Aokang lost ¥900M+ over 4 years — China's 'shoe king' couldn't outrun sneakers

Aokang International was once China's dominant leather-shoe brand, known as the 'shoe king' with over 2,200 stores nationwide. Starting in 2022, the company entered an unbroken decline: it lost ¥373M that year, followed by ¥93M in 2023, ¥216M in 2024, and ¥241M in 2025 — cumulative losses exceeding ¥900M. Revenue fell below ¥2B for the first time in 16 years, and the company closed 399 stores in 2025 alone, reducing its network to 1,836.

The root cause was a category shift that Aokang could not outrun. Chinese consumers, especially younger buyers, moved en masse from leather dress shoes to sneakers and athleisure. Aokang's core product — the leather business shoe — was a shrinking market. The company tried to diversify by licensing Western sportswear brands Skechers and Puma, but the effort was too late and poorly executed. By 2025, Skechers stores had gone to zero, Puma had only 7 locations left, and Aokang's own sub-brand Kanglong saw revenue drop 45%.

Aokang's decline is a textbook case of a brand trapped in a dying category. The company did not mismanage its finances or make a single catastrophic bet — it simply kept selling what it had always sold while the market moved elsewhere. Closing stores and cutting costs could slow the revenue decline but could not reverse it, because the product itself was no longer what consumers wanted.