High-end women's sportswear, competition in the Chinese market has reignited

The competition for high-end yoga apparel in the Chinese market, after a period of lull, has been pushed to a new height during the just-concluded National Day holiday.

Almost at the same time, even in the same business district, the first NikeSKIMS pop-up store in Greater China opened at the core location on the first floor of HKRI Taikoo Hui in Shanghai; one kilometer away at Shanghai Zhangyuan, the highly anticipated ALO finally opened its first pop-up store in the Chinese mainland market.

Almost both brands invited their top-tier celebrity lineups to their store opening parties on the evening of September 28. Kim Kardashian appeared at the NikeSKIMS store at HKRI Taikoo Hui, while ALO also welcomed the brand's global ambassador Zhao Lusi and other stars to the scene.

Then came the National Day long holiday, the "grand scene" of queuing for shopping at the two stores became a widely discussed topic on social media. And the clothing with the two brand-new logos has gradually appeared on the streets of first-tier cities.

On the eve of the National Day holiday, the two American sports brands with an average price of over 1,000 yuan entered the Chinese market in the form of pop-up stores, targeting China's long-dormant high-end women's sportswear market.

Source: ALO

As for NikeSKIMS, Nike positions this new brand under its banner as a "brand new brand", and launches new products at an extremely efficient pace, which can be regarded as another Jordan of Nike. As for ALO's entry into China, its "8 stores in 7 cities" plan in core business districts is almost unmatched among new sports brands entering the Chinese market.

But the question is, is China's high-end sports yoga apparel market experiencing rapid growth?

According to the data from Jiuqian Middle Platform, based on the GMV monitoring of high-end yoga and fitness apparel on three major platforms Tmall/Douyin/JD, the GMV of the high-end line in 2026 increased by 28.3% year-on-year. However, the overall growth rate of the yoga apparel category has dropped from over 20% in the previous two years to single digits.

In other words, the overall growth rate of yoga apparel in the Chinese market is slowing down, but the head competition of mid-to-high-end brands is intensifying.

The accelerated entry of brands such as NikeSKIMS and ALO aims to seize stock opportunities in the high-end market.

Source: Nike

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Opening new stores, signing brand ambassadors

Competition in high-end women's sportswear rekindles

Even in the current period when overall sports consumption is under pressure, China's high-end sportswear market has almost ushered in a "store opening boom" in the first half of the year.

The most typical example is ALO, which entered the Chinese market. It officially announced in September that it will enter seven cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Chengdu, and will open stores one after another from 2026 to 2027. The first batch of stores will be located in multiple core cities and landmark business districts, including HKRI Taikoo Hui in Shanghai, Zhangyuan in Shanghai, China World Mall in Beijing, Hangzhou Intime in77, Lee Gardens in Hong Kong, Galaxy Macau, Shenzhen Bay MixC, and Taikoo Li Chengdu.

Even before the physical stores opened, with its e-commerce platform launched for only one month, ALO has successively announced cooperation with top-tier artists such as Zhao Lusi and Wang Yibo.

For a brand that seems not to have completed the 0-1 stage in the Chinese market, this high-profile, high-investment approach of ALO is almost rare.

Zhao Lusi, Global Ambassador of ALO

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Nike, which has always been cautious about directly operated store openings, has successively opened NikeSKIMS pop-up stores in core locations in Shanghai and Tokyo, demonstrating the brand's determination to revitalize the women's sportswear market even in the recovery period.

In addition, similar new brand store opening information is not uncommon. Vuori, another sports lifestyle brand from California, launched its accelerated store opening plan throughout 2026. It has successively opened stores in Shenzhen Luohu MixC and MixC World, opened two stores at SKP and SKP-S in Beijing, and entered Hangzhou MixC for the first time.

Coupled with the first Shanghai store of the British high-end yoga apparel brand SweatyBetty, and MAIA ACTIVE's rapid expansion in the Northeast China market, all seem to show the "hot scene" of China's high-end yoga apparel market.

Vuori's first store in South China

But another undeniable fact is that judging from the 2% growth rate of lululemon's Chinese market in its latest quarterly report, as well as the successive exit of affordable Chinese yoga apparel e-commerce brands from the market, the "high-growth era" of China's yoga apparel market has temporarily come to an end.

When ALO and Vuori start to call themselves more "lifestyle brands", and when Nike invites Kim Kardashian instead of legendary female athletes for cooperation, it probably shows that the competition for high-end women's sportswear is not necessarily fighting for the stock market of yoga apparel, but very likely for the growth market of fast fashion.

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The stock of yoga apparel

The increment of fast fashion

Judging from the opening scenes of NikeSKIMS and ALO, there seems to be no large-scale yoga sports activities anymore, replaced by gatherings of fashion stars and influencers.

ALO uses the on-site setting of beachside swimming pools, wellness massages and cocktails to represent the brand's healthy luxury lifestyle, while Vuori's opening activities no longer only focus on sports, but hope to expand into more sports categories, and then promote the California coastal lifestyle that it also advocates.

Even in terms of fabric, version and SKU, ALO's fashion label is obviously far more prominent than its sports attributes. Even though the fabric quality has been widely criticized, its fashionable version and color matching still attract many urban female users. Vuori's fabric makes it more comfortable for daily wear, and even NikeSKIMS' fashionable version looks more like a "figure-hugging" sports fashion brand.

They don't necessarily have to compete with lululemon, the top brand in the industry, for market share, but are more reminiscent of the sportswear version of Miu Miu, the sportswear version of Ralph Lauren, or the sports fashion version of SKIMS.

High-end women's sportswear is not just competing for market share from yoga apparel, but seeking incremental growth from fashion women's wear.

SweatBetty

The lifestyle-oriented development of sportswear is almost following the same trend as sports shoes.

According to an earlier report by McKinsey, the wearing proportion of sports shoes in North America has exceeded 50% of all footwear. In other words, wearing sports shoes from brands such as Adidas and Nike accounts for half of all footwear. People wear sports shoes not just for sports, as sports shoes are perfectly suitable for daily commuting.

From the perspective of women's sportswear, the popularity of yoga pants or wide-leg pants, as well as the rise of ballet style and tennis skirts, are all like the re-popularization of female aesthetics from different eras.

The challenges faced by ZARA and H&M are probably not competition from another ZARA, but the popularity of brands such as lululemon and ALO, which have seized the position of fast fashion and women's wear in the wardrobe. Just as outdoor wear has taken the place of men's suits, or sports shoes have taken the place of high heels.

Source: Adidas Originals

Even from the category growth within Adidas, the fashion lifestyle represented by Originals is increasingly targeting the same group of users as the brand's sports performance category. Originals can be very sporty, and Adidas training wear can also be very fashionable.

From the perspective of new high-end sports brands such as On Running, HOKA and Salomon, all of them are focusing on both professionalism and fashion. Their presence in the sports field has laid the brand's foundation, and the path to a lifestyle-oriented orientation allows the brands to sell their footwear and apparel to a broader market.

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China's high-end women's sportswear

Competition has just begun

The women's yoga apparel category only started to develop slowly when lululemon was founded in Vancouver 30 years ago. Compared with other sportswear categories, the market expansion of women's sports yoga apparel has just begun.

From the perspective of the North American market, the trend of market concentration towards top players in high-end women's sportswear remains obvious, while for the European market, the growth path of yoga apparel compared with outdoor apparel still has a long way to go. Even in the huge Chinese market, large-scale yoga apparel brands can be counted on one's fingers.

NikeSKIMS

Even if ALO and NikeSKIMS have successively entered the Chinese market, the expansion path of China's high-end women's sportswear still has a long way to go. Women's sportswear has become a standard category for high-end sports brands, and the new generation of young women's understanding of sports lifestyle may go far beyond yoga and fitness.

Looking at Adidas, which has a brand history of more than 70 years, and Nike, which has a history of more than 50 years, sports brands need to go through cycles counted in decades, including intergenerational changes in sports methods, aesthetic styles, and the ups and downs of consumption waves. For sports yoga apparel, which is still a niche category at present, brand competition has just begun.

This article is from WeChat official account "GymSquare" (ID: GymSquare), written by Qili, authorized for release by 36Kr.