang Xiaojing noticed that in the past two years, with the rapid growth of the sports and outdoor industry, Tmall has actually taken on this emerging consumer trend.

Take flying discs as an example. In the past year, there may have been more than 100 flying disc brands settled in Tmall. In the land rush field, some foreign niche brands, such as Carver, have also settled in Tmall. We will find that the platform has attracted many brands that can meet consumer needs. In this process, many mature brands will work hard to expand their product lines, because when they find that core consumers have this demand, they will definitely develop new products within their capabilities. "

In other words, for the emerging outdoor sports, Tmall has actually created a prosperous "ecosystem" suitable for its development. Moreover, this "ecosystem" is not only for merchants, but also for consumers and users, accompanied by the improvement of user experience.

Why is the user experience of Frisbee important? Many subdivided sports and outdoor categories have attracted many new customers, such as skiing, land skiing, and river tracing. However, as a first-time skier, land skiing, and river tracing experiencer, when I don’t know much about the category, a hidden demand is actually to hope that when making a guide, the language of the platform, the language of the brand, and the language of the consumer are consistent. In this regard, Gudi also said in the live broadcast that Tmall has actually broken down the user experience into subdivided categories.

"We believe that when users enter a circle, they not only need to choose products, but we also need to provide some guidance to merchants, brands and consumers."

In March this year, Taobao Tmall Sports & Outdoors and Tmall jointly released the first "new-chasing" list "TS100". Among the massive number of brands and new products, Tmall showed consumers the new product trends and brand merchants that have exploded in the past year based on brand sales power (business volume, business growth rate), pioneering innovation (pioneering population proportion, search popularity, live broadcast innovation), and circle influence (circle penetration rate, number of active members, functional technology).

A month later, Taobao Tmall Sports & Outdoors cooperated with ISPO, a global multi-category sports goods platform, to jointly create the "Standard Hexagon for Sun Protection Clothing", summarizing the important considerations for purchasing sun protection clothing from six dimensions: sun protection, breathability, coolness, quick drying, washability and lightness. It aims to reduce information asymmetry, standardize the sun protection consumer market and help consumers choose the right products.

Standardized industry standards and scientific new product lists can not only help consumers truly enter the industry and fall in love with outdoor sports, but also help high-quality merchants and high-quality products stand out, expand the scale of the industry, and form a healthy business model.

What other support will the platform provide for those who are now entering the sports and outdoor industry? From this live broadcast, E-commerce Online also learned that from July 14 to the end of September 2023, merchants who successfully enter the Tmall Blue Star Program will be provided with an operating incentive of up to 50,000 yuan, which can be used to offset the store commission for 3 months; at the same time, the platform will provide new merchants with 1-on-1 exclusive services from entry to operation; after the new store is opened, merchants can also obtain exclusive traffic support such as search and short videos from the platform.

Author: Wang Yaqi WeChat public account: E-commerce Online