Kalong: Not chasing the trend, but outperforming the trend

Ask AI · How can KOLON’s restrained strategy achieve rapid growth?

On March 25, Anta Group’s financial report showed that in 2025, the Group achieved revenue of 8B yuan, up 13.3% year over year. “Other brands,” centered on KOLON and Descente, saw a 59.2% year-over-year surge in revenue. Among them, KOLON has become the fastest-growing brand within the Group.

In mainstream perception, KOLON is like the two small trees in its logo—growing quietly, without drawing attention. This restrained brand temperament creates an intriguing contrast with its hard-core performance, which ranks first in growth rate.

At a time when domestic outdoor brands are fiercely competing, most players crowd into frantic store expansion, smash money into marketing, and rapidly seize mindshare—charging forward in the churn of both traffic and scale. KOLON, however, looks distinctly different. It isn’t being pushed along by “short-term gain,” nor has it gotten pulled into the blazing battle. Instead, it remains as always, steady and methodical—anchoring itself at the “professional” starting point. At the same time, it holds rich community activities, shoots outdoor documentaries, and continues to cultivate and pass on sustainable outdoor values—doing slow work that doesn’t count output.

Yet KOLON still managed to stand out. This is not only a win along an unconventional path, but also a brand growth story that begins with precise strategic judgment and continues by sticking to a differentiated route.

Underestimated “professionalism”

The outside world has a common misreading of KOLON.

One interesting phenomenon is that many people talk about KOLON as a “fashion outdoor” brand. The reason is simply that it looks good—clean designs and appealing color schemes. But that is precisely the biggest misinterpretation of KOLON—its foundation is far more solid than just “looks good.”

As early as 1980, KOLON launched a worldwide expedition and exploration support effort, helping summit peaks more than 50 times. Footprints of KOLON can be found on all of the world’s highest 15 mountains. In 1988, KOLON became an official sponsor of the Olympic Games. In 2012, KOLON collaborated with China’s Antarctic research teams and expedition teams. This extreme environment—with an average temperature of minus 55°C and winds reaching 12 or more on the scale—is the harshest exam for outdoor gear, and it has also allowed KOLON to keep exploring and learning how to coexist with nature in extreme conditions.

KOLON has honed this professional DNA for more than half a century, and it is still continually “growing” to this day.

In September 2025, KOLON became the official cooperation partner of the China Mountaineering Association and the China National Climbing Team, embarking on a new chapter together with Chinese climbing.

Just on March 25, the new kit 「Chiying / 炽翎」 designed by KOLON for the China National Climbing Team was officially released. It will accompany athletes throughout the entire 2026 season. Inspired by the “Vermilion Bird,” this kit uses professional technology to support Chinese athletes’ fearless ascent on the rock face.

In the trail running field, KOLON is equally deeply rooted. From mainstream to top-tier events, the brand’s layout in trail running has already taken shape. But KOLON has not stopped at operating conventional events—it has deeply integrated sustainable development concepts into the process, and has taken the lead in focusing on “zero-carbon event hosting.”

On one hand, KOLON has held title sponsorship for the Donghai Yunding Trail Mountain Race for four consecutive years. Together with the event organizers, it advances carbon reduction practices across the full event lifecycle. Starting from details in the event hosting process, it truly reduces carbon emissions across the entire chain. On top of that, it also offsets inevitable carbon emissions through standardized carbon sink trading, forming a carbon-neutral closed loop—creating a domestic first for “zero-carbon event hosting” in commercial trail running events.

On the other hand, KOLON has just announced that starting this year through 2030 it will continue to be the title sponsor for domestic top trail running events—the Ninghai Trail Challenge. This strong alliance with China’s “diamond track” of trail running opens a brand-new page for trail running in China.

It is precisely this kind of professionalism that stays consistent—never cutting corners, from extreme environments to daily city life, and from professional arenas to outdoor mountains and wilderness—that helps KOLON keep rooting in the outdoor space, continuously evolve its product R&D capabilities, and earn its entry ticket to core outdoor scenarios.

Between Conservatism and Aggression: KOLON’s Third Path

Worth studying is that even with an entry ticket, KOLON did not choose “strike while the iron is hot” aggressive expansion. In an environment where the outdoor industry generally runs from turf war to turf war, KOLON’s style feels quite unusual. What it cares about is the pace of expansion and control of boundaries.

“Restraint” is the word most often mentioned by Ding Siyong, Chairman of KOLON’s brand, in public interviews. “When making products, doing marketing, and doing sales, everything has to be restrained.” But this kind of “restraint” is not conservatism—it’s a deliberate choice: between aggressive expansion and the brand’s long-term value, KOLON prioritizes the latter, embedding KOLON’s unique business wisdom.

This uniqueness first shows up in its store-opening rhythm.

At the end of 2025, KOLON had 209 stores in China, with a net increase of only 18 for the whole year. Put this number on the fastest-growing brand within this Group, and it feels somewhat “against common sense.” After all, under the same growth curve, the immediate effect of quickly increasing revenue by opening even one more store can cause other brands’ store counts to multiply by several times.

This is wisdom of “advancing by retreating.” KOLON’s store strategy isn’t centered on “expansion”—its core is “deepening quality.” It invests resources into landmark locations that truly can carry brand value, continuously refines its single-store model, and ensures that each store operates efficiently rather than relying on sheer quantity to build scale.

Therefore, KOLON precisely targets core high-end commercial districts in second- and first-tier (top-tier) cities. Using anchors such as Beijing Huamao, Chengdu Taikoo Li, and Shenzhen MixC, it builds a matrix of flagship stores. It also upgrades stores from purely sales terminals into brand experience spaces. In doing so, it continuously boosts single-store output and brand momentum without blindly increasing the number of stores.

In February 2026, KOLON opened a “KOLON ATLAS KOLON Natural Archive” brand experience flagship store at Beijing Huamao Shopping Center. Inside, there is a “RE-CRAFT Reassembly Zone,” dedicated to showcasing the full chain of old clothing recycling. Consumers can see how old clothes are disassembled, reassembled, and ultimately turned into new fabrics. At the same time, the store also sets up a standalone community space, hosting activities regularly such as movie screenings, singing-bowl meditation, and hands-on workshops.

In Beijing Huamao—where every inch of space is valuable—KOLON allocates its precious area to sustainable concepts and user interaction. Here, the yardstick of value is no longer short-term numbers like sales per square meter; it is a deeper connection between the brand and consumers.

Such a store-opening pace, along with the主动 sacrificing of sales-per-square-meter efficiency, is not about moving slowly—it is to go farther. KOLON digs deep into its positioning of “high quality,” directly avoiding dilution of brand value caused by over-expansion.

How investment with “hard-to-account for output” builds a brand moat

KOLON’s brand-building investment is also somewhat unconventional. More energy is put into slow investments that are difficult to measure. From shooting documentaries to convey brand value expressions, to carrying out community activities that practice the “seamless outdoor” concept, these “slow skills” are destined not to produce an easily calculable return-on-investment in the short term like hard advertising exposure and live-stream shopping can. But they do build KOLON’s most solid brand moat.

KOLON’s investments are not light, and the cycle is long—extremely testing strategic resolve. What it is doing is not surface-level work like “brand packaging,” but foundational brand core-building. This is a deeper kind of investment tied to users’ empathy and resonance.

First is the expression of brand value. In early 2026, KOLON donated professional equipment worth more than 2 million yuan to forest rangers in Gongshan County, Yunnan, and simultaneously released the documentary《The Way of Following the Fir · Depart》. In the documentary, the camera focuses on female rangers who patrol and guard forests every day in high-altitude mountains and forests. This group represents the purest, and also the most enduring, “relationship between humans and nature.” KOLON focuses on them—returning its brand philosophy to paying tribute to “guardians.” This, in itself, is an act of consciously binding brand values to nature.

In fact, starting from 2023, KOLON has continued to provide long-term support for frontline forest rangers and patrol staff. In 2023, with coordination from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), KOLON, together with the Qinghai Provincial Forestry and Grassland Administration and Shenzhen One Earth Foundation, donated professional outdoor gear to the patrol staff of four national parks: Sanjiangyuan, Northeast Tiger and Leopard, Giant Panda, and Qilian Mountains, providing protection for patrols in the wild.

In 2024, KOLON officially announced actor Hu Ge as its spokesperson, and through the short film《In Absentia》 it cleverly conveyed the seamless outdoor philosophy to the public. As an ecological and environmental special observer for 2024 announced by China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Hu Ge’s partnership with KOLON helps the initiative for ecological protection reach an even broader public.

KOLON’s heavy investment in these areas is not only tangible support; it is also like a declaration of value—living in harmony with nature—which contains the soul of brand building.

Another example: KOLON’s own IP, the “KOLON ‘Road’ Lab,” has coverage in 46 cities nationwide. Through forms such as outdoor classes and outdoor hiking activities, it invites community members to step into the mountains and wilderness. From 2020 to now, the number of participation instances has reached 26,974. Just in 2024 alone, through initiatives like “Remolding a Bottle Cap” and Plogging clean-up actions in multiple places, it has cumulatively cleaned up more than 100 kilograms of mountain and wilderness trash. In many brands’ community operation logic, the value of such activities is basically “increasing user stickiness,” and they are categorized as part of “fan operations.”

But the significance of KOLON’s “Road” Lab goes far beyond that. It reshapes the relationship between the brand and users. Here, the brand and users are no longer a linear transaction pair; they are companions who gather because of shared love for the outdoors and mountains and wilderness—forming a value community together.

Therefore, KOLON’s community operations are not just simple offline meetups. They are a “value choice with warmth.” It chooses to invest resources into “people,” not “traffic.” It chooses the most straightforward way to build trust between the brand and users face-to-face.

Although KOLON’s ambition for its brand philosophy is big, the core of what it invests in remains always “heart-to-heart resonance.” It constructs a long-term user relationship based on shared value recognition—using long-term value to resist the game of short-term interest.

The “Professional Outdoor” jigsaw puzzle of Anta Group

A few years ago, the industry was discussing a question: Will Anta Group’s massive matrix of outdoor sport brands, under the Anta umbrella, end up competing with each other for users and resources?

But after several years, that kind of tug-of-war has not happened. Instead, these brands have formed a complementary and synergistic effect.

In Anta’s outdoor map, each brand is given a clear “persona.” Descente represents “hardcore sports,” deeply focused on vertical segments like skiing, with very strong professional sports attributes. KOLON, meanwhile, fills the professional path of the “relationship between people and nature.”

KOLON also continually anchors its own value through this brand differentiation. It doesn’t chase ultimate performance or engage in a parameters competition. Instead, it focuses on a positioning of “high-quality companionship,” exploring with users better ways to connect with and get closer to nature. With professional experience learned from nature, it continuously gives back to nature.

Of course, KOLON’s success also relies on Anta Group’s strong back-end support. Supply chain capabilities, the DTC model, channel resources, and digital systems—these infrastructures are also what gives KOLON the confidence to focus on products and community. More importantly, Anta Group has management patience: it is willing to give KOLON time, allowing it to invest in things that may not show short-term returns. This “long-lane” mindset is not common in multi-brand operations.

So KOLON is precisely an indispensable piece in Anta Group’s outdoor blueprint—a unique voice within the dimension of “professional outdoor.” Along with Descente and Jack Wolfskin, it forms a complete outdoor brand matrix.

Those seemingly “not aggressive” choices at the time—sticking to high quality, deepening professional expertise, and committing to long-term value investment—eventually built a moat that KOLON is hard to surpass. Today, as China’s penetration rate for outdoor sports continues to rise, this kind of steady growth “with warmth” has far more resilience and vitality than short-term prosperity built by marketing hype.

KOLON becoming the fastest-growing brand within Anta Group is, in essence, a powerful victory over short-term traffic thinking—grounded in its long-term, unique, and deeply rooted operating strategy.