Ryan Knudson

Aventa said, you know, our goal is not to be the Nike of China.

Our goal is to be the Anta of the world.

So China's retail market, especially in the past few years, has just gotten hyper-competitive.

So the Chinese shopper is very online.

They're really looking for deals.

It's a bit like the shopping network stuff that we sort of grew up with.

It's somebody holding up a shoe often, talking about how the shoe's really good, how you could wear it, what it's good for, how the price is right, you know, stuff like that.

It was hard for Nike executives to know how much they should embrace Chinese social media trends.

You know, do you jump in on the short-form video app Douyin?

Or do you have to be a bit cautious about it?

And so I think there was a lot of hesitation about how to approach some of these new sales platforms and new ways of selling.

But ANTA certainly didn't have that.

So ANTA brags about how they have AI avatars that are doing this live streaming, live selling, right?

They're future-forward.

You know, younger Chinese, I mean, they don't know much about Michael Jordan.

So, like, for example, I spoke to one person, you know, an employee in Nike in China, a former employee in Nike in China.

He remembers a cousin coming up to him and saying, wait, Michael Jordan, he's dead, right?

And it's like, no, no, no, the legend still lives, is what the guy told him.

So Nike is still rolling out, you know, sort of the old hits, but younger people in China aren't as interested.

Yeah, it's a really great question.