Double Happiness Sports

As the world's No 1 table tennis equipment brand, Double Happiness Sports has found its way to the top by "being the best" instead of "selling to the most".

"The size of table tennis market has always been as stable as the performance of Chinese table tennis players," quipped Lou Shihe, general manager of the Shanghai-originated brand, which was founded in 1959 after China won the bid to host the 26th World Championship of Ping Pong.

Henceforth, the margin to drive growth, for Lou and his team of less than 100 staff, has lied in getting the paddle ever thinner, or the ball a little larger.

In 2000, following the new rule introduced by the International Table Tennis Federation, which required all games to use the ball at a diameter of 40 milliliters instead of 38 milliliters, the brand became the first in the world to invest in R&D and massively produced the bigger-sized balls. The move has since increased the share of DHS on the global market to 70 percent.

In 2017, the brand reported 717 million yuan of sales, far ahead of the second market player, Tamasu from Japan, on the global stage, which reported annual sales at upwards of 400 million yuan.