How ANTA & Kyrie Irving Are Shaking Up the US Sneaker Market

Liam:

We had, like, first event, thousands of, like, thousand people show up, shoes sell out in seconds, and you’re just like — is it me? Is it something else? Is it the box? Is the team very big here or not really?

Christian:

No, no. It’s 20 people, 25 people.

Liam:

Wow. What, now the plan is to just keep growing?

Christian:

Yes. Aggressively. Very aggressively. That’s the Anta way. And to give you the context, we’re number 3 in the world. We’re one of the youngest companies, started in 1991. I was born in 1991, so Anta’s the same age as me. That’s the one thing we have in common. But Chairman Ding is aggressive, and we just bought 29% of Puma. I compare us to Disney in a lot of ways — you grow through acquisition. The same way Disney picked up Pixar and Lucasfilm, we’ll take a Puma, we’ll take an Amer Sports with all those brands — Wilson, Arc’teryx, Salomon. Keep growing.

Liam:

We are recording, so — we’ll do a rundown. Christian, incredibly excited for today’s episode. Thanks for making it out.

Christian:

Likewise. Thanks for having me.

Liam:

You’ve had an incredible career through onto now. Maybe give everyone a quick background on who you are.

Christian:

Yeah, absolutely. Born and raised Los Angeles, California. This is home. I played sports at an early age. My mom was a group exercise instructor, so music and movement has always been key to who I was. If you would’ve asked me when I was 17 years old, graduating high school, what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would’ve gave you the Jerry Maguire answer — show me the money — and I wanted to be a sports agent. I started my career interning for the Pac-10. I sound like a dinosaur when I say that, as now it’s the Big Ten and it’s all completely moved. My career’s kind of been a snowball — working initially with the Pac-10, then with AEG. Eventually got to CAA my junior year, and I said, “All right, I’m an agent.” I was working at CAA, and that was super fun. Worked with Nigel Houston and Chris Bosch and those guys. In my senior year, had the opportunity to intern at Adidas and fell in love with the football team and started doing grassroots basketball and football.

Liam:

So that’s when you got into the world of sports?

Christian:

Yeah, that’s when I officially got into the world of sports. I graduated college at University of Oregon, ran track there. And I said, “Okay, do I wanna become an agent, go back to LA, and go sit in the mail room, or do I wanna go do fun things at the brand level?” I ended up picking Adidas, and that was kind of off to the races. I ended up being their first newsroom hire — newsroom is social media PR. I was doing Instagram, Snapchat, Adidas Football US, I started with my thumbs. It blossomed from there into digital marketing, brand marketing on the football side. I spent some time at the National Football League for a season working on branding — Super Bowl 53 or 54, one of those in there. The 28-3 Tom Brady comeback — I worked on all the decor for that. Super Bowl in Houston, amazing opportunity. I worked on the product side of Adidas, worked with Snoop, Pat Mahomes, Yeezy, Pharrell, all those great collaborators in the Adidas portfolio. I spent some time working with Jerry Rice and his family over at Goatfield as their head of marketing. And then — I jokingly say this — I was doing my 200-hour yoga teacher training. I’m also a yoga teacher on the side, if you guys want to come to a class on Sundays. I was doing my yoga teacher training in Bali, and I get this LinkedIn message that says, “Hey, we’re hiring a head of marketing for Anta in the United States.” I said, “Who? What?” A quick Google search, find out Klay Thompson, Kyrie Irving, and I said, “Oh, okay, this is interesting.” I’ll take the call. It was 10 PM at night, of course, because we’re right at China hours. And they said, “Yeah, this is real. We signed Kyrie, you gotta launch a brand.” Getting hired, I would call it December 1st to us launching the brand that March — 90 days later, went from 0 to 100.

Liam:

Launching here in the US though, right? I didn’t realize they’re the third-largest in the world behind Adidas and Nike.

Christian:

Correct. Yes. Also younger than both of those brands — just being 35 years old, starting in 1991. But China, we are number one in China, above and beyond anything else. Bigger than Nike, probably 10 times what Li-Ning is. They brought us in to globalize the brand, to Westernize the brand. We’ve done a lot in North America, some stuff in Europe as well, and continuing to grow the brand outside of China.

Liam:

And you just opened the first store, right? I saw the photos and the crowd was spilling out.

Christian:

That’s just one of those pinch-me moments. Anta’s known for retail. We have over 12,000 stores across broader China. If you go to Shanghai in the Bund, you’ll see 5 different Anta stores within one mile — that is really our strength. So for us to have our first retail presence here in Beverly Hills, on Beverly Drive, it’s just special. To be part of the Anta cool kids club, but also to show that strength of retail.

Liam:

So market entry into the US — you’ve been charged with that in many ways, joining a very small team here. What’s the game plan? Is it to win the game of awareness and just have everyone know about you, or how do you compete?

Christian:

Yeah, great question. We’re not naive to the aspect that we know we’re strong but not known. It’s almost like the sleeping giant, or the monster underneath the bed — a little Monsters Inc. reference for you. For us it’s how to build that brand awareness. It’s disruption, at the end of the day. People know the legacy players — Nike, Adidas, Lulu, Puma — but they haven’t heard of ANTA. Using Kyrie Irving almost as a Trojan horse allows us to enter into the conversation of sports, especially on the basketball side. And obviously Kyrie is a mega star in his own right. Klay Thompson, another one of our signed assets. It allows us to enter into the conversation. From there we can pivot and say, “Hey, if you like our basketball shoes, let me show you running, let me show you lifestyle, let me show you some of our outdoor and trail stuff.” Awareness is the name of the game, and then continuing to grow our overall approach across retail.

Liam:

As you launch into the US, what do you think is the number one thing you have to get right over the next 12 months?

Christian:

Community. People matter, at the end of the day. Your first impression is always your best impression. As my personal yoga teacher side says — greeting people with their name as they walk through — those are principles I take to myself in work environments. The first activation we did with ANTA was at Sneaker Politics in Deep Ellum, about two and a half years ago, and we had probably 6 or 700 people flooding into the streets. We had a block party. Just seeing the embrace the City of Dallas has given me as an individual, someone who walked in two and a half years ago and nobody knew me, and now I walk into the Mavs arena and they’re like, “Hey, Christian” — we just made it personal. We tried to make a connection with the consumers. Kai is the most personable athlete you’ll ever meet. He always asks how your family is, considers his fans to be the tribe and brings that together. As marketers we try to bring that extension, and it’s a bit of a snowball. The people I met day one tell a friend, who tells a friend, who tells a friend, and that snowball’s gotten bigger and bigger. Whether it was New York Fashion Week last fall, or the store opening, those same people keep showing up. Some of them don’t even live in Los Angeles — they’re traveling to come be part of our events, and that’s the cool part.

Liam:

How do you make community actually work? Because I feel like it’s a buzzword. At a leadership level or in the boardroom, it’s like — all right, where are we actually investing?

Christian:

Absolutely. There are different communities that we’re tapping into. There’s your influencer community — the people really driving the voice and narrative of the category. There’s your grassroots community — the kids that are truly playing basketball, the future stars of tomorrow. There’s the NBA community. We’re being aggressive with the different athletes we’ve been trying to sign, and I’ve pitched a bunch of different athletes over the past couple of years, and that’s gotten around between the agent community and the athlete community. So it’s almost like little micro pockets that we’re consistently going after. You get an event like All Star where everything really comes together — you have the best all-stars, you have the city of Los Angeles, you have high school kids being involved — and it really comes together in this almost Venn diagram of great synergy.

Liam:

You work with so many amazing talent across the US and globally. How do you know who to work with? Is it alignment to product? Alignment to community? How do you measure their success at a business level?

Christian:

Absolutely. A couple years ago everyone was like “brand, brand, brand” — almost a buzzword. People realize that followers don’t mean money at the end of the day. Now everyone’s like, “I want to create a business.” You’re seeing the extension of these celebrity personalities starting to create their own products, white label or merchandise. We’re looking for people who are able to have a captive audience and connect with our audience in an authentic way. The worst thing you can do is get somebody who’s selling something and they don’t even believe in the product. I find influencers naturally on my own on Instagram — I’m scrolling around and I see someone who’s either talking about the product or interested in sneakers, I reach out to them and say, “Hey, have you heard of ANTA?” I build that relationship, we talk shop a little bit, and I say, “Hey, I’d love to extend a partnership with you and figure something out that makes sense.” I’d rather find you before you find me. God bless my email and LinkedIn — they are flooded at the end of the day.

Liam:

I wanna go back to your time at GOAT, where you tripled revenue in the first year. If you look back on your time there, what were the levers that you pulled to make that possible?

Christian:

Paid media. Growth marketing is this ubiquitous term — what is it, really? I’d done some paid back in the Adidas days, but being more hands-on in a very small boutique business, with Mr. Rice’s family — his son Logic, TJ, and his daughter Jaqee — we turned on paid media in a major way both with Amazon and direct consumer through goatfield.com. Part of it was just finding the right influencers that could create content that really resonated with the audience. Second, we had a couple of great agency partners optimizing our ads. We were playing around with different hooks. We did a campaign where we were trying to highlight GOATs within their own field — we took a customizer, Marcus Rivero, Soles By Sir, an artist, a musician. We did a day in their life, showed how Goat Fuel helped them throughout their creative process, and really storytold around that, using them as pillars of connectivity. People found a connection with them, and using media to amplify that really blossomed our overall audience. And we did SMS marketing for the first time — people were like, “Why should we do that? We’ve got Klaviyo email.” We did SMS and it did triple what any email did. It was a baseball campaign and the sales were astronomical. Just be willing to continuously try things.

Liam:

How do you foster a culture of experimentation at ANTA today?

Christian:

You gotta try things. You gotta be willing to take risks. The best money spent is sometimes the money you put something out there with and say, “Well, it’s not great,” just give it a try. On the ANTA side, you can’t play in the safe space. NBA All Star was here, and Kai came up to us and said, “I wanna do a family fun day.” You look at All Star — it’s parties, brunches, it’s 21 plus, the biggest stars of the day. And Kai’s like, “I wanna be with my family and my kids, and bring families together.” We put together this family fun day at the pier with our agency Team Epiphany, and it was so counterculture to what everyone was doing, and people just loved it. It stood out because it was different. I always like to say, you gotta zig when everyone else is zagging.

Liam:

Back on your point around SMS marketing being such a needle mover — how are you thinking about that today?

Christian:

Honestly, as a consumer myself, I get tons of emails that just stay in the Google spam folder. I’m a big concert goer — I have almost every single artist’s number tagged in, so whether it’s John Summit or Dom Dolla, I get their message. Rufus Du Sol just launched tickets in LA — almost impossible to get. When they sent that message, I was on it immediately. That way of communicating is just so much more direct. I think SMS just hasn’t reached that threshold where you’re like, “Enough, STOP.” I would highly advise it — it’s not new by any means, but you gotta check all your bases.

Liam:

There’s a huge push around AI now, particularly around personalization in SMS, email, on your website, in your content. How are you thinking about AI at ANTA?

Christian:

AI is something I personally use day to day — whether I’m composing something and I want someone to check it, or I’m putting together a marketing plan and I put the prompt in and say, “Hey, give me hard feedback on this.” And it does. We used Instant about back end of last year, brought on by one of our agency partners, Richardson Saint. After the first month I think we did 6 digits within the first month of December. I was talking to Izu, the CEO, and I was like, “What exactly is in this?” And he said, “They take the platform, they look at when you’re shopping, the time of day, all your shopping habits.” It’s taking all this data and computing it in seconds to make you a stronger marketer, more timely and more intentional. A normal person can’t do that. You’re taking thousands of data points and simplifying them in seconds to become a better marketer. I do think there are some pitfalls when it comes to creative though — how many brands have gotten blasted over AI creative? Equinox came out with a huge AI campaign to start the year and it was a bloodbath. Creatively, I think AI is in a tough place right now. With ANTA we’ve used AI on the creative side for some animation stuff that simplifies production work and allows our designers to work on more of the big picture.

Liam:

What do you think a lot of marketing teams get wrong?

Christian:

Hide behind money. I’ve had massive budgets, I’ve had tiny budgets. With the massive budgets you can hide behind big spend here, paid media there, big events — you’re not necessarily looking at a lot of the details. The ANTA finance department has pressed me on every proposal — “Hey, can you optimize this cost? Can you do more here?” And it’s made me a stronger marketer because every dollar became more meaningful. I’ve had campaigns where I was just like, “Oh, that’s a rounding error, sure,” and you’re just moving along. But being able to do more with less allows you to actually do more things. That intentionality with every dollar becomes a superpower because your dollar goes further.

Liam:

A lot of companies move the fastest when they’re slammed against the wall with time, money, not enough talent. How are you shaping the team at ANTA now?

Christian:

Being intentional with every single thing that we’re doing. It’s no secret we brought in Kyrie to lead the charge. It’s no secret why our first store is in Beverly Hills — building that infrastructure there. We started with anta.com as a really big driver, knowing that was going to be the moneymaker. We’re growing strategically within our overall retail footprint. We like to always use the phrase — you gotta crawl before you walk before you run. There’s a lot of times you wanna go 0 to 100 and you skip the steps, but you gotta be fundamental.

Liam:

Why is now the best time? A lot of people just don’t realize how big the brand is.

Christian:

The partnership makes sense, and it’s an appetite for growth — continuing to have that mindset of what is next. If you look at the global landscape right now, the world seems smaller than ever. There was probably an ignorance on my part that said, “Things that happen on Douyin and RedNote will never come over.” And we saw content we posted in China going viral in the United States — content that wasn’t even posted on Instagram or TikTok. What happens anywhere happens everywhere now.

Liam:

How do you balance the amount of effort that goes behind ecommerce versus in-store?

Christian:

From an omnichannel approach, you wanna hit consumers on every single touchpoint. I made this joke with our executives early on about the necessity of paid media. I said, “If you guys had a store in Times Square, you’d be paying a couple hundred thousand dollars in rent every day. But what does that rent buy you? It buys you the millions of people that go through Times Square every day that might see your store and say, ‘What’s ANTA? Let me go check it out.’” Paid media’s the same thing — except I’ve got a little more tailored approach that says, “I’m gonna go to you because you like Kyrie Irving or you’re interested in basketball shoes.” So we want our retail environments in high-traffic areas, and we want to do the same thing from a top-of-funnel standpoint within our marketing to drive that traffic and awareness. And the ability of a sales associate to personally connect with a consumer, to tell them about the brand, try on product, have that great in-store experience — it’s about closing that loop. On a Monday you had a great experience with the brand, we follow up Tuesday or Wednesday with an email or SMS.

Liam:

What are you doing with retention marketing today?

Christian:

Just email marketing for the most part. I think Instant’s a great platform that we need to come back to. We’re trying some different things right now, but retention has mainly been basic Meta, basic Google, email retargeting — probably efforts we could be doing a little bit better. But a huge focus on community, and loyalty is a big KPI for us. Getting number of subscribers, getting that CRM data banked. And then looking at purchasing history — are you into running shoes? What kind are you buying? Oh, you’re probably getting ready for a marathon. Let’s plan against that. We’re trying to get to know our consumers better with every interaction.

Liam:

Is there anything creative you’re doing around customer loyalty?

Christian:

Probably nothing out of the ordinary yet — we’re doing some specialized promotions. One of the big things I enjoy is making the connection between the digital and the physical. Every single event we have, our top consumers are getting special invites. I’ve actually gotten to know a lot of consumers personally online because they’ve come to our events, we’ve had personal chats and stayed in touch. That digital presence leaking into IRL — that’s a really cool thing for me to see.

Liam:

What about content creation? It seems like influencers are a big part of that strategy. How do you plan on getting in front of everyone?

Christian:

The biggest influencer we have is Mr. Irving. He is the splash, and as the marketing department, we’re the ripple. We react to what he does and try to make it bigger and bigger. But as it gets down to the tribe — the different influencers — it’s just building that natural relationship with them. They are obviously content creators, but how can I make their life easier? Can I bring them to an experience that gives them the ability to create unique content? Can I give them a product or set them up in a situation where they’re training for something? You need to set them up to be successful. One of my favorites — shout out Marcellus, lives in Sacramento — he’s doing this challenge where he’s trying to make a trick shot, and every time he hits this little pole behind his hoop he Cash Apps someone $25. It was around day 10 and he was wearing an ANTA shirt, and he ended up making the shot. It became a moment for us. I go on there on the ANTA handle and I say, “Must’ve been the shirt.” He engages with it. All of a sudden we kind of crashed his moment in the best way and said, “Gotta be the shirt.” It’s taking those natural, organic moments that happen every single day and asking how can we insert ourselves authentically.

Liam:

Do you think creating these moments is luck, or do you think you can create them?

Christian:

Planned reactive is the name of the game. You gotta move quick. The confetti shot — Jordan mentions that all the time. Right after you win the championship, what’s that first 30-second ad? It essentially says “win with the winners.” That was a great phrase we had with Adidas all the time — when your asset is at its highest point, have the Gatorade bottle right here, have the logo right here. Make that overall connection. You gotta set a calendar of being prepared for a couple of different moments throughout the year. The game is going on, you know you’re gonna have to create a piece of content out of this — you’re not sure what it is yet, but you’ve got the capacity. You have to anticipate these moments or you’ll never have them. The easy ones: what if you win a championship, what if you hit a certain accolade, birthdays, culture moments. The challenging ones are how do you take a piece of content and work it in a way that’s authentic — you can’t just force something. A lot of brands have tried that and failed miserably and ended up on AdAge as what not to do. But you gotta take some risks. You also have to be willing to create content that might never see the light of day because it just doesn’t make sense. You gotta be content rich. A lot of times people are content poor and media rich, or partnership rich and activation poor. You’re gonna take the girl to the prom, you better make sure you’ve got the limo and the corsage and everything else. You can’t just buy the ticket. When that moment happens, when Kyrie makes the Western Conference Finals, you gotta be ready. If not, you’re wasting your biggest opportunity, and that might not ever come back.

Liam:

Our time’s gone quick, but I wanna end on one note. If you could magically solve one problem at ANTA today, what would you solve?

Christian:

Translation. I work with a Chinese company, so I wish I could speak Mandarin all the time. There are a lot of great AI tools helping with that — whether it’s WeChat translating or our internal messaging systems having subtitles at the bottom. I think the new AirPods have a translator in there, so that would be my one thing. But one thing I’d also say — let it be known, we own Amer Sports. Wilson, Arc’teryx, Salomon — massive, popular cool kid brands. Being able to collaborate across all the different ANTA brands is what I’m looking forward to.

Liam:

You described ANTA like Disney. Let’s end on that.

Christian:

I think it’s an incredible brand and people have no idea, but they will soon. It’s growth through acquisition at the end of the day. We’re vertically integrated in a lot of ways — that’s what makes us so strong. We have one of the highest gross margins in the industry because we own the majority of our own factories. That’s where our beginnings come from — the factory that turned into the brand — and that allows us to have a higher gross margin and put more emphasis in the product. But also from a horizontal standpoint, being able to acquire brands. It makes the world a little bit smaller in some ways. Multiple brands with a single focus. Wilson is built around a racket, Salomon is built around the trail — those really cool singular focuses allow us to really double down on the emphasis of that brand, while having another brand standing right next to it doing equally as well.

Liam:

Christian, thanks for coming on. Appreciate you braving the LA traffic to get here. Excited to see the next store opening soon.

Christian:

Likewise. Coming soon.

Use a Trojan horse to enter new markets — Kyrie Irving gave ANTA a credible entry point into US sports culture, letting them lead with basketball before expanding into running, lifestyle, and outdoor

Community isn’t a buzzword if it’s built in micro pockets — grassroots, influencers, athletes, and events all compound into each other, and the same people keep showing up because the brand made it personal from day one

Planned reactive is the competitive edge — the brands that win cultural moments aren’t lucky, they’re prepared, with content capacity ready to move the second an athlete wins, gets fined, or goes viral

0:00 – Intro: ANTA’s U.S. Ambition

4:57 – Pinch-Me Moment: Beverly Hills Store Opening

6:01 – Disrupting the Market with Community & Stars

10:00 – Influencers, Authenticity & Growth Marketing

13:58 – Experimentation as a Superpower

17:19 – AI & Tech: Smarter Marketing at Scale

20:40 – Lean Team, Big Impact

22:30 – Global Lessons: Content Goes Everywhere

24:16 – Closing the Loop: Omnichannel & Retention

26:16 – Creating Moments That Matter