Between November and December 2025, LuxeCO Intelligence tracked and analyzed 610 brand activities involving 464 sports and outdoor brands.
From this pool, LuxeCO Intelligence selected the Top 4 brand cases most worthy of industry attention and provided exclusive commentary, aiming to offer timely insights into the strategic directions and development trends of sports and outdoor brands today.
In an increasingly competitive landscape, the four selected cases effectively illustrate four key strategic focuses (in no particular order):
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Interpreting the Olympic Spirit — Li-Ning launches its first global “Dragon Store.”
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Creating flagship spaces in top-tier luxury retail hubs — DESCENTE opens its global flagship store
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Enhancing narrative power through IP characters — FILA opens its first theme park-style store
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Embodying brand spirit through Chinese cultural symbols — The North Face hosts “Ten Thousand Horses Festival” series of events
1. Li-Ning unveils its first global “Dragon Store” in Beijing’s Taikoo Li Sanlitun and launches a new product line — Li-Ning Glory Gold Label
This year, Li-Ning signed on as the official sportswear partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee and the Chinese sports delegation for the 2025–2028 cycle. These two major moves represent Li-Ning’s modern interpretation of sportsmanship as part of its renewed Olympic partnership.
The “dragon” is a spiritual totem rooted in thousands of years of Chinese culture and is also one of Li-Ning’s signature design elements.
Since the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Li-Ning has incorporated the “CHINA Dragon” motif into the podium uniforms of the Chinese Olympic delegation. For seven consecutive Olympic Games, Li-Ning has designed the “Dragon Suit” for the Chinese national table tennis team, helping Chinese athletes shine on the global stage.
The Dragon Store centers on three core themes: “Podium Moments,” “Competitive Moments,” and “Everyday Moments.” It weaves together national pride, athletic spirit, and daily life to create an experiential space that fosters cultural resonance and emotional connection with consumers.
The Glory Gold Label collection embodies Li-Ning’s ambition to extend the spirit of sports beyond the arena and into everyday life. For the first time, the Chinese Olympic Committee’s emblem, a symbol of national sports glory, appears alongside the Li-Ning logo in a co-branded product line.
According to financial reports, Li-Ning’s R&D investment in the first half of 2025 increased by 8.7% year-on-year, bringing the company’s cumulative R&D spending over the past decade to more than RMB 3.8 billion [approximately USD 535 million].
In the Glory Gold Label collection, Li-Ning blends advanced sports technology with a minimalist design aesthetic to offer premium apparel for urban consumers seeking quality lifestyle solutions. Targeting diverse scenarios such as commuting, business, and light exercise, the collection opens up a new growth segment. It not only strengthens the brand’s professional image but also injects fresh momentum into its development.
Through the launch of the Dragon Store and the Glory Gold Label, Li-Ning achieves a multidimensional upgrade across experiential retail, product innovation, and brand strategy.
This initiative reinforces the brand’s positioning as a professional sportswear leader and offers the industry a blueprint for transitioning from event-driven marketing to emotionally resonant storytelling.
2. DESCENTE unveils its global flagship store, “City of the Future,” at Beijing’s China Central Place (Hua Mao Center)
Going beyond traditional retail shelving concepts, DESCENTE has made a strategic leap in brand storytelling with the opening of its global flagship store, “City of the Future,” at China Central Place in Beijing. Through architectural design, spatial layout, and immersive experiences, the brand has translated its abstract values and professional heritage into a tangible narrative.
The store design incorporates the concept of a Möbius strip, symbolizing the infinite drive of athleticism. The continuous looping shape visually expresses the brand’s relentless spirit of exploration.
The interior layout organically links four major thematic zones via connecting corridors, presenting DESCENTE’s offerings across skiing, golf, urban all-terrain performance, and children’s lines. This spatial strategy presents a comprehensive view of the brand’s ecosystem in professional sports.
The immersive environment transforms shopping into a brand experience. For example, installations such as ski gondolas and ice caves materialize the world of winter sports, directly communicating DESCENTE’s enduring “Starts from Skiing” identity.
The store also showcases the brand’s core technologies, such as HEAT NAVI® and its 3D thermal insulation system. It hosted the “Peak to the Future” fashion show and held the handover ceremony for the new uniforms of China’s national alpine ski team, further reinforcing DESCENTE’s image as a professional brand.
According to ANTA Group’s 2025 mid-year performance report, DESCENTE recorded strong growth across both online and offline channels in the first half of the year, making it one of the group’s strongest growth drivers.
As of the end of June 2025, DESCENTE operated 241 stores. Adhering to a “refined and strong” expansion strategy, the brand focuses on high-end commercial zones in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities in the Chinese Mainland. Through its “large-format upgrade” initiative, the number of high-performance stores with annual sales exceeding RMB 50 million [approximately USD 7 million] continues to grow.
The “City of the Future” flagship store occupies 1,600 square meters and is located in Beijing’s China Central Place, taking over the former space of Armani. It is DESCENTE’s largest store worldwide.
With this move, DESCENTE not only showcases how a professional sports brand can shape a futuristic, premium identity through spatial storytelling but also extends its reach to high-net-worth individuals in Beijing’s CBD. The store is a bold declaration of the brand’s ambitions to secure a strong presence in the premium sportswear market.
3. FILA opens its first theme park-style store at Universal Beijing Resort, marking the debut of FILA KIDS IP character Wonnie and its friends in full form
The new store at Universal Beijing Resort is not a traditional FILA KIDS store, but rather a “ONE FILA Concept Store” centered on children’s experiences and designed to engage the entire family. With children as the core target audience, the store extends its influence to parents and the broader family unit.
According to the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA), Universal Beijing Resort saw a 109.3% year-on-year surge in visitors in 2023 and maintained steady growth of 8.6% in 2024. It ultimately ranked first globally for year-on-year visitor growth among the top 15 theme parks, with family visitors as the main customer base.
Leveraging the heavy footfall and joyful atmosphere generated by Universal’s premier entertainment IPs, FILA effectively positioned itself at the heart of family consumption. This alignment between brand and entertainment-driven traffic allowed FILA to capture key family-oriented retail moments.
Inside the store, various interactive installations create a closed-loop experience that is “interactive, immersive, and shareable,” transforming the shopping environment into a leisure destination. This significantly extends customer dwell time and deepens emotional engagement among both children and their parents.
The debut of IP character Wonnie the Bear and its family of friends, each with distinct personalities and hobbies such as tennis, skiing, and golf, marks a new era of systematic and story-driven IP development for FILA KIDS.
Today’s children play an increasingly influential role in household purchasing decisions. They are no longer passive recipients but active participants with independent aesthetic preferences and interests.
The IP characters, especially Wonnie the Bear, mirror real-life children and act as emotional companions, greatly enhancing brand storytelling and emotional value. This builds a strong emotional moat between the brand and young consumers.
Previously, FILA KIDS launched creative store formats such as an art gallery-inspired store and a “Diamond Tennis Store” focused on professional sports. With the new theme park-style store at Universal Beijing Resort, FILA is clearly building a diversified and refined offline retail ecosystem, tailoring store formats to specific commercial areas and target demographics.
According to ANTA Group’s mid-year 2025 performance report, FILA achieved a better-than-expected 8.6% growth on a large revenue base of over RMB 30 billion [approximately USD 4.2 billion], with total revenue reaching RMB 14.18 billion [approximately USD 2 billion]. FILA KIDS continues to leverage the brand’s athletic heritage and is positioned in the mid-to-high-end children’s apparel market. Its high-end line, BIELLA, children’s footwear, and tennis collections performed particularly well and were prominently featured in this new store.
4. The North Face launches the “Ten Thousand Horses Festival” series of events in Gansu under the annual theme “Exploration is Innate”
How can outdoor brands authentically tap into China’s rich historical and cultural heritage to convey brand spirit and resonate with local consumers? The North Face provides a compelling answer with this initiative.
As the Year of the Fire Horse (Bingwu) approaches, The North Face adopts the horse, a symbol present in both Eastern and Western cultures, to draw a connection between its core brand ethos of “Never Stop Exploring” and the Chinese spirit of exploration and progress.
For instance, the Eastern Han bronze sculpture “Flying Horse of Gansu,” housed in the Gansu Provincial Museum, captures a moment of boundless energy and speed. It symbolizes the Chinese people’s imaginative spirit and relentless pursuit of the unknown, as well as the cultural exchanges that exploration has historically enabled (such as the introduction of fine horses during the Han Dynasty and the expansion of the Silk Road).
Rather than applying the horse symbol in a superficial or forced way, The North Face collaborated with the Gansu Provincial Museum to create a special exhibition route titled “In Search of Horses Through the Ages,” alongside a themed dialogue series called “Exploration is Innate.” These efforts imbue the brand’s exploratory spirit with cultural depth and offer Chinese consumers a more profound emotional resonance.
The North Face understands that today’s high-end consumers are no longer content with passively receiving messages. They seek personal experiences and emotional engagement.
Using the horse as a storytelling thread, the event spanned three key Silk Road cities — Lanzhou, Wuwei Tianzhu, and Zhangye Shandan. It integrated diverse experiences such as historical exhibitions, snow mountain treks, and open-air performances. These activities enabled participants to experience the brand spirit across multiple dimensions in a cohesive narrative journey.
According to Q2 FY2026 financial results, The North Face recorded a 6% year-on-year increase, reaching USD 1.1571 billion in revenue, achieving comprehensive growth.
With this campaign, The North Face demonstrates its commitment to respecting and integrating into local culture, a move that will further earn the trust and recognition of Chinese consumers.
| Image Credit: Luxe.CO Design, official brand sources
| Editor: Elisa
