John Emont

A lot of the brands that have had success in China recently have been good at sort of pinpointing specific niches.

And so, you know, if you wear Lululemon leggings, that might mean that you love yoga.

So brands that are, you know, very targeted at specific sports have often done better recently than sort of the Omnibrands.

like Nike.

Yeah, it's definitely gotten a lot harder to succeed in China.

And a lot of American companies for many years were growing very quickly in China because China's economy was growing very fast.

And also because Chinese domestic brands weren't as competitive.

But that has all flipped.

It's just tough.

And these are companies that know their market very well.

They know how Chinese consumers expect products to come out quickly.

They expect products to come out loaded with features.

They know how to meet the Chinese consumer where they are.

So

it's just gotten tougher.

There's no question.

Some brands are managing to succeed, to be clear, but it has definitely gotten tougher.

Yeah, it does.

One way to think of this is that one thing that was keeping the United States and China sort of diplomatically close for many years was this optimism among American companies that they could earn a lot of money in China so that even though there were always going to be issues with China from IP infringement, all sorts of problems, that

China was worth keeping close.