Champion's China Upgrade: Brand Expansion and Deep Cultivation

Key to brand upgrading is to transform brand narratives into market popularity and user resonance. In September 2025, leading Chinese fashion footwear and apparel company Belle Fashion Group, together with Tmall Super Brand Day, launched the grand opening of "Starlight District". Its sub-brand Champion quickly gained popularity with its iconic hoodies and new winged shoe series, with several products selling out on debut, online sales increasing by 143%, brand search popularity growing by 150%, new customers increasing by 69%, and sparking wide discussions on social media. Simultaneously, the newly opened Champion flagship store in Chengdu, named Yingjia, attracted many young people with its immersive "landmark" space narrative. The store combines urban culture with super-sized hoodie walls, a century-old logo display area, and DIY workshops, enhancing the shopping experience and becoming a social gathering place. In recent years, Champion has accelerated its presence in the Chinese market, refurbishing stores in key cities like Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou, gradually building an experiential network that integrates classic genes with local culture. From the short-term explosion of Super Brand Day to the long-term deepening of channel layout, from comprehensive product upgrades to increased brand marketing investment, Champion is continuously expanding its brand capabilities with "trendy sports" as its anchor, pushing the boundaries. The strategy of "expansion + cultivation" not only reflects Belle Fashion Group's profound insights into the Chinese market but also provides an innovative paradigm for multi-brand group operations. Strategic positioning: Entering the blue ocean, creating a new engine for trendy sports The Chinese sports consumer market is undergoing structural changes. According to data from the General Administration of Sports of China, the number of sports participants in China exceeded 500 million in 2024. iiMedia Research forecasts that the Chinese athletic footwear and apparel market will reach 598.9 billion yuan by 2025. As the market expands, consumer needs continue to diversify, and the trend towards the daily and diverse use of sportswear becomes increasingly apparent. Today, consumers' demand for sportswear goes beyond functionality and comfort, focusing more on style expression and cultural identity. This shift has brought about strong growth potential in the niche market that combines sports with design. Leveraging its century-old brand heritage as the inventor of the hoodie and the origins of Ivy League campus style, Champion naturally possesses a dual attribute of sports and fashion, providing a unique advantage for entering this market. With this characteristic, Champion has become a key component of Belle Fashion Group's expansion into the sports and leisure field. 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 company with Authentic Brands Group, a global brand management giant, to comprehensively upgrade Champion's business in Greater China, expanding into multi-category products from footwear and accessories to clothing. This strategic move not only demonstrates the group's strong confidence in the growth potential of the trendy sports sector but also propels Champion into a new development stage - currently with over 300 physical stores nationwide, multiple official online stores, and a membership base exceeding 6 million across all channels. Recently, Super Brand Day has become a microcosm of brand upgrading. With the theme of "Classic Freedom Created by Me," Champion announced that young actor Ding Yuxi has become the brand ambassador for Greater China, aligning his retro yet contemporary image effectively with the brand, connecting with younger consumer groups. During the event, landmark advertisements were launched nationwide simultaneously, sparking fan check-ins and topic discussions. The hashtag #Ding Yuxi treat ads as magazines# topped Weibo's hot search list and the official announcement day topped the Weibo Star Product list. Sales surged on the online flagship store, with the champion hoodies and champion racing shoes becoming the top-selling products in the hoodies and men's shoes categories on Tmall, leading to a wave of fans sharing photos with the same products. One consumer said, "I bought the same product as my idol, and also because the product design is really attractive." This achievement not only highlights the brand's market appeal but also validates Belle Fashion's precise control over the trendy sports sector. Three-dimensional deep cultivation: a differentiated combination of products, spaces, and minds After successfully positioning itself in a new market, Champion faces the core challenge of building sustained competitive advantages. The brand, centered on trendy culture, operates deeply through products, spaces, and minds, implementing a differentiated combination strategy. Champion understands the value of brand assets and achieves product innovation through a dual-track strategy of "classic recreation" and "classic creation." In the "classic recreation" aspect, the brand deeply redefines iconic hoodie categories, such as launching the HYPEBEAST 20th Anniversary limited-edition hoodie, reinterpreting classic styles with modern design language. In terms of "classic creation," the brand's recent new winged shoe series combines retro sports aesthetics with the demands of a new generation of users, retaining American retro elements while considering Asian consumers' body shapes and aesthetic preferences. This product strategy not only solidifies the core category's strengths but also creatively combines the international brand's century-old heritage with the local market demands in China, driving the sales proportion of the footwear category to continuously increase, becoming the brand's second growth curve. Physical stores are considered the core space for brand experience. Champion's store renewal goes beyond enhancing sales to convey brand attitudes and deepen user connections. The recently renovated flagship store in Chengdu, Yingjia, combines street style with retro collegiate elements, creating an immersive "brand archive" and transforming the retail space into a trendy cultural landmark. The store features a custom hoodie area where consumers can create personalized items, enhancing interactive experiences and emotional resonance. This offline renewal resonates with the online Super Brand Day, achieving a closed-loop flow of traffic. Champion accelerates brand awareness through celebrity strategies, announcing young actor Ding Yuxi as the brand ambassador for Greater China, a crucial move to reach the young consumer group. Through various methods like nationwide landmark ads, the brand quickly spreads its message, achieving a key leap from niche to mainstream recognition. This multi-layered, three-dimensional communication strategy not only enhances brand awareness but also deepens consumer emotional identification. Wang Xiaoyi, a professor and digital marketing expert at Zhejiang University School of Management, states, "Excellent brands are moving from seeking to be 'liked' to being 'acknowledged.' To continuously win in the market, brands must go beyond the product itself 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 challenges of adapting to local conditions. Champion's quick establishment in China is made possible by Belle Fashion Group's robust platform empowerment. Taking Super Brand Day as an example, Belle Fashion Group utilized resource synergy across multiple brands: unified theme planning, concentrated resource allocation, and differentiated brand interpretation, achieving efficient conversion from brand awareness to sales volume. Behind this is the support of platform capabilities like supply chain and channel management, ensuring rapid and precise responses in product and service, aligning with the rhythms of the Chinese market. In the process of localization, Champion has implemented measures like signing brand ambassadors, upgrading products, and creating urban flagship stores, achieving a deep fusion of international genes with the Chinese market. This is not simply adaptation, but a creative integration - maintaining brand essence while injecting Chinese cultural elements, upgrading brand localization operations. Belle Fashion Group, with deep consumer insights, a full-channel customer operation consisting of over 8,000 direct-operated stores and online stores, swift and precise full-value chain from product planning to retail terminal driven by digital intelligence, provides solid support for brand development. As the "expanding tracks + differentiation" strategy continues to deepen, its brand portfolio continually strengthens core advantages in their respective niche fields. Champion's renewal journey is not just an upgrade for a single brand but also a successful example of expanding the capacity boundaries of a footwear and apparel group. Through Champion, Belle Fashion Group has expanded into the new "trendy sports" track, opening up a completely new growth path through differentiated positioning and refined operations, providing a comprehensive set of methodologies from strategic positioning to on-the-ground operations for the industry to learn from.