Swedish outdoor brand Peak Performance is accelerating its expansion in the Chinese market. It opened stores at Rui Ou Department Store on Nanjing West Road in Shanghai and Luohu MixC in Shenzhen in 2023, and recently moved to Chaoyang Joy City in Beijing and Zhongxing Building in Shenyang.
In 2022, Peak Performance opened a pop-up store in Taikoo Village, Sanlitun, Beijing. This is the first time it has entered the Chinese market as a direct sales channel for offline sales. Previously, Peak Performance had already been sold in China through distributors such as Sanfu Outdoor, and during the snow season, like other outdoor brands, it also entered collection stores in ski resorts in Chongli and other places.
This pace can already be considered fast.
In April 2022, Peak Performance officially announced that it will open direct stores in the Chinese market - a sign that a brand values a certain market and decides to increase investment. And its parent company, Yamafin Sports, was acquired by Anta Group in 2019.
Prior to this, Peak Performance first conducted a trial by opening an official Tmall flagship store. In English, Peak Performance means "top-level performance", while also referring to product quality and the wearer's athletic performance. In order to adapt to the Chinese market, it shortened this long string of letters to "Bike Peak", but a more concise name is "PP".
Belonging to the Yamafin Group, Peak Performance cannot avoid comparison with Archaeopteryx. They all focus on the outdoor field, emphasize skiing genes, and share a high-end positioning. Both sides are eyeing the booming Chinese skiing market, while also trying to grab a share in the trend field.
The difference is that the Archaeopteryx was already sold in China through multiple agents in the early 2000s, while Peak Performance remains niche to this day. Under the operation of ANTA Group, Archaeopteryx has become a high-end representative in the new wave of sports brand upgrading in China, and its experience has been applied to the development of more brands under ANTA Group.
But from skiing to high-end sports brands, these two currently hot fields in China are far from reaching the upper limit of development.
The 2023 Ski Industry White Paper shows that from 2014 to the 2022 snow season fiscal year, the number of skiers in China increased by 65.9%, and online consumption of skiing equipment has reached nearly 1.5 billion yuan. In the field of high-end sports brands, in the first nine months of 2023, Archaeopteryx's revenue in Greater China increased by 61.8% year-on-year.
For ANTA Group, having more of its own brands involved in the emerging high-end sports market is also one of the ways to elevate the overall image. From the perspective of practical measures, Peak Performance's recent operational approach also bears traces of borrowing from Archaeopteryx. But the other side of reality is that in a relatively small market as a whole, two brands with similar positioning will also bring the risk of diverting performance.
So there were differences in details. The most obvious feeling for consumers is the price.
Wu Xiangyu, the brand leader of Peak Performance, previously stated in an interview with sports commercial media "Lazy Bear Sports" that the overall pricing of the brand in the Chinese market will be slightly lower than that of Archaeopterbird. Archaeopteryx has many items priced close to 10000 yuan in its official Tmall flagship store, and the higher priced products in the Peak Performance WeChat official mini program are mostly around 6000 yuan.
On this basis, Peak Performance places greater emphasis on fashion attributes. From online social media promotion to offline barriers and product styles, one can often see a richer and more diverse range of colors. Its official claim is that this is a reflection of the Nordic style. Furthermore, the more fashionable design corresponds to lighter outdoor activities such as stream hiking.
It can be seen that in the past few years, whenever Archaeopteryx tried to make more attempts in the field of fashion, it was difficult to avoid being criticized by professional sports product consumers, who claimed that it sacrificed the brand's professional technical attributes. And Peak Performance's choice to focus on this field is to some extent complementary to the development limitations of the Archaeopteryx.
However, these strategies may differentiate Peak Performance from Archaeopteryx within the Anta Group, but they also pose new challenges in the entire sports brand market. In this era of collective trend of sports brands, higher prices themselves are the factor that distinguishes brands.
Even if the positioning is slightly lowered, it will still make the brand face greater competition.
Especially in the fields of sports and functional styles, there are already highly renowned brands like The North Face. Even if the scope is narrowed down to the skiing field, Goldwin and Snow Peak from Japan can still take advantage of the influence of the Japanese trend, let alone they have already integrated into the trend culture in Japan.
At present, Peak Performance is still in the initial stage of development in the Chinese market, and from its store opening measures, it also intends to replicate the intention of Archaeopteryx to quickly seize the market. Its advantage lies in its clear image planning, but in an increasingly complex market, how to accurately outline its image will determine whether it can stand at the same level as the Archaeopteryx in the future.