**Author | Lin Mu                            ****Editor | Wu Yue                            **Image Source | Visual China

“No growth in a company means nothing; growth is the best corporate culture.” At the end of January, Ding Shizhong, Chairman of Anta Group’s Board of Directors, confidently stated at the 2025 annual summary meeting. That day, he wore a white sports hoodie with the words “Win with Products, Win with Management,” and delivered a speech titled “Good Products Win the Change, Understanding Management to Win the Battle,” emphasizing that the secret to Anta’s 35 years of success has always been good products and management expertise.

2025 marks Anta’s 35th anniversary. Despite industry-wide pressure, Anta delivered a solid performance that year. For the full year of 2025, Anta’s main brand and FILA saw single-digit growth, while all other brands, including KOLON and Descente, experienced retail sales growth of 45%–50% year-over-year.

That year, acquisitions remained one of Anta’s key strategies. On one hand, acquisitions accelerated; on the other, the effects of earlier mergers and acquisitions became clearer in the financial reports. In the first half of 2025, brands acquired through M&A contributed over half of Anta’s revenue.

Ding Shizhong denies being a “merger and acquisition fanatic,” claiming he “is not in investment, but in real industry.” The revitalization of multiple acquired brands also proves that Anta is not only good at acquiring brands but also capable of growing and strengthening them.

Still Accelerating “Buy, Buy, Buy”

Ding Shizhong and Anta’s 2025 journey began with an investment.

On January 3, 2025, Anta purchased approximately 1.7% of South Korea’s fashion e-commerce company MUSINSA on the secondary market for about 500 billion won (roughly 264 million RMB). This investment signaled the start of their cooperation. Seven months later, a joint venture called “MUSINSA China” was established, with Anta holding 40% and MUSINSA holding 60%.

MUSINSA is dubbed “Korean version of Vipshop,” hosting around 8,000 Korean fashion brands, making it Korea’s largest local trend fashion platform. Industry insiders generally believe this investment marked Anta’s official extension from professional sports into the fashion lifestyle sector.

In April, Anta made another move, acquiring the German outdoor brand Jack Wolfskin for $290 million (about 2.129 billion RMB). This was Anta’s first full acquisition.

Many outdoor enthusiasts are familiar with Jack Wolfskin. Founded in 1981, this outdoor brand was repeatedly sold due to poor management, leading to a dilution of its brand value. This acquisition fit Anta’s criteria for target selection. After acquiring Jack Wolfskin, Anta finally filled a gap in the outdoor segment beyond Arc’teryx and KOLON.

According to the timeline, in the first half of 2025, Anta also acquired a company called “Kaiseng Sports.” Details were not extensively disclosed, only noting in the interim report that they are “simultaneously forming a joint management team and developing a new 3–5 year brand revival plan.”

Later, just before the Lunar New Year of 2026, Anta successfully finalized the acquisition of PUMA’s parent company. According to the announcement, Anta will invest €1.506 billion (about 12.278 billion RMB) for a 29.06% stake, becoming PUMA’s single largest shareholder, with all funds coming from internal cash reserves.

In recent years, Anta’s “buy, buy, buy” strategy is no longer new. However, the narrative of acquisitions in 2025 reveals some differences.

First, Anta’s acquisition pace has clearly accelerated. Over its 35-year history, whether acquiring brand operations in China or direct acquisitions, Anta has made a total of 10 major moves. Four of these occurred in 2025, totaling nearly 15 billion RMB.

Second, the approach to acquisitions has evolved. In earlier years, when funds were tighter, Anta mostly formed joint ventures with brands, such as FILA, Descente, and KOLON. As its financial strength grew, Anta began acquiring with consortiums, like Arc’teryx’s parent company, Amer Sports. Now, with the PUMA deal, Anta is using its own cash directly.

Third, Anta’s ambitions are expanding. If acquiring Descente, Arc’teryx, and Jack Wolfskin was aimed at avoiding head-to-head competition with giants like Nike, and instead focusing on niche, specialized segments, then the acquisition of PUMA signals a potential shift toward direct competition with industry leaders.

Continuing to Dominate Xiamen’s Richest

Among the four listed sportswear companies in Hong Kong stocks, Ding Shizhong is the youngest leader but holds high prestige.

Years ago, a widely circulated video showed the eldest son of Jiumuwang’s chairman during his wedding, walking to the main stage while singing the classic Minnan song “Ai Pin Cai Hui Ying” (“Only Those Who Strive Will Win”). Ding Shizhong was at the forefront of the procession.

This scene persisted into 2025. The Hurun Rich List 2025 ranks Ding Shizhong with a personal wealth of 50 billion RMB, placing him 112th, maintaining his position as Xiamen’s richest person. Most of the other prominent figures from that wedding are not on the list.

Also on the list, Ding Shizhong’s brother Ding Shijia, sister Ding Yali, and cousin Wang Wenmo are all named, with personal wealth of 47.5 billion RMB, 15.5 billion RMB, and 14 billion RMB respectively. In comparison, Li Ning and the founder of Xtep Group, Ding Shui Bo, have fortunes of 10.5 billion RMB and 6.5 billion RMB.

Undoubtedly, the foundation of the Ding family’s wealth is Anta Group. As of the close on February 10, Anta’s stock price was HKD 83.2 per share, with a market cap of HKD 2,327 billion—four times that of Li Ning, 15.8 times that of Xtep, and 19.88 times that of 361 Degrees. In the first half of 2025, Anta’s revenue reached 38.54 billion RMB, 1.4 times the combined revenue of Li Ning, Xtep, and 361 Degrees, not including Amer Sports’ performance.

Unlike the “powerful presence” of Anta Group, Ding Shizhong has been relatively low-profile over the past year.

Since stepping down as CEO and remaining Chairman in early 2023, Ding has focused mainly on acquisitions, brand synergy, and thinking about Anta’s future. Throughout 2025, he appeared publicly only a few times, but each message was clear. For example, in April 2025, he participated in a research and exchange event at Donghua University to promote university-industry collaboration in sports technology—an industry consensus. In August, at Anta’s earnings release and annual summary, Ding reaffirmed the company’s global development goals.

Meanwhile, Ding’s son, Ding Shaoxiang, has begun to take on more responsibilities and appears more frequently in public.

Born in 1995, Ding Shaoxiang’s career path closely mirrors his father’s. After gaining experience and understanding at the grassroots level, he began managing Descente China in 2017. Industry observers see placing the second generation in high-potential sub-brands as a way to give him greater innovation and autonomy.

In 2025, Ding Shaoxiang delivered a solid performance: sales of Descente China surpassed 10 billion RMB, a year ahead of schedule, making it the third brand in the group to break the 10-billion mark after Anta and FILA.

He then took on a new task: starting in 2026, the group’s women’s sports brand MAIA ACTIVE will report directly to him. This indicates his management scope and influence within the group are further expanding.

Still a Long Way from “The World’s Anta”

Anta’s goal is “not to be China’s Nike, but to be the world’s Anta.” This vision was proposed by Ding Shizhong in 2005.

An investor once mentioned that inside Anta, there is a brand positioning map and a blueprint for entering different countries. The internal consensus is clear on “which foreign brands to acquire at what stage, which trend categories to fill, or which countries to enter.”

Over the years, through “buying,” combined with group-level empowerment in supply chain, digital systems, and talent development, Anta has gradually narrowed the gap with industry giants, surpassing Adidas and Nike to top the Chinese domestic market in 2021 and 2022.

However, on the global stage, the gap remains significant. In the first half of 2025, Anta Group, including Amer Sports, had total revenue close to 58 billion RMB, still far behind Adidas’s nearly 100 billion RMB and even more distant from Nike.

It’s clear that “buying” remains a powerful weapon in Anta’s pursuit of giants. But this is only the beginning.

“First, Anta needs to develop its main brand, Anta, to avoid the situation of ‘strong external expansion, weak internal growth,’” an analyst told Caijing Tianxia. A retail survey previously showed that if Anta’s terminal discounts exceed 25%, performance declines. This indicates there is still significant room to strengthen the brand power of the main brand. In Q4 2025, this segment experienced negative growth year-over-year.

Second, the long-standing issues of multi-brand synergy and management remain. In 2025, the Arc’teryx incident once again raised concerns that after numerous acquisitions, Anta might lack the cultural understanding and professional management talent needed to operate high-end brands. As the number of brands in Anta’s portfolio grows, managing multiple brands, avoiding internal competition, and establishing clear positioning are key challenges for Ding Shizhong.

Finally, Ding’s true vision of globalization is not just about capital going abroad. In his words, Anta’s globalization is a three-step process: first, excel at international brands in China; second, go global with those brands; third, help Chinese brands like Anta go international.

In 2025, Anta announced a plan to open 1,000 stores in Southeast Asia over the next three years. On February 13, 2026, on the eve of the Lunar New Year, Anta’s first North American store opened in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, marking its entry into the high-end market.

Starting from this point, Anta and Ding Shizhong continue on their path of “building a global brand.”