Japanese sportswear brand DESCENTE opened a city concept store on September 19 across the first and second floors of the south zone of Jing'an Kerry Centre in Shanghai. The company that opened it is not the Osaka headquarters but a joint venture 60% owned by China's ANTA Sports. The joint venture's local sales in China are 1.7 times the parent's consolidated revenue.
1.The address is 1238 Yan'an Middle Road. Floor area was not disclosed. The store carries the theme "明日世界" (Tomorrow's World), the same name as the 1,800㎡ global flagship that opened last December at China World Mall in Beijing. On opening day the forecourt was laid out with ski simulators, treadmills and rowing machines so visitors could log their own times.
2.It began in 1935 in Osaka as a ski-wear maker. The three arrows of the logo stand for straight descent, traverse and side-slip, the three basic ski techniques. In Japan, ITOCHU took control of the parent in 2019 after a tender offer lifted its stake to 40%. The China business is run by a joint venture set up in 2016, owned 60% by ANTA, 30% by Descente and 10% by ITOCHU. Its store count rose from 187 at the end of 2023 to 241 in June 2025.
3.The façade is a surface of silver metal bands laid at a slant. The bands tilt down like a slope, break once at a central diamond, and catch the sun in short flashes along every edge. In the ground-floor window hangs "细雨" (Fine Rain), an installation of hundreds of blue threads dropped from the ceiling, with a single orange shell jacket floating among them.
4.The ground floor is the DESCENTE BLANC zone, finished in white and grey with natural wood. The premium ALLTERRAIN line takes the centre. An orange shell jacket hangs in mid-air, and the rest of the clothes are spaced one by one along long rails. The fixtures are modular with adjustable heights, so the whole floor can be rearranged when the season turns.
5.The second floor gathers men's and women's training wear, golf, footwear and the DUALIS line for city commuting. In the passage between floors stands a white bust by American artist Daniel Arsham, and one wall lays images of snow and ice over Shanghai landmarks. The front of the cash counter carries the same diagonal bands as the façade.
6.Chinese media have a nickname for the brand: "东北省服", the uniform of the Northeast, because everyone there wears it. The three northeastern provinces alone have 59 stores, and one store in Changchun sells 100 million yuan (about KRW 19 billion) a year. That figure comes from customers over 30 buying 4,000-yuan down jackets in cities where winter drops below minus 20 degrees.
7.Are customers buying ski skill? What they wear to malls and on the commute is clothing built for the slope, a sign that says they train seriously. Holding the opening with world champions in trampoline and swimming, and setting up fitness machines that record times in the forecourt, sells that same sign.
8.The Japanese parent's consolidated revenue for the year to March fell 6.8% to ¥119.3 billion. Operating profit rose 28.4% to ¥23.9 billion, and net profit set a record for the fourth year running. The reason profit rose while revenue fell lies with the China joint venture. Its sales do not appear in the parent's revenue; instead, profit equal to the 30% stake comes in as equity-method income.
9.In the same results the parent separately disclosed local sales in China of ¥199.3 billion (about KRW 1.85 trillion), up 28.8%. Korea came in at ¥68.2 billion and Japan at ¥40.4 billion. A market in which the parent holds only 30% is bigger than the parent's entire books.
10.On ANTA's side, the numbers climb faster. In the first half of this year ANTA's "all other brands" segment (Descente, Kolon Sport, Jack Wolfskin and others) grew revenue 44.2% to RMB 10.69 billion, with operating profit of RMB 3.54 billion, so 33% of sales stays as profit. Descente alone passed RMB 5 billion in China sales in 2023 and RMB 10 billion in 2025.
11.Divide RMB 10 billion by the year-end 2025 target of 260 stores and each store sells about RMB 38 million a year, roughly KRW 7.2 billion (estimate, online included). That is more than 40% above RMB 27 million in 2023. Twenty-one stores exceed RMB 50 million a year. New stores have gone mainly into large malls in major cities, and sales per store did not fall while the store count grew.
12.The price range stretches upward. The best-selling long down jacket on the Tmall official store is 3,990 yuan (about KRW 760,000), and the ski line runs 5,000-9,000 yuan. The top-tier down made in Japan, "水沢ダウン" (Mizusawa Down) MOUNTAINEER, is ¥154,000. Putting ALLTERRAIN at the ground-floor entrance looks like a route that shows the most expensive section first and then sends people upstairs for training wear and golf.
13.The Beijing global flagship at China World occupies space that once held Giorgio Armani. Shanghai practice STILL YOUNG took the Möbius strip as its model, wrapping four buildings in a single silver band and adding an 830㎡ outdoor plaza. Inside is a ski zone carved from white walls like a snow cave. The Shanghai store is that silver band and slope diagonal shrunk into two floors.
14.Korea runs the other way. It is operated directly by the parent's subsidiary Descente Korea, and local sales of ¥68.2 billion (about KRW 630 billion) are a third of China's, down 8.8% in April-June last year. The market the parent runs itself is shrinking, while the one handed to a local sports giant with a majority stake grew the most. It was also the joint venture that began producing inside China in October 2016 and fixed chronic supply delays. The China business first turned a profit in 2019.
15.In a year when consolidated revenue fell 6.8% and profit hit a record, the Japanese brand's Chinese joint venture opened another two-floor store in Shanghai. What that venture sold is 1.7 times the parent's reported revenue. For a Korean brand trying to enter China the same way, the first sticking point is the ownership split. Hand a majority to a local conglomerate and store counts and sales grow quickly, but those sales land on the partner's books, and the power to set prices and pick locations goes with them.