Source: China Daily

12-05-2008 18:53

By Li Fangfang (China Daily)

For young Chinese urbanites, owning several pairs of sports shoes is natural.

Sports apparel is an indispensable part of their fashion sense. And they can hardly imagine that when their parents were young in the 1970s the ultimate sports dream was perhaps just a pair of ping-pong paddles.

Sports shoes and colorful sweat suits were far beyond their parents' expectations at a time when wearing a pair of army green Jiefang (liberation) brand shoes was enough make the wearer stand out from his or her "comrades".

Until the 1980s, when living became easier, sports slowly became a part of people's daily lives.

However, sports shoes had only one style - white canvas sneakers with yellow rubber soles. People still recall the using white chalk to "paint" the shoes after washing - a cheap, simple way to keep their shoes from turning yellow due to the low quality laundry soaps.

Although China's sports products industry has a short history, it has developed at an amazing speed. Today, sports products aren't luxuries for many and it's difficult to spot identical shoes being worn on the streets. According to statistics from World Federation of Sporting Goods Industry, China now accounts for more than 65 percent of sports goods production in the world.

Nearly all the international sports brands have entered China to further mine the market potential. They are not only the creators but also the beneficiaries from China's speedy development.

For the German sports conglomerate adidas, China has become the most important market and is expected to be its second-largest revenue market after the US by the end of this year.

"The adidas Group has been active in the China market for over two decades, and in that time we have borne witness to the remarkable changes that have transformed the country, changes that the adidas Group too has directly experienced and is honored to have been a part of," says Wolfgang Bentheimer, managing director of adidas China.