{"text":[[{"start":7.54,"text":"Above the entrance of Qiaodan’s expansive corporate headquarters in the Chinese city of Xiamen, a red logo displays the silhouette of an athlete who feels immediately familiar."}],[{"start":17.38,"text":"His slanted legs convey the motion of dribbling, while an outstretched left hand grips what appears to be a basketball."}],[{"start":24.14,"text":"The name of the company behind the logo — Qiaodan — is a literal Chinese rendering of one of the most illustrious brands in sport: Jordan."}],[{"start":32,"text":"Since its founding 26 years ago, Qiaodan has spent a significant chunk of that time embroiled in a legal dispute with Michael Jordan, the basketball legend who appears to have inspired its branding. However, in 2020, Qiaodan was ultimately found only to have infringed an element of Jordan’s prior name rights."}],[{"start":50,"text":"The sportswear company — which has expanded into running trainers and yoga gear — is now a fully fledged nationwide retailer, with around 6,000 stores across the country, most of them under franchise arrangements. In a Qiaodan store in the lower-tier city of Yueyang, its Air Jordan-style high-top trainers sell for Rmb339 ($50)."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":70.16,"text":"Qiaodan acquired the Chinese rights to the classic football brand Umbro, formerly owned by Nike, for $62.5mn in 2020. Since then, it has begun exploring overseas expansion, including by opening a store in Vietnam."}],[{"start":85.24,"text":"Long an irritant to Nike, Qiaodan is part of a cohort of increasingly sophisticated Xiamen-based brands piling pressure on Nike in its most important international market."}],[{"start":95.26,"text":"Other insurgents include Anta Sports, a larger business that made over $11bn in revenue last year and agreed to buy a 29 per cent stake in Puma in January. There’s also Hong Kong-listed 361 Degrees and XTEP, which specialises in running shoes. Their rise reflects the growing sophistication of a vast apparel industry in the south-eastern province of Fujian."}],[{"start":117.64,"text":"“Every one of those companies is sharpening the knife by the day,” said Joshua Perlman, head of Greater China at Authentic Brands. This adds to “very severe competition from all angles” for Nike, including from Adidas, On, Hoka and Salomon, he added."}],[{"start":132.52,"text":"Nike so far appears to have few answers to the ferocious competition: its sales in China slumped 17 per cent in the three months to June, the eighth consecutive quarterly decline."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":143.82,"text":"The emergence of China’s domestic sports brands reflects a trend sweeping across industries. The country’s electric vehicle start-ups, led by BYD, have built a dominant position in the domestic market, at the expense of western rivals. Western brands selling everything from cosmetics to coffee are also dealing with intense competition from domestic companies."}],[{"start":164.04,"text":"Wei Kan, a former Nike employee in China and founder of consultancy Conduit Asia, described the sportswear brands’ growing clout as “a permanent change” in the market."}],[{"start":174.28,"text":"Qiaodan may not be the largest of the challengers to Nike but it has arguably been a bigger nuisance than the rest."}],[{"start":180.88,"text":"The company’s revenues were Rmb5.8bn ($850mn) in 2021, the last publicly available figure. On Tmall, one of China’s biggest ecommerce platforms, Qiaodan has annual sales of Rmb500mn and over 11mn followers, compared with Rmb3.4bn and 49mn for Nike, according to consultant Jacques Roizen, based on data from provider Nint."}],[{"start":206.36,"text":"The company has a factory in Jinjiang, a city in Fujian famous for shoe manufacturing, opened a facility in Henan province in 2023 and this year plans to open a manufacturing site in Chongqing."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":217.56,"text":"Qiaodan — whose name translates as “Jordan” — was founded in 2000 by Ding Guoxiong. China’s “first to file” trademark laws typically grant the first applicant legal rights, with some exceptions, and usually need to be challenged within five years."}],[{"start":232.84,"text":"Michael Wellman, Nike’s head of China sales in the 1990s, recalled that “there [were] a number of brands that popped up . . . that were as close to a knock-off that you can get”. Those who worked in China during that time recount tales of widespread counterfeiting and products disappearing from factories in order to be copied."}],[{"start":250.76,"text":"At the time, Michael Jordan was well known in China, where the former Chicago Bulls shooting guard was nicknamed “flying man”. But after Nike released the Jordan brand in the country in 1997, Wei Kan said Jordan products were not readily available in lower-tier cities, giving Qiaodan “some opportunities to grow their foundation”."}],[{"start":271.08,"text":"There was a “massive curiosity” of Chinese consumers to learn what was going on around the world, as it transitioned to a market economy in the latter part of the 20th century, according to Wellman."}],[{"start":281.64,"text":"He added there was little sense domestically at the time that “you would be faulted for imitating another brand”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":287.76,"text":"Records of legal disputes between Jordan and Qiaodan date to at least 2012. Legal filings show that Qiaodan even trademarked transliterations of the names of two of Michael Jordan’s children, Jeffrey and Marcus, should they have decided to follow in their father’s footsteps by launching their own brands."}],[{"start":305.6,"text":"Even while it was being sued for allegedly copying the Jordan brand, Qiaodan took legal action to protect its own brand rights. In 2020, the company unsuccessfully sued Amazon in China for using the term Qiaodan on Chinese-language pages for Nike Jordan products."}],[{"start":322.12,"text":"In the same year, a Supreme Court judge in China ruled that the Chinese spelling of Qiaodan (乔丹) was associated with Michael Jordan for a particular trademark. Dozens of Qiaodan’s other trademarks were unaffected, however."}],[{"start":336.06,"text":"There is no suggestion that the company, which declined an interview request, is currently infringing Jordan’s name rights."}],[{"start":342.76,"text":"At its Xiamen head office a display centre emphasises Qiaodan’s technological capabilities, which it claims have helped to reduce the weight and enhance the flexibility of its running shoes, such as the Q-Kungfu Turbo and Pro models."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":356.2,"text":"But the company has not abandoned its basketball roots. Its headquarters features a statue of Chuck Hayes, former captain of the Houston Rockets and the first NBA player the company sponsored in 2011, as well as chrome mannequins that appear to leap through the air with ball in hand. Qiaodan now sponsors Keldon Johnson of the San Antonio Spurs."}],[{"start":377.9,"text":"As Qiaodan matures, the brand that inspired it is going through one of the toughest periods in its 42-year history. In Nike’s latest quarter, global sales of Jordan-branded products slumped 16 per cent due to a hangover from a period in which Nike saturated the market with Jordan trainers."}],[{"start":393.96,"text":"Qiaodan, which officially changed its name to Zhongqiao in 2021, has attempted to IPO in China multiple times, most recently in 2019. The company’s listing ambitions may have been thwarted by its legal dispute with Jordan, according to Wei Kan. Its controversial origins are, in his view, out of sync with China’s changing consumer tastes."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":416.44,"text":"Nowadays Chinese consumers “appreciate authenticity” and local companies “know how to build the brand, they know how to manage the product portfolio and the cycles [and] they also have a very strong tie with the local community”, he added."}],[{"start":430.8,"text":"Others who worked closely with Nike in its early years in China view Qiaodan in the context of the country’s reopening to the global economy."}],[{"start":438.92,"text":"Joe Eberling, a former Nike sales director in China, said Qiaodan had needed to evolve its business practices — from supply chains to marketing and staffing — to succeed."}],[{"start":450.2,"text":"“You can’t just make a brand that looks like Jordan and then have it succeed because it looks like Jordan,” he said. “They’ve built a [proper] business.”"}],[{"start":462.2,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1787037270_8220.mp3"}