Before Pinduoduo, Huang Zheng won the top spot in the global category in this field

The epidemic is like a clear watershed. Some industries have ushered in a boom after the epidemic, while others have been unable to recover and have repeatedly expressed pessimism. In such a sharp contrast, the "pet economy" and "camping economy" have become increasingly popular, while in the past few years, the clothing economy in the fashion industry has felt like a hero in his twilight years.

In the past few years, a number of domestic fast fashion clothing brands have disappeared from the market one after another, while foreign brands have repeatedly closed stores or withdrawn from the Chinese market.

Industry insiders said that if a 10-year period is used, the first decade of the 21st century was when global clothing brands flocked to the Chinese market; the second decade was when Chinese and foreign clothing brands competed with each other in the Chinese market; and the third decade was when Chinese clothing brands took big steps overseas.

Now, it is the third decade, and En.com has noticed that a number of Chinese clothing brands have already gained a foothold overseas. "Now is the 'golden period' for us to go overseas," a clothing brand seller told En.com.

Judging from the current pattern of Chinese clothing brands going overseas, they can be roughly divided into three categories: one is going overseas in the form of independent brand websites; the second is going overseas through third-party platforms; and the third is going overseas by old domestic brands.

The big players in the overseas clothing market

If we talk about Chinese clothing brands, SHEIN must be on the list. As a synonym for China's fast fashion unicorn, it did not become famous quickly when it was founded in 2008. At that time, its main products were wedding dresses.

Around 2015 , the company's founder shifted from wedding dresses to fast fashion clothing belts, and the brand name SHEIN was officially launched, making its overseas debut, and then began to drive on the fast track of growth .

Data shows that SHEIN's revenue has increased exponentially year by year since 2016. After 2020, it exploded . The Financial Times reported that its annual profit from 2021 to 2023 has reached the billion-dollar level .

SHEIN's success has also made more Chinese brand sellers smell the tempting fragrance of the overseas clothing market.

Therefore, it can be clearly seen that more and more Chinese clothing brands choose to go overseas and have achieved great success in recent years.

JJ 's​   House : Founded by Huang Zheng, once ranked first in the global category

Few people mention this clothing brand. In fact, it did not come from 2020, but was born in 2010.

At that time, wedding dresses were an extremely popular and high-demand category in the cross-border e-commerce industry. Therefore , like SHEIN's predecessor, JJ's House was one of the first brands to export wedding dresses as its main product. And it came from Suzhou, the largest wedding dress industry belt in the country. This is the "household registration information" of JJ's House.

What’s more interesting is that this brand has a close relationship with Pinduoduo’s founder Huang Zheng. In September 2010, the cross-border e-commerce wedding dress brand JJ’S House was launched. In just half a year, the business revenue accounted for half of the parent company’s revenue at that time. In 2011, Huang Zheng established Suzhou Lebei Technology Co., Ltd. and incorporated JJ’S House into this new company.

It is reported that at that time, the revenue from JJ'SHouse supported several companies under Huang Zheng. By the beginning of 2016, the sales of JJ'SHouse's wedding dress business exceeded that of LightInTheBox, becoming the world's largest wedding dress e-commerce brand. According to media reports, JJ'SHouse's monthly transaction flow reached tens of millions of yuan at that time, with thousands of orders per day.

After that , the founder of SHEIN changed his business from wedding dresses to fast fashion women's clothing . It was from that time that SHEIN gradually became the $100 billion unicorn it is today.

JJ's House is still doing the old business, but it has also expanded from wedding dresses to party dresses, accessories, shoes and bags. According to data, the brand currently has more than 2,000 SKUs.

In terms of independent site traffic, Similarweb data shows that JJ'sHouse's brand website jjshouse.com ranks fifth in the US wedding website visit list. In July, the website's total visits reached 5.9 million, and the average monthly visits in the past three months reached 5.67 million.

With its relatively niche product, wedding dresses, JJ'sHouse can be called a hidden champion in the overseas clothing market, and in recent years it has appeared on many Chinese overseas brand influence lists.

Cider: A unicorn with a valuation of 1 billion within one year of its establishment

This should be a brand that most overseas sellers are familiar with. It was founded more than ten years later than SHEIN . After its establishment in 2020 , it completed four rounds of financing in less than a year , with a total amount of over 130 million US dollars . Among its investors, there are not only IDG, which has invested in SHEIN and Anker , but also Silicon Valley venture capital legend A16Z , which has invested in social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter .

Among the numerous clothing brands that went overseas during the same period, Cider achieved a valuation of over US$1 billion in less than a year, quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing unicorn companies in the world.

By the first half of 2022, the Cider APP had been downloaded over 2 million times in the United States, a year-on-year surge of 1,686%, and over 7.4 million times worldwide; during the same period, it became one of the top 10 shopping apps in France and South Korea in terms of downloads.

From the design point of view, Cider tends to be in Y2K and INS styles, focusing on large sizes (it is the first to offer the largest clothing size 4XL on the US market) , high cost performance, and trendy fashion to cater to Generation Z in Europe and the United States.

In terms of products, it will start with daily women's clothing, launch a swimwear series at the end of 2021, a neutral clothing series in 2022, and shoe products in 2023.

Although Cider has become increasingly low-key in the past two years, this is not the case in overseas markets. Last year, Cider opened its first global pop-up store in South Korea and also opened one in the London market during the same period.

Its traffic volume also proves the popularity of the brand. According to Similarweb data, in July, the total number of visits to Cider 's brand website shopcider.com reached 7.3 million. In the past three months (May-July), its average monthly visits reached 7.67 million, with the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Germany being the main sources.

Aelfric Eden : Taking a different approach to street style, with over 900 million exposures on TikTok

In the "Google x Kantar BrandZ China Global Brands 2024" growth star list jointly released by Google and Kantar this year , an online fashion brand suddenly caught everyone's attention, that is Aelfric Eden.

But in fact, as early as last year, this brand had appeared in multiple lists, such as ranking 52nd in the "China Cross-border E-commerce Brand Influence List" .

Although public information shows that Aelfric Eden was founded in Los Angeles, USA in 2014, the above list is enough to show that this is a brand that was conceived in China and grew overseas. A closer look reveals that the brand actually belongs to Shenzhen Di'er Technology Co., Ltd.

But if we dig further back, we will find that the trademark Aelfric Eden was originally owned by Shenzhen Tianhong Chuangyue Technology Co., Ltd., and was transferred to its current owner in 2020.

How can Aelfric Eden carve out a niche in the fiercely competitive European and American clothing markets?

It has set its sights on street culture, freedom, individuality, diversity ... are all labels of street culture. In recent years, we can often see "street style" products on various e-commerce platforms, and it is even more popular in the birthplace of this culture - the United States. Correspondingly, clothing with this cultural style has also become a favorite of consumers.

In the multi-billion dollar European and American street clothing market, Aelfric Eden has successfully entered the market and become a new favorite.

In terms of exposure, Aelfric Eden used TikTok to quickly increase brand awareness, and the brand topic #aelfriceden has been viewed over 900 million times.

With streetwear as its core, Aelfric Eden also extends to products such as shoes, bags, and accessories. In addition to actively deploying on third-party platforms such as Amazon, AliExpress, and eBay, the brand's official website also has a high level of traffic.

Similarweb data shows that the total number of visits to its brand official website aelfriceden.com reached 1.2 million in July, and the average monthly visit in the past three months was 1.09 million.

Making wedding dresses, street style, fast fashion women's clothing ... no matter which sub-category, more and more companies are going overseas nowadays, and the brands in this field include Halara, Bloomchic , Urbanic, ORORO, Romwe, LovelyWholesale, Cupshe, etc.

Eating through third-party platforms

In addition to those who set up independent websites from the beginning and have a particularly strong brand awareness, there are actually many big sellers in the cross-border circle who have incubated multiple clothing brands.

Zi Buyu: "Hot-selling trader" sold 1.462 billion yuan in 6 months

The day before yesterday, Zi Buyu, the "first cross-border footwear and apparel stock", released its latest financial report, stating that its total revenue in the first half of this year was approximately 1.462 billion yuan, and its gross profit was approximately 1.081 billion yuan, an increase of 6.3% and 8.0% respectively over the same period last year, and its net profit was 91.4 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 789.1%.

In 2011, Zibuyu was founded in Hangzhou, Zhejiang , and opened the door to the e-commerce market with clothing and footwear .

In 2014, it opened its first store on Amazon and officially entered the field of cross-border e-commerce ; in 2018 , Zibuyu's GMV had reached 1 billion yuan , and it began to build its own website; in 2020 , GMV exceeded 2 billion yuan, and it ranked first among all platform sellers in China's cross-border export B2C e-commerce apparel and footwear market.

Seeing that things were going smoothly, Zi Buyu began to plan for A-shares, so on Double Eleven 2022, it officially rang the bell at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The prospectus shows that as of the first half of 2022 , Zibuyu has created more than 300 brands, 87 of which are best-selling products. The annual sales of each brand exceeds 10 million yuan, and the brands have a total of 6,473 best-selling products.

Looking at specific brands, sweater brand Emily Bela is a hot seller on Amazon, with sales increasing by 36.1% and annual GMV increasing by 41.8% from 2018 to 2021. In the first half of 2022 alone, Emily Bela brand sales exceeded 210,000 pieces.

As of the first half of 2022 , the cotton and linen shirt series of casual menswear brand Runcati has accumulated sales of 410,000 pieces, firmly occupying the top 3 of the best-selling list of similar products on Amazon ; the women's clothing brand Cicy Bell has accumulated sales of 470,000 pieces, and became the top 1 of the best-selling list of similar products on Amazon in December 2020 and February 2022.

The 2023 annual report pointed out that the sales revenue of Zibuyu’s top ten brands increased by more than 15% year-on-year. It also has several brands with annual sales revenue of over 100 million yuan, and the women's clothing brand Fisoew has also become a hot-selling brand on Amazon.

Although it has built its own independent website, Zibuyu is heavily dependent on third-party platforms. In the first half of this year, its revenue in the North American market was approximately 1.397 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.6%, but this was mainly contributed by Amazon and TikTok Shop.

Judging from the data of the entire third-party platform, in the past six months, the revenue of this channel was about 1.441 billion yuan, an increase of about 10.5% year-on-year, accounting for more than 98% of the total revenue, while the independent site contributed only 3.61 million yuan.

Junyi : Sportswear is selling like hot cakes on Amazon

During last year's Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday, brand baleaf's sales on Amazon increased by 110% year-on-year.

This is a brand from Xiamen. Its parent company, Xiamen Junyi Supply Chain Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Junyi"), set its sights on overseas markets when it was established in 2014. It has since established the brand baleaf for sales on platforms such as Amazon . In 2021, CICC Capital led the investment and gave Junyi RMB 100 million in Series A financing.

From the listing on Amazon’s flagship store, we can see that baleaf, a subsidiary of Junyi, focuses on sportswear products, including yoga wear, running wear and a series of other indoor and outdoor sportswear.

On Amazon, a single yoga pants listing from Baleaf can accumulate nearly 100,000 reviews, and has been topping the BS list in its sub-category for years .

In addition, many of baleaf's products are ranked TOP1 in Amazon's BS list in various subcategories . For example, a pair of women's quick-drying hiking pants has a monthly sales of 2,000 pieces and over 16,000 reviews; a pair of sports shorts has a monthly sales of 4,000 pieces and nearly 90,000 reviews ; a pair of men's sunscreen shirt has nearly 30,000 reviews ; a pair of yoga pants has nearly 33,000 reviews , and waterproof sports windbreakers are all TOP1 products on Amazon.

Statistics show that in summer , the monthly sales of a single listing of baleaf’s yoga shorts can even exceed 40,000 pieces .

It has been on the top of Amazon's best-selling category list for many years , and once became the number one in Amazon's clothing category in 2020. Over the years , it has won numerous awards, such as Amazon's most popular brand seller in 2019, the most watched brand of 2021, the leading brand of the single product CLOTHING category in 2022, and Amazon's most valuable brand award in 2023.

Savi: The clothing brand "Assassin" that dominates the charts

This is an old acquaintance.

Suntech 's latest financial report shows that in the first half of this year , its revenue reached 4.177 billion yuan, an increase of 50.65% over the same period last year ; its net profit was 236 million yuan, an increase of 56.69% .

Among them, the revenue of clothing and accessories category exceeded 3 billion yuan, accounting for 72.25% of its total revenue, and compared with the same period last year, the revenue of this category increased by 53.62%.

The brand matrix is ​​rich and not limited to clothing, but the clothing category under Savi has always accounted for the highest share of revenue year after year.

It is reported that Savi has bred 4 leading brands with cumulative sales of over 1.5 billion yuan each, 20+ mid-level brands with cumulative sales of over 100 million yuan each, and 70+ emerging brands with sales of over 10 million yuan each . Among these brands, the majority are clothing brands.

Last year , among Savi's top five brands, there was only one non-apparel brand ranked fourth, namely ANCHEER ( sports and fitness brand ), but its sales fell by 13.4% year - on-year compared with 2022. By the first half of this year, this brand had withdrawn from Savi's top five.

On the other hand, the performance of the other four clothing brands in the list in 2023 and the first half of this year:

1. The sales of men's clothing brand Coofandy reached 1.455 billion yuan ( up 58.63% year-on-year ) and 948 million yuan (up 51.11% year-on-year) respectively ;

2. The homewear brand Ekouaer had revenues of RMB 1.286 billion ( up 41.90% year-on-year ) and RMB 786 million ( up 57.93% year-on-year ) respectively ;

3. The sales of underwear brand Avidlove were 629 million yuan ( up 33.43% year-on-year ) and 371 million yuan ( up 34.72% year-on-year ) ;

4. Women's clothing brand Zeagoo had the fastest growth, with sales reaching 228 million yuan ( up 85.14% year-on-year ) and 179 million yuan ( up 81.90% year-on-year ) .

In addition, the performances of women's clothing brand Hotouch and children's clothing brand Arshiner were also very impressive.

Since Savi has established a brand, it naturally has an independent brand website. However, as far as the first half of this year is concerned, revenue from third-party platforms is still the bulk, accounting for as much as 91% of total revenue, while independent websites only account for 3%.

Old domestic brands are also going overseas

In the past few years, many new stories have also happened in our old domestic clothing companies .

Souyute, Bobaolong, Qianbaidu and others have announced their delistings, Guirenniao has fled from the footwear and apparel market and decided to switch to the food business, while Hasen, Red Dragonfly, Semir and others have also laid out new businesses. Among those who have made big moves in the overseas apparel market, Anta , Li Ning, Semir and others were all mentioned .

Anta: Buy, buy, buy, go overseas

In fact, more than a decade ago, Anta had already begun planning to expand its overseas presence.

But the difference is that Anta’s “going global” strategy shows its financial strength, with its main focus being “buy, buy, buy”.

From 2009 to 2023, Anta spent huge sums of money to acquire brands such as FILA China, DESCENTE , Sprandi, KOLON SPORT , KINGKOW, as well as Amer Sports, which owns well-known brands such as Arc'teryx and Salomon.

Through its existing brand influence, Anta has rapidly expanded the global visibility of its main brand and broadened its share in the global market .

In the early years, Anta entered the Southeast Asian, Eastern European , and Middle Eastern markets through distributors , but the revenue share was not large.

Since last year, Anta has been making frequent moves to expand overseas. First, it established the Southeast Asia International Business Department and set up direct-operated stores in Thailand , Singapore , the Philippines and other places ; then it signed a number of sports superstars as spokespeople , and also signed a contract with the Olympic Committee to become the sportswear supplier for the 2024-2027 Olympic Games .

It is reported that Anta's current overseas expansion is mainly in Southeast Asia, and then radiates to multiple markets such as North America, the Middle East and Africa. Although it is currently only sold in the United States through cooperation with offline trendy stores and the brand's official website in the United States, its brand vice president and CMO once revealed that after determining the globalization goal in 2023, the group has begun to recruit troops in the United States.

Semir: Achieve double-digit growth every year in Southeast Asia

In fact, as early as 2016, Semir had already started to expand overseas. In 2019, Semir Group established an overseas business center through its Balabala and Semir brands.

However, it was not until 2020 and 2021 that its overseas business saw a rapid growth, doubling in size to 120 million in 2021.

In 2021, Semir focused on the overseas e-commerce market and rapidly expanded with the help of platforms such as Lazada. According to Lazada data, in the 2023 Lazada Mega Promotion, Semir brands ranked among the top in the platform's clothing category.

In April last year , Semir officially established its overseas business department and announced that it would realize full-domain online and offline operations for overseas markets. In the same year, its entry into Shopee quickly received market response, and its daily sales during the promotion period reached nearly 10,000 US dollars.

With Southeast Asia as its key market, Semir is accelerating its efforts in overseas markets. It is understood that by the end of last year, Semir had opened 70 stores overseas and entered multiple third-party e-commerce platforms.

Its main brand and children's clothing brand Balabala are exported to the Middle East, Southeast Asia and other places. It has currently achieved "high double-digit annual growth" in the Southeast Asian market.

In addition to Anta and Semir, there are also brands such as Li Ning, Metersbonwe, and Bosideng that are exploring overseas markets.

For example, although Li Ning proposed a brand internationalization strategy in the early 21st century, it announced at the end of last year that it would set up a headquarters in Hong Kong, China to accelerate overseas expansion, and planned to fully launch overseas business expansion in 2024. Metersbonwe, once the "king of pedestrian streets", has a successor who founded BloomChic, a well-known large-size women's clothing brand in the overseas market.

In the trillion-dollar apparel industry, more and more brands are choosing to go overseas to expand their business territory, but it remains a mystery as to who will capture more market share in the future.

Going to sea

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Hot sale