The era of Xu Yang's leadership at ANTA SPORTS (ANTA SPORTS), which lasted three and a half years, has officially concluded with a recent management change announcement. The company stated that former ANTA brand CEO Xu Yang has resigned from his position due to family reasons, and the group has approved his departure and will assign him to another role. Concurrently, Lai Shixian, an Executive Director and Co-CEO of ANTA Group, will assume the role of acting CEO for the ANTA brand, taking full responsibility for its daily operations and management.
In recent years, Xu Yang was seen as a key figure within ANTA driving brand rejuvenation and retail transformation. His departure has prompted the market to re-evaluate the substantial investments made in ANTA's brand reforms over recent years and whether these investments have translated into sufficient operational returns.
Two Decades at ANTA, Returning to the Core Brand Three Years Ago
Xu Yang's career has been deeply intertwined with ANTA. In 2006, the advertising professional, who previously worked at 4A agencies including TBWA and Grey, officially joined ANTA, serving successively as Brand Management Center Director and General Manager of the Basketball Business Unit. Following ANTA's participation in the acquisition of Amer Sports in 2019, Xu Yang transitioned to become the General Manager for Arc'teryx Greater China, responsible for developing this high-end outdoor brand in the Chinese market.
During his nearly four-year tenure there, he led the complete transformation of Arc'teryx to a fully direct-operated retail system, clarified its positioning as a "sport luxury" brand, and drove the brand's China business from approximately 800 million yuan to nearly 3 billion yuan, with membership numbers soaring from 14,000 to 1.7 million. Arc'teryx also became a key growth engine within ANTA Group's multi-brand strategy.
In early 2023, following the largest organizational restructuring since ANTA's listing, Xu Yang was transferred back to the ANTA brand as CEO. The expectations from ANTA Group's Chairman, Ding Shizhong, were clear at that time. With his experience managing a high-end brand, Xu Yang was seen as the ideal candidate to transform this mass-market sports brand with annual revenue exceeding 30 billion yuan.
Slowing Growth for the Core Brand Following Sweeping Reforms
However, compared to Arc'teryx, the highly mature mass-market sports sector presented a different set of challenges. The ANTA brand possesses a vast channel foundation and consumer base but also faces intense competition from brands like Nike (NKE), Adidas, Li-Ning, and Xtep, alongside pressure from evolving consumer demands.
Upon taking over, Xu Yang aimed to enhance the ANTA brand's competitiveness through brand upgrades and retail model innovation. At the ANTA Investor Day in 2023, he set a target for the ANTA brand to achieve a compound annual growth rate in retail sales of 10% to 15% from 2023 to 2026. This target became a key benchmark for observing the outcomes of his reform efforts.
To achieve this goal, the ANTA brand explored various store formats under Xu Yang's leadership. These included the "Super ANTA" targeting large-scale consumption scenarios, Arena stores emphasizing professional sports experiences, ANTA SNEAKERVERSE (SV) targeting young consumers, and the ANTA Zero Carbon Mission stores. Among these, the large-format "Super ANTA" stores, exceeding 1,000 square meters, operating on a fully direct-owned model, and offering a full product range, were a major focus for Xu Yang, described by him as a potential industry disruptor.
Meanwhile, the SV format, led by former Li-Ning Wade series chief designer Zhou Shijie, focused on trendiness, design, and scarcity. By entering high-end shopping districts like SKP and IFS, it aimed to elevate ANTA's brand fashion appeal and expand into higher price segments.
These initiatives reflected Xu Yang's desire to move beyond the traditional model of simply selling footwear and apparel. By creating larger spaces, richer product mixes, and stronger experiential elements, the goal was to increase consumer dwell time and store value. However, these new store formats also entailed higher investment. According to media reports, sources close to ANTA indicated that both Super ANTA and SV stores were incurring significant losses, with group management reportedly extremely dissatisfied with the ongoing poor performance of Super ANTA stores.
This also weighed on the ANTA brand's financial performance. Entering 2025, the brand's growth rate slowed significantly. For the 2025 fiscal year, ANTA Group's revenue reached 80.219 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.3%. Within this, ANTA brand revenue was 34.75 billion yuan, growing only 3.7% year-on-year, a sharp decline from the 10.6% growth in 2024. The ANTA brand's operating profit was 7.2 billion yuan, up 2.5%. In contrast, FILA's operating profit reached 7.4 billion yuan, growing 10.1%, surpassing that of the ANTA brand.
Cheng Weixiong, a senior brand management expert and founder of Shanghai Liangqi Brand Management Co., Ltd., analyzed that in recent years, Xu Yang led the implementation of refined operations segmented by consumer groups, product categories, and store types, along with reforms establishing independent business units. This model drew from Arc'teryx's high-end direct-operated approach but fundamentally mismatched the resources and market dynamics of the ANTA brand, which relies on a vast franchisee network and a mass-market national consumer base.
For a mature brand in transition, slowing growth subjects previously high-investment reform projects to stricter commercial scrutiny. Media reports citing ANTA's 2025 interim report showed the number of SV stores was 62, which had been reduced to approximately 41 by June 2026. The expansion pace for Super ANTA stores is also being adjusted, with rapid store rollout set to cease in 2026.
Leadership Change Does Not Signal Shift in Long-Term Strategy
Following Xu Yang's departure, ANTA has chosen Group Co-CEO Lai Shixian to act as the brand CEO. A veteran who joined the group in 2003, Lai has led important projects such as the FILA acquisition, the Amer Sports merger, and supply chain integration, which is expected to facilitate better coordination of the core brand's operations from the group level.
However, the leadership change does not imply a shift in the ANTA brand's strategic direction. The company has also stated that the brand's established long-term development strategy remains unchanged. Cheng Weixiong believes this leadership change at the ANTA brand represents a correction following aggressive expansion. The core focus for ANTA Group remains adhering to the long-term strategy of maintaining the mass-market positioning of its core brand, elevating the brand, and focusing on a multi-brand globalization approach.
Only by balancing brand elevation with the turnover efficiency and profitability of its core national business, and by harmonizing refined upgrades with the mass-market business model, can the ANTA brand achieve steady, long-term growth in a period of competition for market share and avoid repeating past mistakes of盲目 large-store expansion.
In a 2025 media interview, Xu Yang stated, "Let me make a bold claim now: within 3 years, our ANTA single brand will surpass Nike in China." For the fiscal year ending May 31, 2026, Nike Greater China's annual revenue was $5.847 billion (approximately 39.6 billion yuan). On July 17, 2026, ANTA Group released its operational data for the second quarter and first half of 2026. In Q2 2026, the retail sales value of ANTA brand products recorded only low single-digit positive growth compared to the same period in 2025.
The goal for the ANTA brand to surpass Nike in China within three years is not yet a certainty. While "having dreams and daring to make bold claims" may be characteristic of the ANTA culture, for a sports goods group with annual revenue exceeding 80 billion yuan, any reform must ultimately be justified on the balance sheet. How to translate innovative investments into tangible growth results will be a key question for ANTA to answer in its next phase.
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