On January 24th, the first flagship store of LNG (full name LNGenetic) of Li Ning Company officially settled in Raffles City Chongqing. Li Ning himself, and the person in charge of the LNG brand, extraordinary Sports CEO Li Qi lin, attended the opening ceremony of the store.
Li Ning is a famous gymnast in China. He founded the company under his own name in 1989 to design, manufacture and sell sportswear and shoes. At the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, as the last torchbearer, he flew from the flat ground to the air to light the main torch.
Since 2016, significant changes have taken place in the consumption habits of Chinese consumers. Instead of worshipping overseas brands, they began to chase local Chinese brands known as “New domestic products” (新国货). Li Ning also benefited from this change.
The company first launched the “China Li Ning” sub-brand in 2017 in an attempt to refresh its own brand. Although only the word “China” was added to Li Ning’s Logo, the strategy was very successful.
In 2018, the total sales of “China Li Ning” clothing series exceeded 5.5 million pieces, shoes series sold more than 50, 000 pieces, and the sales rate of new products all exceeded 70%. Led by the “China Li Ning” series, the retail flow of Li Ning’s sports and fashion categories rose 42% in 2018 compared with the same period last year, leading all Li Ning’s categories.
Now, the company has decided to go a step further and launch a completely independent trendsetter brand, LNG.
The predecessor of LNG can be traced back to the high-end fashion sports series launched by Li Ning in January 2010, but the series did not receive much attention because the consumption power of the Chinese market was still not high at that time.
Instead, Li Ning changed its name to LNG Esports after acquiring Snake e-sports Club (the full name is Lining Gaming ESports).
The opening of the store announced the return of the LNG brand from e-sports to the field of mass consumer goods. But in fact, although the abbreviations are the full names of LNG,LNG e-sports club and LNG trendy clothing are different.
According to Li Ning’s official introduction, the brand will use e-sports and game elements to attract young Chinese consumers.
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