NBA Sells Men’s Hygiene Products in China
While walking the streets in Shanghai I constantly keep my eye roving in all directions to see what variances I can discover between the NBA presence in the USA and China. After all it’s the little things in life that makes life interesting.
The first thing I noticed happened during the first night I was here. After playing some pick up basketball I was having dinner with a close friend who ordered a Tsingtao beer to help extinguish the fire of some delicious Hunan food..
Tsingtao is China’s top selling beer, and undisputed Chinese champion of beers. It is like Budweiser is the king of beers stateside, but in all actuality, tastes much better.
Budweiser is the official beer of the NBA in the United States.
So why all this rambling about beer?
Tsingtao happens to also be the official beer of the NBA. So, the NBA has two official beers?
To put this in perspective, Jerry West’s logoman image can be found on billions of bottles and cans all over China. Clever move NBA, but why not keep the loyalty to Budweiser here in China? My guess is the NBA realizes, like the rest of the world, that Budweiser simply sucks.
The reason I share this story with you is because at the time my friend half-jokingly stated that if you slap an NBA logo on a product in China, you can sell it like a wildfire. OK enough about the beer, more about the wildfire.
The point of this entire piece is to show you not about endorsers using NBA logos, but to cover and enlighten you about products manufactured by the NBA for sale in China.
While seeking out the wireless router I am using to publish and syndicate this piece, I had to make a pit-stop at a Watson’s drugstore for a bottle of water. While there I realized I had run out of shaving gel (something I conveniently try to forget until my wife inconveniently reminds me about) and trotted my way through many pushy locals to grab whatever inexpensive yet recognizable and, most importantly, trustworthy brand I could find.
What blew my mind was what I discovered next.
Careful, skin care comes with a costly price tag!
The NBA has its very own exclusive line of men’s personal hygiene products.
The friendly woman working proudly tried to tell me this product was extremely popular in the United States, and had just arrived in Shanghai for the Chinese people to enjoy and consume.
I was puzzled.
I have spent my entire life in the United States, and have never heard or seen of such products before. Ever.
The NBA line had a huge portion of the meager shelf space dedicated to men’s hygiene within the Watsons shop as if the NBA skin care line was Shaq, and all other brands were normal to undersized sized NBA centers, metaphorically speaking.
This vast array of NBA men’s products features a deodorant, skin lotion, and skin cleansing 3-bottle system.
The NBA even got cheeky and named the system “Transition: Skincare For the Modern Man” calling their product comfortable and cool. I could imagine the slogans right there “Just like the NBA transition game, you too can make action packed impact on the life of your skin” or something along those lines.
The system works in a 3 bottle sequence:
Bottle #1: Transition: Charcoal Detoxifying Cleaner
Bottle #2: Invigorating Face Scrub
Bottle #3: Abyssal Mineral Clay Cleanser
I was in disbelief. A NBA skin care product in the US would be laughed off the shelves.
So, it turns out my friend was correct. These products were selling well, as I saw large gaps in the inventory displays near the front entrances of the store.
These products were priced higher than well known established brands such as Nivea and Biore by about 10-15 RMB (The Chinese Yuan) per bottle at 95 RMB apiece. That’s around $12.00 each. Pretty heavy pricing if you ask me.
To summarize this entire shopping experience, the NBA has selected China as the venue to venture into the skin care market, knowing damn well that anything they pump their logo on will sell in bulk. Whether or not this would work anywhere else matters not. It works in China, and the NBA will continue to exploit their popularity and profit.
The NBA has created a sales strategy for the retail sales force of China to misinform customers that their products are bigger than Godzilla in the United States while selling them at a higher price point than products I know work well and entirely trust purchasing.
The hype is working, and I only pray that the players can use this sort of leverage to make a penny of this during the upcoming CBA negotiations.
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Mon, Apr 12, 2010 by Adam Sedie
Exclusives, News