About 12,000 track jackets closed with Pankou (盘扣) instead of a zip sold out in 27 minutes in North America, according to Adidas. The style carries a standing collar, a knotted front closure and the three stripes along the sleeve, and it was designed at the company’s Shanghai creative centre. Last year it was an exhibit at the China International Import Expo. This year it is a reorder.
The Numbers Behind a 27-Minute Sellout
Wu Liang, Adidas senior director of corporate public affairs and sustainability for Greater China, gave the figure to Jingwei, the business outlet of China News Service, during the ninth CIIE in Shanghai. Roughly 12,000 units went in 27 minutes on the North American launch, he said, and the company has since placed additional orders. Several Xinzhongshi styles have also been opened for wholesale in other markets.
Two further figures describe who is buying. At the Qingpu outlet store, inbound tourists account for about 15 percent of spending, and the share runs higher at the Nanjing East Road and Anfu Road stores. Shanghai Observer put the Nanjing East Road reading at about 40 percent of Xinzhongshi series sales coming from international shoppers. The two numbers use different denominators and should not be added together.
Design ownership is the third set. Wu said roughly 95 percent of Adidas products sold in China are made in China and more than 65 percent are designed at the Shanghai centre, with about a quarter of that centre’s output going to overseas markets. Shanghai Observer counted close to 200 designers and creatives on site, holding authority to develop products locally rather than adapt a global range.
From a CIIE Booth to a North American Shelf
The jacket started as an exhibit. Adidas is at the CIIE for the fifth time this year, with a booth that grew from 300 to 500 square metres and is organised around three themes the company lists as honour, growth and aesthetics. An Innovation Lab made its debut, built around movement speed, temperature regulation and recovery.
What happened between the booth and the shelf was not a campaign. Shanghai Observer’s account has the jacket selling only in Greater China at first, then appearing on overseas TikTok and Instagram accounts posted by people wearing it, then moving to North America once the demand was visible. Design sat upstream, social platforms midstream, retail downstream: the brand controlled the first link and inherited the other two.
AI enters the same chain at both ends on Wu’s account, shortening design cycles on one side and running recommendation, personalisation and content on the other. He put it as every industry being rebuilt. Adidas marks 30 years in China in 2027, and lists local innovation, support for elite and grassroots sport, talent and philanthropy as the four areas it will keep working in.
Why the Pankou Survives the Translation
A Pankou is a closure made of cord: a looped knot on one side, a knotted button on the other, both formed from bias-cut fabric rather than from metal or plastic. It is functional before it is decorative, which is precisely why it moves. Unlike a crossed collar or a sleeve wide enough to need its own pattern block, a knotted closure does not argue with a raglan seam; the block stays a track jacket and the garment still reads as Chinese.
That is the pattern in most crossovers of this kind. Small components travel first and shaped ones wait. A mandarin collar or a knotted placket can be added to an existing block without redrafting the shoulder, while a sleeve that has to fall in a particular curve cannot. The limit is not design but production: reproducing a hand-formed knot at sportswear volumes is a supply question, and whether buyers keep paying a premium for that signal is a market question this sellout answers for one quarter only.
For the buyer rather than the maker, the test is simpler. Look at the closure and then at the cut: a Pankou on a modern athletic block is a decoration applied to sportswear, not a piece of traditional chinese clothing in any strict sense, and it is not sold as one. That distinction is what lets a global brand borrow the element without touching the form, and it is also why the borrowing tends to stop at the wrist and the neckline rather than moving into the body of the garment.
