"Yizhong Maotai" is also starting to learn Anta from Yinyilifen

Ask AI · What resource challenges does Uncle Circle’s top influencer face in transformation?

(Text / Huo Dongyang Editing / Zhang Guangkai)

In China’s apparel industry, few have previously discussed Biyin Lefen and Anta together.

One is a “middle-aged boss brand” long dominant in high-end men’s wear and golf apparel tracks, the other is a sports goods group expanding through acquisitions, agency, and multi-brand operations.

Regardless of customer base, channels, or brand temperament, the two companies seem like entirely different business species. But by 2025, Biyin Lefen has begun to show increasingly obvious signs of “Anta-ization.”

This change is not just because it started representing the American recovery shoe brand OOFOS; more importantly, the logic behind it has shifted: after a single brand’s growth peaks, Biyin Lefen is trying to move from “operating a brand” to “managing a brand portfolio.”

And this approach is exactly what Anta has been most successful at over the past decade or so.

“Uncle Circle Top Influencer” Strives for Youthfulness

From the financial reports, Biyin Lefen’s 2025 outlook is a typical “growth slowdown period financial report.”

In 2025, Biyin Lefen’s operating data itself isn’t bad: total revenue of 4.31B yuan, up 7.73% year-on-year, continuing a record of 15 consecutive years of revenue growth since 2011.

But looking further, real problems begin to surface. Net profit attributable to parent company of 551 million yuan, down 29.46%; non-recurring net profit of 500 million yuan, down 32.79%; net profit margin dropped from 19.5% last year to 12.77%, a decrease of 6.73 percentage points year-on-year.

This is a typical “revenue growth but profit decline” report, and the deterioration exceeds market expectations.

More worth noting is the quarterly rhythm. In Q4 2025, Biyin Lefen’s quarterly gross profit margin fell by 5.26 percentage points year-on-year to 73.52%; quarterly net profit margin dropped to -6.19%, with net profit attributable to parent at a loss of 68.92M yuan.

This quarterly loss, for a company long maintaining high profitability as “China’s first golf apparel stock,” is a rare signal since its listing in 2016.

Over the past two years, Biyin Lefen has continuously increased its brand marketing investment. In 2024, the company’s sales expense ratio rose to 40.3%, further up from the previous year. Entering 2025, this high-investment trend continues: annual advertising and promotion expenses reached 303 million yuan, up 54.86%; e-commerce service fees increased by 106.9%.

Biyin Lefen has clearly accelerated its youth-oriented and channel-upgrading pace. In December 2024, Ding Yuxi officially became Biyin Lefen’s “Pioneer Spokesperson.” Meanwhile, the company continued to upgrade its tenth-generation terminal image stores, strengthened high-end commercial district layouts, and increased online channel investments.

Behind these moves are rising marketing, channel, and operational costs, which together squeeze the profit margins that Biyin Lefen once had as a significant advantage.

In a weakening consumer environment, Biyin Lefen is maintaining brand growth and online expansion through higher marketing and channel investments.

From the fundamental perspective of its main brand, Biyin Lefen still has a solid foundation. The company has ranked first in China’s golf apparel market for eight consecutive years (despite a survey of VIP customers showing nearly 80% of consumers do not play golf or have only played at golf practice ranges), and its T-shirt category market share has also remained long-term leader.

Over the past years, Biyin Lefen’s gross profit margin has consistently stayed above 75%, a profitability level once regarded by the market as comparable to some luxury brands, serving as a sample in China’s apparel industry.

Although inventory turnover days have lengthened in recent years, the overall inventory age structure remains relatively healthy; as of the end of 2025, the company’s cash and equivalents still approach 1.3 billion yuan, maintaining financial flexibility.

The real issue is not the main brand losing profitability, but Biyin Lefen trying to support a costly transformation with this basic asset base.

To understand Biyin Lefen’s current situation, one must first understand its customer structure.

Biyin Lefen originated from airports and high-speed rail stations, precisely targeting middle-class entrepreneurs, senior executives, and elites within the system earning over 30,000 yuan per month.

Wu Xiaobo wearing Biyin Lefen

For this group, “golf” is not just a sport label but a symbol of social status. A thousand-yuan T-shirt, jackets starting at two thousand, with a single store purchase often reaching three to five thousand yuan, and visiting twice a year can make it a “Moutai among clothing” in its niche.

But this logic began to loosen when outdoor brands under Anta (including Amer Sports) also targeted this customer base. Arc’teryx, Karrimor, Descente entered from professional outdoor gear, quickly establishing a more convincing sports culture narrative among elites, and these brands are even easier for system insiders to buy into.

Biyin Lefen is nicknamed “Uncle Circle Top Influencer,” but on the flip side, young consumers keep their distance.

The pressure for transformation thus arises.

Rebranding with a new logo, signing young celebrities, developing trendy co-branded series and outdoor Motion series for youth, collaborating with Harvard University… These actions generate buzz in publicity, but their sales conversion remains limited.

Learning from Anta

Biyin Lefen has begun to “learn” from Anta.

In 2023, Biyin Lefen acquired the global trademarks of the UK brand KENT&CURWEN and the French brand CERRUTI 1881 for about 95 million euros, widely interpreted as a declaration of its move toward high-end fashion groups.

But the reality is more complex. Two years on, the subsidiary Guangzhou Houde Zaiwu, responsible for operating these brands, has yet to turn a profit.

In August 2025, the company proactively lowered the market positioning of these two brands: CERRUTI 1881 exited the luxury market, and KENT&CURWEN was repositioned to target mid-to-high-end brands like Ralph Lauren rather than the previously ambitious luxury segment.

The logic behind this adjustment is straightforward: large differences in supply chain standards, insufficient channel resources, and lack of customer operation capabilities are common hard barriers in multi-brand integration.

Additionally, at the end of 2024, Biyin Lefen also established a partnership with Japanese outdoor brand Snow Peak, responsible for part of its operations and channel development in China…

Biyin Lefen’s channel capabilities in apparel have accumulated over twenty years; replicating the same in fashion requires not just capital but also time.

This is the core difficulty in “learning from Anta.”

Anta’s success in multi-brand management largely depends on its precise judgment of acquired brands like FILA and Arc’teryx, and its systematic ability to rebuild channels and operate consumers without damaging the original brand DNA.

Biyin Lefen’s current multi-brand layout resembles more asset acquisition than brand operation; the former needs capital, the latter needs an ecosystem.

Amid mounting performance pressures in 2025, Biyin Lefen added a new move in its multi-brand strategy: obtaining exclusive agency rights for the American professional sports recovery shoe brand OOFOS in mainland China.

This move’s informational density warrants close reading.

OOFOS is a US footwear brand focused on sports recovery scenarios, with its core selling point being its patented OOfoam foam technology, claiming to absorb 37% more impact than traditional EVA midsoles, suitable for post-exercise recovery.

Media reports indicate that in North America, OOFOS has long been deeply integrated with medical, health, and physical therapy circles, and is recognized by the American Podiatric Medical Association, with a relatively stable professional user base.

From the perspective of Biyin Lefen’s existing customer base, this choice has internal logic. Its core consumers (elite men over 35 with exercise habits or at least awareness) are precisely the most potential group for recovery products.

Therefore, Biyin Lefen’s agency of OOFOS is not just a simple product expansion but an attempt to enter a new consumer narrative: shifting from “business success attire” to “middle-class healthy lifestyle.”

But recovery shoes are still in an early penetration stage domestically, and whether Biyin Lefen can grow the recovery shoe category and OOFOS as a brand remains to be seen, as there are no successful cases yet.

What Biyin Lefen is doing can be summarized simply: it is trying to follow Anta’s path, evolving from a single high-end brand into a multi-brand sports lifestyle group.

Acquiring European fashion brands, representing American functional shoes, incubating youth-oriented product lines, expanding channels into high-end districts. The strategic direction of these moves is not wrong; the problem lies in execution order and resource matching.

Under the pressure of the main brand’s profit squeeze, advancing multiple fronts simultaneously will pose substantial challenges in capital and management resource allocation.

The landing of the OOFOS agency rights, on its own, is a pragmatic move aligned with brand customer logic, a step worth affirming on the chessboard. But in the overall strategic puzzle, it remains an unplaced piece.

Therefore, what Biyin Lefen should pay most attention to is not just profit decline, but that it is beginning to change its corporate logic. It is no longer just a single-brand company relying on POLO and golf narratives, but starting to try to become a “multi-brand middle-class lifestyle operator.”

This is also a common challenge faced by many Chinese apparel companies today: after the end of the original consumer dividend, who can continue to find new entry points for consumer identity?