Knocked back ten years: Pou Sheng's Nike and Adidas trap

Pou Sheng International was spun off in 2008 from Yue Yuen Industrial — one of the world's largest athletic-shoe OEMs, making shoes for over 50 brands — and listed in Hong Kong as the Greater China distributor of Nike and Adidas. With rival Topsports it formed the duopoly that ran Western sportswear through thousands of Chinese doors. The model was wholesale logic at retail scale: secure the brands, open the doors, collect the margin between.

FY2025 (released mid-March 2026): revenue ¥17.132 billion, down 7.2%; operating profit ¥362 million, down 49%; attributable profit ¥211 million against ¥491 million — down 57.1%, the worst in about ten years, with revenue and profit both back at decade-old levels. Greater China directly operated stores fell by a net 138 to 3,310, same-store sales declining low-to-mid double digits. Cash and equivalents fell 54.9% to ¥640 million.

The squeeze has three jaws: the supply chain is heavily dependent on Nike and Adidas while the brands themselves push direct-to-consumer; the category has rotated toward Anta and Li-Ning; and discount competition keeps deepening. Against Topsports, analysts see a clear gap in consumer operations, brand storytelling and digital capability. The counter-bet is new labels — Korea's XEXYMIX (exclusive Greater China distribution from December 2023), Germany's Dynafit (China agency from July 2025). Management has moved from cautious contraction to what it calls active slimming.