American sports brand Skechers has announced Chinese actor Li Yifeng as its ambassador in China in a video on its official Weibo account on Friday.
As one of the most famous Chinese actors, 30-year-old Li has more than 38 million followers on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter. Despite debuting as a singer in 2007, Li became a household name in his TV series, including Swords of Legends, The Lost Tomb, Noble Aspirations and Sparrow. He also won Best Supporting Actor of the 33rd Hundred Flowers Awards, an important film festival in China, for his good performance in the film Mr. Six. Due to his great popularity in China, Li entered the 2015 Forbes Chinese Celebrity list, placing at 9th with an estimated revenue of 69 million yuan.
As a world-famous sports brand, Skechers entered the Chinese market in 2007. With its 2,260 Chinese stores, the brand’s sales in China reached US $977 million in 2016, up by astonishingly 89 percent from 2015. The Chinese market has become a very important one for Skethers as its sales are already more than one-fourth of its domestic market, which grows only by five percent year-on-year since 2016.
According to CEO of Skechers China Willie Tan, the company plans to have more than 4,000 stores in China by the end of 2018.
Proofread by William Logsdon