Kelong and Descente join hands with the national team: How will ANTA's "new Olympic card" be played?

ANTA seems to be systematically shifting its scarce top sports resources within the system towards a multi-brand matrix.

Recently, ANTA officially announced that the Kelong brand has become a partner of the national climbing team.

Earlier, in August of this year, Descente also took over the sponsorship rights of the Chinese triathlon national team, replacing the original partner 361°.

The aforementioned sponsorship marks the first collaboration between the national climbing team and Kelong, and it is also the brand's first foray into national-level sports resources in the Chinese market.

For Descente, following two sponsorships related to skiing projects in 2023, this collaboration signifies its official entry into the triathlon, a professional field that highly matches its brand DNA.

This series of actions indicates that after solidifying the channel capabilities of its sub-brands, ANTA is using sports sponsorship as a strategic lever to inject professional momentum and brand recognition.

Whether it can leverage this round of resource integration to build a differentiated narrative in the professional sports field may affect the growth space and market positioning of this batch of "second-tier" brands within ANTA.

Grasping the Olympic Card

Olympic marketing and national team sponsorship are core strategies that ANTA has skillfully utilized and successfully validated.

Since partnering with the Chinese Olympic Committee in 2009, ANTA has continuously served the London, Rio, Tokyo, and Beijing Olympic Games, especially during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, where its influence peaked as the host brand.

By providing professional sports equipment for the Chinese sports delegation, ANTA has successfully built a user perception of "professional and reliable" at the main brand level, deeply binding national honor with brand image.

Over the 16-year sponsorship period, ANTA's annual revenue scale has grown from less than 6 billion yuan to over 70 billion yuan.

However, the external environment has changed.

At the beginning of 2025, Li Ning officially replaced ANTA as the top partner for sports apparel in the new cycle of the Chinese Olympic Committee.

Although ANTA still retains its global identity as the "official apparel supplier of the International Olympic Committee," continuing to acquire and deepen national team resources in the domestic arena remains crucial for maintaining the brand influence and professional image accumulated through Olympic marketing over the years.

Since the beginning of this year, ANTA has renewed contracts with traditional advantage projects such as gymnastics, trampoline, and rhythmic gymnastics, while intensively signing contracts with national teams in archery, 3x3 basketball, swimming, and intercontinental cycling teams.

At the group level, ANTA has for the first time entered more vertical professional fields such as the national climbing team and triathlon team through sub-brands like Kelong and Descente, leveraging the multi-brand matrix to develop niche and specialized tracks.

Compared to the sponsorship rights of the Chinese Olympic Committee, national team resources may be slightly inferior in overall volume, but their advantage lies in being able to span year-round events during non-Olympic cycles, providing the brand with a continuous supply of professional narrative material.

Whether in climbing or triathlon, both sports are entering a rapidly rising attention phase as the national teams achieve breakthroughs in international events, showing a clear trend towards popularization.

Since climbing was included in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in 2016, the process of popularization has significantly accelerated.

Subsequently, it was also included in the National Games and further "broke the circle" with the hosting of the Hangzhou Asian Games From the perspective of infrastructure development, as of January 2025, the number of commercial climbing gyms in mainland China has increased to 811, achieving a year-on-year growth of 27.5%.

At the Paris Olympics, Lin Xinyu won 28th place in the women's triathlon individual event, setting the best Olympic record for Chinese athletes in this event.

The national team's outstanding performance has not only sparked public interest but also gradually pushed these two sports, which combine professionalism and spectator appeal, from the professional realm into the public eye.

An industry insider who has long observed sports brands pointed out to Xinfeng that the core value of sponsorship does not solely depend on the level of the event or frequency of exposure, but rather on whether the brand can achieve long-term alignment with the trends, demographics, and spirit of the sport.

"In high-growth sectors like climbing and triathlon, sub-brands with clear demographic positioning, such as Kelowna and Descente, are more strategically adaptable than the main brands," the insider added.

In their view, the projects that Kelowna and Descente are involved in generally have high professional thresholds and elite images, connecting with high-net-worth sports consumers while forming a good strategic complement with the main Anta brand.

Creating New Pivot Points

From the perspective of Kelowna and Descente themselves, both need to quickly open up new avenues for the next stage of development.

In the first half of the year, the revenue of "all other brands" represented by Kelowna and Descente grew by 53.7% year-on-year to 10.678 billion yuan.

Among them, Kelowna is the fastest-growing brand, with a growth rate close to 80%.

Against the backdrop of pressure on the main brand's growth rate, Kelowna and Descente are highly anticipated by the group to reach a scale of 10 billion.

The development path they have followed in the past, "one bird, two trees, three roads," may be difficult to support this goal.

Taking Kelowna, known as the "little ancestor bird," as an example: the brand initially focused on mountaineering and camping equipment when entering the Chinese market, but its rapid rise in visibility was mainly due to fashionable marketing methods such as cross-border collaborations.

In Anta's multi-brand matrix, Kelowna's positioning lies between professionalism and trendiness: it is more functional than Fila, yet more urban and fashionable than Descente, which is also an outdoor brand.

Some consumers even see it as a "replacement for the ancestor bird," valuing its cost-performance advantage of "more choices at the same price point and lower prices for the same functionality."

While these traits help Kelowna quickly establish differentiated recognition in the fiercely competitive mid-to-high-end outdoor market, they also bring potential challenges—

Over-reliance on cultural narratives and trendy tactics can easily be influenced by market aesthetic cycles and may continue to dilute its technical accumulation and brand perception in the professional sports field.

In the current context of outdoor brands accelerating their entry into China and market competition becoming increasingly fierce, returning to the professional sports field and constructing new differentiated narratives has become an inevitable strategic choice.

Descente positions itself as a professional sports brand in the fields of high-end comprehensive training, skiing, and triathlon.

For a long time, skiing products have always been its core category—the brand name "Descente" comes from French, meaning "ski descent," carrying a deep skiing gene As a composite sport consisting of swimming, cycling, and running, triathlon has generated diverse demands for a full range of professional equipment, including swimsuits, cycling helmets, and thermal wetsuits. This type of sport not only has a complex equipment system but also generally features a high average transaction value, presenting considerable commercial potential.

The "running-cycling" composite scenario derived from triathlon aligns closely with Descente's focus on its running shoe product line.

In April, Descente launched the DELTA PRO EXP V2 running shoes, emphasizing their design specifically for triathlons and marathons. The "T2" mark on the shoe comes from the "second transition area" in the competition, indicating the phase when athletes switch from cycling to running, further reinforcing the product's association with professional events.

However, industry consultants have pointed out to Xinfeng Analysis that for companies that heavily rely on brand symbolic value, their fundamental growth logic will not change due to localized adjustments in marketing or product strategy.

For KOLON and Descente, continuously enhancing brand awareness and expanding retail formats based on that remains the main path to drive growth.

At this year's mid-term performance report, ANTA's Executive Director and Co-CEO Lai Shixian introduced that KOLON has performed outstandingly in Northeast and Northern regions in the past, and has also made breakthroughs in areas outside the Northeast this year.

In June, KOLON's first KOLON KRAFT flagship store officially opened in Chengdu Taikoo Li, with new stores in cities like Urumqi, Chongqing, and Jinan also entering the preparation stage.

Huaxing Securities analyst Jiang Xuefeng observed that with the rich SKU of spring and summer products, Descente is gradually penetrating the southern market from its core area in the Northeast.

On this basis, Descente has also opened stores in ski resorts, golf courses, and children's stores, achieving segmentation of categories and demographics.

Regional penetration, category expansion, and binding with professional events ultimately serve a larger goal: to build a brand narrative that can be continuously told and firmly believed.

The above may determine how high KOLON and Descente can ultimately grow within the ANTA system