Letao promotes Fruit Ninja shoes

After the launch of Angry Birds shoes, a domestic B2C footwear company Letao has partnered with the classic mobile game Fruit Ninja to introduce Fruit Ninja shoes. Speaking about this series of collaborations, Letao CEO Bi Sheng said that the longest negotiation took nearly half a year, which was with Angry Birds.

Bi Sheng mentioned that because there were no precedents for combining footwear with entertainment, negotiations with international online gaming companies were not easy. The difficulty of negotiations varied among the top ten App games, but eventually, Fruit Ninja, Taiko no Tatsujin, and Angry Birds all exclusively authorized Letao to sell shoes featuring their game characters on China's internet.

This type of shoe was referred to by Bi Sheng as a co-branded product. According to him, this creative idea quickly gained favor among many gamers. In the first week of the Angry Birds shoes' launch, they sold out, which was both expected and unexpected. Now, there are approximately over 1,000 pairs sold each week.

Previously, in the second half of 2010, Letao formulated a mobile strategy. Besides selling well-known brands like Nike and Adidas via mobile platforms, this channel should also have its uniqueness, which is to sell Letao's co-branded products.

"At that time, we thought of the App games everyone was playing, primarily Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds, and Plants vs Zombies," recalled Bi Sheng about his thoughts when formulating the strategy last year: if the channel sells goods that fit the demographic of the channel users, the conversion rate will certainly not be worse than well-known brands. Therefore, Letao launched a brand series named "Applife" in the first half of this year, using this brand as a pool to include brands like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds.

There is a little story behind this collaboration with Fruit Ninja. At the beginning of this year, Letao's CEO assistant Chai Yunfei made a phone call to Australia and connected with Fruit Ninja. By this summer, Fruit Ninja-themed shoes began appearing on Letao's website.

Currently, there are 15 styles of Fruit Ninja shoes available on Letao's website, and Letao has confirmed the upcoming release of new Fruit Ninja shoe styles. Letao announced that it will fully expand its Applife series of shoes, increasing the styles of already existing series like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and Taiko no Tatsujin, and gradually launching the Plants vs Zombies series and Tom Cat series shoes.

Previously, Letao's main push for "joint brands" leveraged the popularity of smartphone App games to boost sales. Letao CEO Bi Sheng revealed that currently, product advertisements have been embedded in the Android version of Fruit Ninja, and advertisements for Fruit Ninja shoes will subsequently appear in the iPhone and iPad versions of Fruit Ninja.

Bi Sheng disclosed to Tencent Technology that currently, the sales of Letao's joint brands account for around 10% of Letao's overall shoe sales.

Why not create its own brand but instead operate a cross-border joint brand? Bi Sheng stated that establishing its own brand online is a long process, not faster than offline, making it difficult to balance speed and price. Letao attempts to find a balance by collaborating with well-known non-footwear brands to jointly create a crossover-style brand, allowing them to share users from both sides.