(Yicai Global) Aug. 10 -- Anta Sports Products brought to the market earlier this week a high-performance running shoe originally designed for professional athletes, as the Chinese sporting goods maker bids for a slice of the country’s growing market for high-end sportswear.

The Olympic Champion shoe, developed for members of China’s national sports team to wear when training for five to 10 kilometer track events, sells on e-commerce platform JD.com for CNY699 (USD103) a pair.

Jointly developed by Anta and telecoms equipment giant Huawei Technologies, the shoe has excellent cushioning, providing maximum protection from any potential injury, according to the company.

Xiamen-based Anta, which sponsored China’s national team during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, has embraced a strategy of launching new products with cutting-edge technologies to the mass consumer market.

“Ever since the Beijing Winter Olympics, consumers have more closely associated our brand with the Olympics,” said Chief Marketing Officer Zhu Chenye, citing Anta’s e-commerce data, adding that “high-end clients have increased rapidly since then.”

Anta also provided the competition clothing for freestyle star skier Eileen Gu, who won multiple medals for China at Beijing 2022, as well as the competition shoes for Chinese skeleton bobsledders.

The sponsorships have brought a mass of new followers to Anta, with the firm’s trading volume on e-commerce platform Tmall jumping 35 percent from a year earlier following the Games.

Like other Chinese sports gear makers, Anta has been chasing after leading foreign rivals in recent years, steadily narrowing the gap. Its share of China’s sports shoe and apparel market rose 1 percentage point last year to 16.2 percent, surpassing Adidas’ 14.8 percent and closing in on Nike, according to market researcher Euromonitor International.

The increase was partly a result of the company’s higher spending on research and development in recent years. Since its Hong Kong listing in 2007, Anta has invested more than CNY5.6 billion (USD828.8 million) in new product development, Zhu said. That is expected to reach more than CNY20 billion (USD3 billion) by 2030. 

Anta hopes to cooperate with universities and research institutions and Chinese tech companies including Huawei to this end, its marketing chief said.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Emmi Laine