Conduit Asia is a sports and lifestyle brand strategy practice.
We advise international brands on Asia and Asian brands on going global, and take the work to market through a regional partner network.
The costly mistakes in a market like China are usually the ones a brand never saw coming. Catching them before the budget is committed is most of the value, and it takes someone who has sat inside the same decisions. That shifts the odds. No one is right every time, and we won't pretend otherwise.
The kind of sportswear, premium accessories, and lifestyle brands you'd know by name, working on a China or APAC question headquarters has been circling for a while. Usually it's specific and bounded: whether a rising local player is a real threat in premium athleisure, or why the brand's pricing power is slipping while a couple of competitors hold full price. We work questions like that through as counsel, drawing on having actually run brands in the market.
Asian brands with real scale at home, now building outside the region. The sportswear groups and designer names you've seen making global headlines, not only founder-led labels making a first move. The recurring problem is that brand equity built in Asia doesn't always survive the move intact, and the receiving market reads it differently than the home market does. One question that surfaces here: whether a marquee athlete or celebrity signing actually builds the brand abroad, or just rents attention for a season and leaves it where it started.
The research firms and expert networks that cover these names, needing a regular read on Asian consumer behavior, brand performance, and how categories are moving. The gap between what analyst numbers say and what's actually happening at brand and retail level tends to be where these conversations start. Reading a quarter's distributor inventory or discount depth as either an early warning or just noise is the kind of judgment that comes from having operated in the category rather than observed it.
A focused engagement on a single, well-defined question, for the point before a decision is made. A 90-minute working session, followed by a written Strategic Read of one to two pages within 48 hours. Typical questions: how much room a category leader has left in China, whether a rising local player is a real threat in premium athleisure, what a competitor's move into luxury means for your own positioning.
A structured engagement for a decision with too many moving parts to resolve in a single session: a market entry, a repositioning, a category investment, an acquisition or partnership. The work spans market structure, price architecture, channel and competitive dynamics, the partner landscape, a decision tree, and a financial model, resolving into a clear recommendation. Delivered as a 30-40 page brief and a two-hour readout over three to four weeks.
A standing advisory relationship for brands that want senior judgment on call inside the region. It runs on monthly working sessions, access between them, and a read on what's moving when it affects your position. The value is continuity: counsel that already holds the context when a decision arrives, rather than briefing a new advisor each time. Six-month minimum.
A multi-phase engagement for brands ready to act on a decided direction. Conduit Asia leads strategy and holds the client relationship throughout; execution runs through a coordinated network of vetted regional partners, spanning positioning, channel and partner identification, negotiation support, media and KOL coordination, and local activation. The strategy is carried through to market rather than handed off. It begins from a Briefing or Strategic Read. Retainer plus scoped project fees, six to eighteen months.
The sell-side says Li-Ning needs three million Curry pairs a year to break even. That number measures the wrong thing. Why the signature shoe was never built to pay, and where the value in a deal like this actually sits.
A structural read on Nike China 2026 from inside the category. The cleanup is real, the assets are intact. The dividing line is whether product configuration starts from the global platform or from the local consumer.
Four growth archetypes for China sportswear in 2026: Anta, Li-Ning, On, Adidas, and the question of where Nike fits.
Wei Kan spent twenty-five years operating at the center of Asia-Pacific brand marketing, fourteen of them at Nike and Converse. At Converse, he led marketing across Asia and scaled the regional business. At Nike Greater China, he drove growth in Running and Women's before taking on Nike Sportswear, its largest revenue driver. He founded Conduit Asia in 2024 to advise brands navigating the region from that same operating base.
Client work is confidential by design. The perspective Wei brings to public commentary draws on frameworks built and tested inside those engagements rather than assembled afterward.
Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Nikkei Asia, the BBC, Footwear News, and Het Financieele Dagblad have quoted him on China consumer dynamics and global sportswear brand strategy. That commentary represents a fraction of what the advisory work covers.
A short intake form takes about three minutes. We respond within two business days with next steps and confirm the fee. If a different engagement is a better fit, we'll suggest that instead.