BACKGROUND

Adidas was founded in 1949 and is a member company of German sporting goods manufacturer, Adidas AG, which is named after its founder, Adolf Adi Dassler. It began producing footwear in 1920 in Herzogenaurach and registered on 18, August, 1949. Adidas was originally set up jointly by the two brothers. After they parted ways, Adolf's brother Rudolf Dassler set up the sports brand puma. Its classic slogan: "Nothing is impossible". In March 2011, adidas announced a brand-new slogan, “Adidas is all in”. 

 Li Ning Company is a professional sports brand company founded by Mr. Li Ning in 1990. Taking sponsoring the Chinese delegation to the 1990 Asian Games as an opportunity, it started the business of Li Ning Company, thus pioneering the brand management of Chinese sports goods. On December 30, 2008, Li Ning won the "China's Most Competitive Brands List" award with good brand impression and brand vitality in the "2008 World Brand Value Laboratory Annual Award" competition organized by the world's authoritative brand value research institution, the World Brand Value Laboratory, and won widespread praise from consumers.

Adidas targets the Chinese mainland 

Adidas, Europe's biggest sports-goods maker, will open 2,500 stores and expand its sales network to 1,400 Chinese cities, in an effort to regain market share lost to foreign and domestic competitors in one of the world’s most rapidly growing retail markets. 

The German company is one of many consumer-goods multinationals that have recently decided to shift their focus from near-saturated cities like Shanghai and Beijing to target smaller cities and less wealthy consumers, where they believe growth potential is higher for foreign brands.

Adidas plans to reach far into the Chinese interior to open the new stores. Initially, this will be in urban areas with as few as 500,000 people and then, by 2015, in cities with a population of just over 50,000, company officials said in Shanghai on Tuesday.  

 ‘We will be in much smaller cities by 2015,’ said Christophe Bezu, Adidas Managing Director for Greater China. At present, the company has 5,600 stores in 550 cities.

The product mix in smaller cities will be chosen so that the entry price for consumers would be 15 per cent less than in Adidas’s existing shops in larger cities, he added. The company would be targeting consumers with an average disposable income of RMB5,000 ($753) a month.     

Herbert Hainer, Adidas Chief Executive, predicted that the strategy would allow the German group to regain the number-two market position that it recently lost to Li Ning, the Chinese sportswear manufacturer.   

Li Ning, named after the Olympic gymnast who lit the flame at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, recently announced plans to take its brand upmarket to compete more directly with foreign brands like Adidas and the market leader, Nike.

Li Ning’s move up to second position could prove a key moment. Retail analysts see it as one of the first signs in the retail field that Chinese products can rebrand themselves as not just cheap but desirable. 

Li Ning has strong sales and distribution networks in the lower-tier cities that Adidas hopes to penetrate. 

Mr Hainer dismissed Adidas's recent problems in China as temporary, related to overstocking in the run-up to the Olympics. Mr Hainer predicted double-digit sales growth in China over the next five years.

Complete these sentences with some of the words/phrases above. 用上题中学习到的新词填空

[WORDS&EXPRESSIONS]

regain 

v. to get something you have lost before back again 赢回

e.g. Troops have regained control of the city.

saturated 

adj. filled to capacity or having absorbed all that can be taken up 饱和的

e.g. Saturated fat can increase risks for heart disease and some cancers.

disposable 

adj. related to the amount of income you have left after you have paid income tax and social security charges (纳税后的钱)可自由支配的

e.g. The nation's disposable earnings in 1987 amounted to £586 billion.

double-digit 

adj. the number between 10-99 两位数

e.g. Australia had 15 years of double-digit inflation.

BACKGROUND

Nestle was founded by Henri Nestle in 1867 and headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva. With more than 500 factories worldwide, Nestlé is the world’s largest food manufacturer. The company originated in Switzerland and started with the production of baby food. It is famous for producing chocolate bars and instant coffee. On August 28, 2018, Nestle bought Starbucks’ retail coffee business for 7.15 billion US dollars. NESPRESSO (Nespresso) is a brand of Nestle’s capsule coffee machine and related products, which was established in 1986 and headquartered in Switzerland. Capsule coffee machine is a new type of coffee machine that has appeared in recent years. It is positioned for home and office use.

Stirring up the tea market

Competition in the hot drinks market reached boiling point on Wednesday, as a former Nestle executive launched a new tea-making system to compete with the Swiss food group's own recently launched product. The move followed legal action, as Nestle this week won a court battle to ban a rival product in its highly profitable Nespresso business.

Eric favre, previously Nespresso's chief executive, and who is now an independent businessman, launched Tpresso, a new tea-making system which he said he wanted to make ‘the Nespresso of tea’. The first machines, to be assembled in China from European components, will go on sale in China in April, with other Asian markets next year, and Europe possibly following.

The new system, to be sold in China for RMB5,000 ($756),  followed Nestle's launch last year of Special T, a tea-making system designed to do for tea what Nespresso has done for coffee. Machines for Nestle's Special T system, launched initially in France, cost E129 ($168), with a 10 capsule pack costing E3.50. 

Over on the coffee front, a  commercial court in the Swiss city of St Gallen gave Nestle an important legal victory on Monday when it won its case against discount retailer Denner. Denner had been selling Nespresso-compatible coffee capsules for about half the Nestle price. Last June Nestle showed its willingness to defend Nespresso, which it says is protected by 1,700 patents. It took legal action against the US company Sara Lee, when it launched its L'Or Espresso machine.

 [WORDS & EXPRESSIONS]

assemble

v. to collect it together or to fit the different parts of it together 安装，组合

e.g. He is assembling evidence concerning a murder.

initially

adv. soon after the beginning of a process or situation, rather than in the middle or at the end of it 开始，最初地

e.g. Forecasters say the gales may not be as bad as they initially predicted.

capsule

n. a small container with a drug or other substance inside it, which is used for medical or scientific purposes 胶囊

e.g. They first inserted capsules into the animals' mouths. 

compatible

adj. related to things work well together or can exist together successfully 兼容的

e.g. He is needed also to make sure that the planning of one group is compatible with the planning of the others.

patents

n. an official right to be the only person or company allowed to make or sell a new product for a certain period of time 专利权，专利品

e.g. He held a number of patents for his many innovations.