Sports brands are in decline, but "outdoor" is thriving
A Hangzhou outdoor gear store has stockpiled tens of thousands of items for this surge. At an outdoor gear shop on Hangzhou’s Wulin Road, boxes are piled up like a small mountain. Store clerk Xiao Chen said that to prepare for the Qingming and May Day holidays, the boss has stocked up heavily—with just T-shirts alone exceeding tens of thousands of items. Tens of thousands of items—afraid they won’t sell? "No worries, the outdoor gear business is doing great," Xiao Chen said.
Not only are specialty outdoor stores in Hangzhou changing, but all department stores’ sports sections are also quietly evolving. Once-dominant sports brands are gradually declining, with the market dominated by Nike and Adidas, yet outdoor brands are thriving. Brands like Columbia have seen growth of over 150%, becoming a new growth point in sports retail.
"If our assessment is correct, outdoor brands are drawing an 'S' curve," industry insiders analyze. It took outdoor brands 10 years to go from 0% to 10% market share, and in 2007, they finally entered the fast lane. Over the next 10 years, outdoor brands will reach 90% market share. This means that in 10 years, 90% of people will own at least one outdoor jacket or a pair of hiking boots.
Outdoor gear sales explode as shops stock up for the peak season
Around the Qingming Festival is a great time for spring outings and also when outdoor gear stores scramble to stock up.
"To grab this sales wave, we started sourcing goods eight months early to fight for market share," said the head of Jiahe Outdoor. By the end of March, the store will have fully stocked new arrivals, with quantities ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands per product category.
Take Hangzhou Jiahe Outdoor Products Co., Ltd. as an example—they imported over 10,000 short-sleeve T-shirts this year alone, with other items also coming in batches of several thousand or tens of thousands. In addition to hiking shoes and outdoor apparel, the store now offers climbing and rafting gear, ranging from large items like camping tents and air mattresses to small ones like breathable cotton socks, high-efficiency charcoal, waterproof gas stoves, and non-slip gloves. Hangzhou Fengxue Outdoor, known for selling clothing and shoes, recently stocked 3,000–4,000 pairs of shoes alone to prepare for the upcoming peak season.
"Many customers are outdoor professionals—for example, they’ll ask how many times a climbing rope can be reused or what the fall factor is when carrying an 80kg load," said store staff. Nowadays, customers don’t just look for waterproof, warm, or breathable features in outdoor gear; professional survival equipment is also gaining attention.
According to Li Jun of Fengxue Outdoor, their 2011 sales grew by 50% year-on-year, while Jiahe predicts over 30% growth this year, with the entire outdoor industry also expanding by about 30% annually.
Sports are the "declining nobility," while outdoor is "thriving"
As outdoor gear stores thrive, even department store sports sections are subtly changing: the sports market is highly concentrated among brands like Nike, Adidas, and Li-Ning, while the number of outdoor brands is steadily increasing with strong momentum.
In major Hangzhou malls, aside from Li-Ning, familiar domestic sports brands like Reebok and Xtep have disappeared. Among international brands, only Nike and Adidas remain strong, while Mizuno and Umbro have vanished. In contrast, outdoor brands are thriving—foreign outdoor brands like Columbia and The North Face now occupy half of the sports and leisure sections in Hangzhou’s major malls.
"Last year, outdoor brands generated over 10 million yuan in total revenue, with top performer Columbia seeing over 150% year-on-year growth, while Nike experienced negative growth, with sales at only 90% of last year’s level," said a sports mall manager. Many brands are entering the outdoor sector—for instance, Playboy registered the "Camel" brand, focusing on casual wear, hiking shoes, and other outdoor gear, while Porter expanded its clothing lines with a "general outdoor" approach, adding outdoor sport series.
What does the outdoor brands’ "S" curve mean?
What is an "S curve"? In English, it’s called an S-Curve—a graph showing cumulative costs, man-hours, or other values over corresponding time points. The name comes from the curve’s shape resembling the letter S (gentle at the start and end, steep in the middle), resulting from slow beginnings, accelerated mid-phases, and gentle conclusions.
Japanese market research experts once proposed a concept about "brand growth" called the "S curve."
The time it takes for a brand to grow from 0% to 10% is roughly the same as from 10% to 90%. It took outdoor brands over a decade to establish themselves in the domestic market, and around 2007, they began explosive growth—meaning they’ve entered the second phase of the "S curve"—rapidly taking up 90% of consumers’ wardrobes.
"We predict that in the next 10 years, outdoor brands will capture 90% of the market, meaning 90% of consumers will own at least one item of outdoor clothing or a pair of shoes, just as sports brands once did," industry insiders analyze. Outdoor brands have long held a significant market share abroad, with more distinct product segmentation than in China—for example, specialized sleeping bag brand CAMP or hiking sock brand Bridgedale, which both have substantial customer bases overseas. The domestic outdoor market will also expand exponentially as urban consumers’ lifestyles evolve.