Zhejiang sellers sell 200 million yuan in one and a half years by creating high-quality products and brands

Chinese brands are emerging in the global market.

Rest, a Chinese bedding brand that has only been around for three years , has become popular. With its innovative design, differentiated products and precise market positioning, it has quickly become the first choice of many North American consumers. It was named the best bedding brand of 2024 by Good Housekeeping, one of the well-known home magazines in North America. Its brand strength should not be underestimated.

Insight into user needs and focus on category innovation

Rest is affiliated to Zhejiang Samsung Down Co., Ltd., and only began planning to enter the US bedding market in 2021. It was officially launched on Amazon in May 2022, and exceeded the revenue mark of over 10 million US dollars in one year. Only one and a half years after its launch, Rest's annual sales on independent websites and other channels reached 30 million US dollars (equivalent to about 220 million yuan).

On Amazon, Rest's popular summer quilt has a monthly sales volume of 20,000 pieces, and has long been ranked in the top 10 of Amazon's Best Seller category. Before Black Friday in 2023, Rest's revenue reached 26 million US dollars, and the repurchase rate during Black Friday reached 40%. During the two days of Prime Day in 2024, Rest's sales were about 2 million US dollars, more than ten times the usual day.

Bedding is a traditional category that is difficult to innovate. It has high customer unit prices, low repurchase rates , and strong seasonality, making it difficult for new brands to enter the market. In addition, traditional big brands and top sellers on e-commerce platforms have already firmly occupied the market, making it even more difficult for emerging brands to enter the market and break through.

As a Chinese brand, Rest was able to stand out in a short period of time, which is inseparable from the brand's unexpected and successful combination of measures.

When Rest started to enter the bedding market, it found that there were many competitors and high traffic costs. The brand founder Zhou Yong realized that if he wanted to break through the heavy competition in the red ocean track, he had to innovate in categories and dig deep into consumer demand.

As a result, the team spent nearly eight months conducting market research, distributing thousands of questionnaires, interviewing about 100 users, and browsing countless industry reports and related user reviews on Amazon.

They found that among people with sleep disorders in the United States, about 40% of them have the problem of overheating, including many menopausal women, athletes, pregnant women and children. The quilts sold on the market are usually divided into categories according to the material, such as silk quilts, down quilts, and bamboo fiber quilts, but no one divides them according to the group of people, so the needs of people with overheating are ignored.

The more detailed the market research is, the more likely it is to find an angle to promote the redefinition of the category. In the end, Rest targeted the brand-new category of cooling bedding.

Zhou Yong mentioned: "We have summarized the 4U principles of innovation - Unworkable, Unavoidable, Urgent, Underserved, which means previously unattainable, rigidly needed, urgent, and underserved. Every category contains undiscovered innovation space. If we can find the 4U principles and segment the population, success can be replicated."

Thanks to the precise control of market demand, Rest products have achieved differentiation and occupied the commanding heights of the subcategory, laying the foundation for future hot sales of products.

Strengthen the brand and win high customer price

In addition to the advantages of the product itself, Rest has taken the brand route from the beginning and strengthened the brand power through a full range of brand marketing strategies. Whether on Amazon or on social media, Rest has invested a lot of money in advertising to raise the brand's profile through advertising and attract the attention of potential consumer groups.

On Amazon, Rest’s advertising revenue accounts for 70% of its total revenue, of which about 30% comes from consumers actively searching for brand terms. Although it relied on advertising to generate orders in the early stages, the subsequent brand effect gradually emerged.

In advertising, many sellers or brands focus on the effect of advertising, but Rest knows how to accumulate slowly, promote the brand first, and use the brand to build a mental defense line for consumers. With continuous investment, Rest's repurchase rate on Amazon Mall has reached 20% in 2023. Many users directly purchase products through the natural traffic brought by searching the Rest brand name.

Rest also conveys its brand concept through Amazon's flagship store. Its store has been designed and optimized many times to establish connections with consumers through pages. At the same time, the brand will also post its own posts to attract brand fans. The benefits of strengthening the brand are not only the increase in sales, but more importantly, it can sell at a high customer price.

Taking the popular Rest quilt as an example, the unit price of the product is as high as US$229 (equivalent to about RMB 1,670). The high value of a quilt is due to its brand influence and premium, which is dozens of times higher than the selling price of many similar products.

Before going online on Amazon, Rest first established an independent brand website because the team was determined to create high-quality products and build a brand.

For most overseas sellers, it is not easy to build an independent website. Once you do it, it means you need to have a full understanding of the brand and operation. Rest adheres to one principle: brand is above, channel is below. Whether it is an independent website, a third-party platform or offline sales, it is a part of channel underwriting, and the ultimate goal is to build a brand.

On social media, Rest has raised its brand awareness through channels such as Meta advertising. It has also actively participated in various overseas public relations activities, such as Emmy Awards event souvenirs and NBA star recommendations, which have brought the brand extremely high popularity and exposure.

At the same time, Rest also strives to gain insight into every aspect of consumer shopping and build brand awareness in all aspects. On the one hand, the brand takes the American female consumer group between the ages of 45 and 54 as the entry point, appears on various social platforms and magazines that the target group will pay attention to, and captures their consumer psychology through multiple channels; on the other hand, the brand cooperates with multiple Internet celebrities to promote the brand through various forms.

Rest 's main social media channel is Facebook. By placing ads in the Reels section on Facebook, it has brought a lot of interactions and comments to the brand, increasing brand awareness. During Black Friday in 2023, Rest's advertising returns on Facebook increased by 200%.

"We firmly believe that brand innovation must ensure that the brand becomes number one from the start and has the potential to be number one. This requires reaching consumers widely across all channels, whether it is social media or on Amazon, " said Zhou Yong .

Another important part of Rest 's success is the supply chain. The deep cooperation between the brand and the supply chain has accelerated the response speed of Rest's products to the market. When Rest wants to develop and test new products, the factory is also willing to cooperate with small orders, because the factory can not only make profits, but also enjoy the benefits of the brand effect. Let the supply chain become part of the brand, improve the efficiency of consumer product innovation, and achieve high potential in the traditional market.

In the red ocean track of bedding products, Rest has taken a different approach, accurately insight into consumer pain points, and captured the minds of consumers through category innovation, differentiated products, and brand innovation. In the future, Rest will continue to exert its strength on Amazon and independent websites to establish its brand reputation and win more market share.

Rest's strong breakthrough in the overseas market is also a microcosm of many overseas brands digging for gold overseas. In recent years , more and more Chinese brands have relied on a strong supply chain to gain in-depth insights into overseas consumers, create new purchasing demands, and sell high-quality Chinese products to the world through cross-border e-commerce platforms.

Zhejiang Sellers

Rest