“Because of the Winter Olympics, the order volume has increased significantly since 2021. We have been busy recently.” Recently, Ms. Zhou, the sales director of a ski facility company in Jining, Shandong, told the Securities Daily that in the past, the company’s customers were mainly concentrated in the north, and now customers from southern provinces such as Yunnan, Sichuan and Guangdong also came to purchase.
Senior skiers also told the Securities Daily that in recent years, there have been more and more skiers, and the age of skiers has a trend of becoming younger and younger.
“With the opening of the Winter Olympics, the enthusiasm of Chinese people for ice and snow sports has been boiling to the highest point,” Wang Ke, an analyst of Analysys tourism industry, told the Securities Daily. “A research activity we have done shows that skiing has become the top 5 of daily sports, and ice and snow sports are gradually moving towards the mass market.”
The heat of the Winter Olympics has driven the enthusiasm of “300 million people on ice and snow”. Can domestic ski facilities and ski equipment keep up with the pace of development? What is needed to achieve universal access?
can domestic ski equipment rise in the wind?
At present, the ice and snow sports industry includes personal ski equipment, ski resort infrastructure, ski resort operation, ski event operation, ski service app and other major links.
Xiao Liu, a senior ski enthusiast in Beijing, told the Securities Daily that in terms of ski equipment, it mainly includes ski clothes, snowboards, fixtures, snowshoes, helmets and snow glasses. The price of the whole set ranges from thousands to tens of thousands of yuan. At present, there are few special ski equipment brands in China. In addition to some sports brands, there will be sub categories of ski clothes and snowshoes, and a few snowboard, helmet and snow mirror brands are also positioned at the middle and low end. Europe, America and Japan have more brands and more complete categories in skiing equipment.
\u3000\u3000 “Many special ski brands in Europe and the United States basically have a full category layout, and there are all kinds of low, medium and high price stalls. I personally and the snow friends around me will basically buy snowboards, helmets, snow glasses and snowshoes of European and American brands through various channels, but the snow clothes are basically bought from the Internet, because the price is cheap, and the experience is different unless extreme conditions Not much. ” Xiao Liu said that at present, more domestic ski equipment occupy a certain market with cost performance. However, for equipment such as snowboards and helmets, European and American brands may have more advantages in design and quality. However, for most junior players, they can’t experience much difference.
“In the past, Chinese ice and snow sports enthusiasts would choose to go to North America and Europe for ice and snow sports. High end ski equipment also depended on imports, mainly foreign brands.” Zhang Yi, CEO of AI media consulting, told the Securities Daily that due to the constraints of objective climate conditions, the development of China’s ice and snow industry is congenitally deficient and started late. At present, it is still in the primary stage of development. Take the field of ski clothing as an example. In the high-end or medium and high-end market, there is still a certain gap between domestic brands and foreign brands. The traditional advantages of ski equipment enterprises in European and American markets are still obvious, and the brand awareness is relatively high.
“China’s outdoor (industry) started relatively late, especially the hot ice and snow industry. To tell the truth, it started later.” the reporter of Securities Daily called the ice and snow industry concept stock Beijing Sanfo Outdoor Products Co.Ltd(002780) as an investor. Relevant people said that the company’s overall planning for the acquisition of some ski resorts and brands was relatively early. Beijing Sanfo Outdoor Products Co.Ltd(002780) began to contact some ski brands from 2018 to 2019, including preparing to acquire x-bionic brand, completing the acquisition procedures from September to October 2021, and starting independent research and development after the acquisition, producing Chinese and foreign ski clothing, and achieving considerable sales performance.
“Because the company owns the independent property rights of x-bionic in China, the gross profit is much higher than the full agency model.”
The person admitted that “previously, the company only represented the brand, mainly focusing on personal ski clothes, but after the acquisition, the company owned the ownership of the brand in China and began to independently develop Chinese and foreign ski clothes. At present, the company has opened 6 ski shops in ski resorts such as Chongli”.
According to the source, at present, ski equipment is mainly developed by companies in professional segments; However, in terms of ski clothing, domestic ski clothing is mainly several major outdoor sports brands in China, and ski clothing equipment and other businesses are expanded on the subdivision of the original sports brands, such as Anta, Li Ning and so on.
“In fact, there are a large number of these well-known brands abroad, and many of their production and manufacturing are carried out in China.” Zhang Yi said, “the ski equipment and a large number of maintenance equipment used by some athletes in this winter Olympic Games have been localized, which also means that China can fully meet the localization of ski equipment.”
capital inflows into trillion yuan ice and snow track
“Cold resources” have become “hot economy”, and the popularity of ice and snow sports has also driven the rise of the trillion yuan ice and snow industry. According to the development plan of ice and snow sports (2016-2025) formulated by the State Administration of sports, the total scale of China’s ice and snow industry will reach 1 trillion yuan by 2025. The Research Report on the development of China’s ice and snow industry shows that in 2020, the total scale of China’s ice and snow industry has reached 600 billion yuan.
The huge market scale is also accelerating the influx of capital. According to incomplete statistics, since January 2021, ski start-ups such as Aoxue culture, snow51, extreme Road, skiing and goski have received tens of millions of yuan of financing, involving a total amount of 340 million yuan.
In addition to investment institutions, a number of listed companies have already actively laid out the ice and snow industry in the A-share market. According to the data, as of February 9, there were 15 ice and snow industry concept stocks, including different types of listed companies such as Fujian Snowman Co.Ltd(002639) , Org Technology Co.Ltd(002701) , Toread Holdings Group Co.Ltd(300005) , Shanghai Yuyuan Tourist Mart (Group) Co.Ltd(600655) , China Sports Industry Group Co.Ltd(600158) .
Previously, Fujian Snowman Co.Ltd(002639) said on the investor interaction platform that the ice and snow business is one of the business areas that the company focuses on expanding. The company has participated in the construction of a number of ice and snow projects in recent years. The company will take the opportunity of the development of ice and snow sports in China to further develop the ice and snow equipment business.
Org Technology Co.Ltd(002701) said that the company is deeply engaged in the ice and snow industry, and its subsidiary has high-standard ice hockey venues and is engaged in all-round ice cooperation; In addition, the company also exclusively operated the war horse cup national college hockey league, carried out cooperative business with many foreign hockey leagues, and carried out hockey youth training.
In addition, the education and training industry is also actively embracing the ice and snow industry. In the first half of 2021, Wanyu Fangfei, an educational institution whose main business is ice sports training and aesthetic education, obtained round a financing from New Oriental. Spark 4D also reached strategic cooperation with China ice and snow conference at the end of 2021.
According to tianyancha data, ice and snow sports related enterprises grew rapidly after successfully bidding for the Winter Olympics in 2015. From 2015 to 2021, the average growth rate of newly registered enterprises in the seven years reached 24.3%, especially the year-on-year increase of 38.3% in 2021. By the end of 2021, there are currently more than 8500 enterprises engaged in ice and snow sports in China, among which Shandong, Hebei and Guangdong rank in the top three, and Shandong ranks first with more than 1000 enterprises.
“The Winter Olympics has formed a catalyst for ice and snow sports and promoted the vigorous development of China’s ice and snow sports.” according to Zhang Yi, “the national enthusiasm for ice and snow sports will not fall after the Winter Olympics.”
However, in the opinion of Xiao Liu, a senior skiing enthusiast mentioned above, although China’s skiing enthusiasm is rising rapidly, the development of the whole skiing industry is still in a relatively primary and chaotic stage. On the one hand, skiing has not been standardized in terms of rules like basketball and football, and many ski resorts are not standardized in terms of safety and coach allocation, Ski training has not been established; On the other hand, skiing is still relatively expensive. For example, the price of two-day snow tickets in the hot Chongli ski resort is about 1000 yuan, while the cost of skiing in southern provinces is more expensive. Only when the overall cost of skiing is reduced can it be truly popularized.
