Chinese operation of Mizuno Corporation

According to an article of the July 7th edition of Nihon Kezai Shinbun, Mizuno Corporation (Mizuno) , a leading sporting goods maker in Japan shutter around 200 outlets and shrink the number of total stores to 700, down more than 20% from a year earlier. Mizuno's sales in China remained at low 9 billion yen compared with sales target by 10% in 2009.

 
Mizuno Corporation

Mizuno had both 260 directly managed stores in department stores mainly and 642 franchise shops at the end of 2008. The incoming restructuring plan in Chinese operation would be taken in 2009 due to disappointing sales after the Beijing Olympics.

Mizuno rapidly increased its presence in China over a few years. It has employed marketing initiatives as supplying shoes to Chinese Olympic table tennis players and sponsoring China's baseball league for the Beijing Olympics but never kept up with international major brands Nike Inc. in the US and Adidas AG in Germany with huge advertising budgets.