Chinese running shoes are coming!

If the Chinese already master the new technologies for electronics, what would stop them from doing the same with super-top sneakers since they manufacture the vast majority of them?

Li-ning Feidian 3 Elite, Chinese super tennis. The brand had revenues of US$ 3.6 billion in 2022

About three or four years ago I watched a BBC report on the change in the electronic equipment landscape in China, mainly in Shenzhen, a city considered the Chinese Silicon Valley, due to the presence of small electronics and software manufacturers at the large technology companies such as DJI, Huawei, Tencent and others.

At the time, the reporter said that a big change was happening there. In the past, Western companies developed a new technology, showed it to the Chinese and they manufactured products with the new technology. The change he was referring to is that at that moment, when the report was made, it was the Chinese who were presenting new technologies to Western companies and these were asking them to include them in their new products, that is, they were the ones who were dictating the new trends and standards to be adopted by the industry.

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It’s already known that the vast majority of electronics we use have something Chinese in them – either it was manufactured there or it has Chinese components. Gone are those days of “Xing ling”. In fact, “Xing ling”, or poor quality electronics still exist, of course, but China has been giving the West a leg up in terms of electronics quality. My Insta 360 cameras, which are dethroning GoPro, are Chinese. My drone is Chinese, and from the best drone brand on the market, DJI.

Will we see Chinese sneakers threatening western athletic shoe brands as well?

All high performance shoes, or super shoes, are made in China. So of course, logically, we can’t be surprised if Chinese brands start to show their claws in competitions previously dominated by Nike, Adidas and Asics.

But the thing is, this has already started to happen. At the Seville Marathon, in February, the third place used a prototype of the li-ning, China’s biggest sports brand. Third place wore a Xtep 160X 3.0brand that I have already used and I was absolutely surprised by the quality (look here).

In April, at the Paris Marathon, the winner wore an Xtep 160x 2.0, the same model= used by the third-placed male.

At the Copenhagen Marathon, which took place last week, the top three men in the men’s race were using the Feidian 3 Ultra, by Li-Ning. The winner also wore a Li-Ning, the Feidian 2.0 Elite.

Nor can we forget the embroglio that happened with Kelvin Kiptumwho had made a deal with Qiaodan, to be the brand’s poster boy and would run the London marathon (which he won) with the Feiying PB 3.0but had to race with Vaporfly for having a pre-contract with the American brand.

The Chinese have technology and money, too, as Li-Ning ended 2022 with revenues of US$ 3.6 billion and Xtep with US$ 1.8 billion. It’s not like the revenue of the big world brands like Adidas, which earned 22 billion euros or Nike, the leader, with US$ 46 billion in revenue last year, but it’s a substantial amount if you take into account what we’re talking about of companies that sell the vast majority of their products only in the Chinese market.

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The issue of seeing Chinese branded sneakers on the feet of Africans in competitions around the world can have two meanings: The first would be validation of the quality of the sneakers with the Chinese consumer market itself, which would see this positioning as an attestation that brands national brands would be as good as the brands that dominate the international market.

The second, however, could be seen as the beginning of a movement to leave the “little house” of brands out of China. Of course, this would also mean that they would need partners for the distribution and sale of the models around the world and we know that this is not very simple or cheap. But, as we already mentioned, Li-Ning has revenues of US$ 3.6 billion and that only includes the Chinese market. Imagine where they could get if they conquer other markets in the coming years?

For now it is only possible to buy these sneakers through aliexpressbut given what we’ve seen out there, it’s good to stay tuned to see the scenes of the next chapters to see if the Chinese sneakers are really coming around.