Bosideng: How to Revitalize the Brand?

By 2017, the comprehensive multi-brand Chinese clothing manufacturer Bosideng International Holdings Limited (Bosideng), founded in 1976, had become famous for its main business of down jackets. After almost 40 years of rapid development, Bosideng had become the top brand in the Chinese down apparel industry and had established strong brand equity. However, the company’s performance had been in decline since 2013. Faced with increasingly fierce competition, Bosideng had gradually lost its appeal to younger customers, who were uninterested in its unfashionable designs. The reduced profit level threatened Bosideng’s further development. In 2017, Bosideng’s chairperson and president was considering how to overcome this dilemma by revitalizing the brand. He hoped to strengthen the position of the Bosideng brand in the Chinese down jacket market and even in the global market in the future. However, he was not sure which approach would be most effective: should he maintain Bosideng’s existing brand values or invest in rebranding?

This case is suitable for use in undergraduate- and postgraduate-level courses on strategic management, brand management, and marketing management. It can be used to illustrate and discuss the strategic changes or marketing strategies of enterprises in a development bottleneck within a competitive marketplace. Through a discussion of the development of a traditional Chinese clothing company and its brand dilemma, the case helps students deepen their understanding of brand management. Students will learn how to effectively build brand equity and adopt marketing strategies to revitalize an aging brand. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:<ul><li>Describe the effects and opportunities, for companies, of changes in the market environment.</li><li>Define the concept of brand equity, and explain approaches to building brand equity.</li><li>Identify the characteristics and causes of brand aging.</li><li>Describe methods of brand revitalization and related marketing strategies.</li></ul>

• brand aging
• brand management
• Bosideng