Sports goods retailer Li Ning, with more than 7,900 stores in China, plans to invest USD10 million in U.S. operations this year, becoming one of the first Chinese companies to enter the U.S. retail sector. At present, international operations made up only 2% of the company’s total revenue. The U.S. expansion began in earnest in 2007 with the opening of an R&D center and design studio in the Portland, Oregon, area, heart of the U.S. athletic shoe industry where Nike is headquartered and Adidas has a regional office. Li Ning has a quality product but “we need to bring in the cool factor, the street legitimacy, the street cred. Bring all these elements together and fuse them into the product. It’s a systemic project and we are working on it,” Li Ning said. “A few brands are attempting it, but no one has come out as a dominant Chinese brand in any industry yet,” he said. “I always optimistically look back on the Japanese brands in the ’50s and ’60s and the Korean brands in the ’80s and ’90s. It’s our turn. We’ll get there.”