The curtain of this year's Tmall Double 11 kicked off early.
On the evening of October 14th at 8pm, Tmall's Double 11 shopping festival opened pre order sales. In terms of sports and outdoor activities, in the first hour of pre-sale, 6 brands sold over 100 million yuan, and 32 popular items sold over 10 million yuan. According to the first day transaction list of Tmall Sports Outdoor Pre sale, FILA ranked first in transaction volume, followed by Adidas and Nike in second and third place. Domestic brands such as Li Ning, ANTA, Camel, and Boxihe have all entered the top 20.
Of course, this is only the first day sales data. Based on previous years' experience, some sports brands will increase their discounts during the mid to late stages of the Double 11 shopping festival. In addition, this year's Tmall Double 11 shopping festival has a longer activity cycle and more variables. The final sales ranking is likely to undergo significant changes.
Thanks to the popularity of outdoor sports, Tmall has started setting up rankings for outdoor brands during the Double 11 and 618 shopping festivals in recent years. In last year's Double 11 Tmall Outdoor Brand Sales Ranking, the top spot changed ownership. The North Face, a traditional outdoor brand from the United States, was squeezed to second place on the 2022 list, while the domestic brand Camel became the new top scorer. In the TOP10, domestic outdoor brands such as Boxihe and Kaileshi are also listed.
If the "protagonist" product in the outdoor field last year was the submachine jacket, then the "newcomer" category that has received attention this year is cycling. On the first day of pre-sale, this category performed exceptionally well. Data shows that on the first day of Tmall's Double 11 pre-sale, the entire category of cycling brands increased by over 40%, and the total number of bicycles increased by over 80%. TREK, a road bike brand, saw a sales growth of over 1300% in the first hour of pre-sales. The cycling clothing and equipment category achieved double-digit high-speed growth, while the professional cycling clothing brand Lanpada achieved double first place in sales and growth rate in this category.
Behind the rising demand for products is an increasing number of cycling audiences. Interface News found that the "2023 Outdoor Lifestyle Trend Report" and the "2024 Sports Outdoor Industry White Paper" jointly released by Xiaohongshu and "Outdoor Adventure" and "Hiking China" mentioned the cycling craze. Taking Xiaohongshu's "2023 Outdoor Lifestyle Trend Report" as an example, the report shows that from January to October 2023, the number of notes related to cycling increased by nearly 400%, with over 1.8 million notes and more than 1 billion views on the topic of "cycling". Both in terms of note growth rate and total number of notes, cycling can be regarded as the most popular outdoor sport.
Zhao Yuewu, the brand director of road cycling in Decathlon North Asia, predicted in an interview with the interface news in May this year that by 2029, there will be 100 million bicycle enthusiasts in the Chinese market, and the market demand for professional products such as road bikes will be growing.
In fact, cycling has already been "hot" around 2022, but at that time, the "one car hard to find" mainly focused on leisure folding bicycles priced at 10000-30000 yuan: Brompton, a famous folding bicycle brand in the UK, once became the "top stream", and DAHON, the world's largest folding bicycle manufacturer, also benefited from it.
With the increase of cycling events and cycling clubs in the past two years, the demand for professional bicycles has surged, and the two major categories of mountain bikes and road bikes have become the focus of competition for cycling brands. According to a professional self media observation in the cycling circle, in 2023, road bikes and mountain bikes will be the two mainstream vehicle choices for car enthusiasts, with about 80% and 60% of car enthusiasts owning these two types of bikes respectively, accounting for a much higher proportion than other categories of bicycles.