Shenzhen sales volume topped the list! Another "dark horse" product sold out

The "shoe economy" has unlimited potential !

Food, clothing, housing and transportation are the basic needs of life and are the "urgent needs" of consumers. Among them, footwear products related to "travel" have always been the most searched for in the cross-border e-commerce field.

Targeting the women's shoes category and taking environmental protection as the entry point, VIVAIA, a domestic overseas brand , successfully won the title of the fastest growing website in the US apparel and accessories industry in 2023. The company behind this brand is Starlink, which has received a round B investment of about RMB 700 million from ByteDance and other companies. With strong corporate and capital support, VIVAIA's success is inevitable.

In addition to VIVAIA, the cross-border e-commerce export sector has produced many hot-selling shoes and boots. The technological footwear brand Meimai Technology achieved revenues exceeding RMB 3 billion in 2022, and its brand Dream Pairs became the number one independent footwear brand on Amazon’s US site.

The world's footwear industry looks to China. As the world's largest footwear manufacturer, China has always been a major footwear exporter. According to data from the National Development and Reform Commission, the cumulative export value of footwear in 2022 was US$57.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 20.4%; the export volume was 9.29 billion pairs, a year-on-year increase of 6.6%. China has many well-known footwear industry belts, such as the four major shoe production bases in Quanzhou, Fujian, Putian, Dongguan, Guangdong, and Wenzhou, Zhejiang. In recent years, one after another footwear OEM factories have embarked on the road of going overseas to grab orders through cross-border e-commerce platforms. The vast development space overseas and the characteristics of consumption upgrading have brought new development opportunities to the footwear industry.

Among the top 100 websites with the highest annual traffic growth in the United States in 2023, VIVAIA ranked first in the apparel and accessories industry !

Recently, in the 2023 "Digital 100" ranking released by SimilarWeb, VIVAIA took the top spot in the US apparel and accessories field with a growth rate of 654.6% (total traffic 11.8M, average monthly unique visitors 633.7k), far exceeding the second place musinsa (growth rate of 375.7%), and the third and fifth places were hoooyi (growth rate of 195.0%), edited (growth rate of 183.3%), and underoutfit (growth rate of 177.0%).

Founded in 2020, VIVAIA focuses on the R&D, design and sales of fashionable and environmentally friendly footwear and apparel products, with sales covering 61 countries and regions. The products are priced between US$97 and US$189, with young women aged 25-34 as the main target group. It has become one of the most popular fashion brands for European and American women, and its performance has more than doubled in the past year.

The VIVAIA brand has over one million fans on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. The content posted on Instagram is mainly about fashion, environmental protection, and life. In addition to the DTC website, it is also sold on the Amazon platform and has also entered offline physical stores.

In terms of brand marketing and promotion, similar to SHEIN, VIVAIA has also gained a lot of traffic by cooperating with overseas celebrities and influencers. It is understood that VIVAIA will cooperate with a large number of influencers with different fan bases on multiple social media platforms including Instagram, and also encourage consumers to actively share their product experience and pictures on social media platforms. Selena Gomez is a die-hard fan of the brand and has worn VIVAIA shoes in public many times. Actresses Emma Roberts and Katie Holmes have also worn VIVAIA shoes.   Holmes and other celebrities have also worn this brand. With the celebrity effect and the promotion of Internet celebrities, VIVAIA is attracting more and more attention from European and American consumers.

At the same time, VIVAIA accurately finds the target consumer group through platform algorithms. In order to expand the conversion rate, the brand has always attached importance to investment in advertising. In the past year, the proportion of website visits through paid traffic has been gradually increasing.

Since its birth in 2020, VIVAIA has achieved a series of outstanding results.

In 2023, according to the "China Cross-border E-commerce Brand Influence List (2023/10)" jointly launched by the National Business Daily and Shenzhen Yishi Technology, VIVAIA ranked 48th with an independent site natural traffic of 1644.24 (K) and Amazon search volume of 20974.00 (uv). It is the only brand on the list in the footwear category, and is on the same list with well-known brands such as SHEIN, ANKER, and Roborock.

In July 2022, Google and Kantar released the "BrandZ™ China Global Brands" research report, which showed that VIVAIA was successfully selected into the [BrandzTM China Global Brand Growth Star List]. The reason for the selection is that the brand's online search index has increased significantly; at the same time, it also performed well in Kantar's "meaningful" and "differentiation" indicators.

Survey data shows that consumers are four times more willing to consider high-value brands than low-value brands , and will pay 9% more for brands with higher value when shopping. "Using 6 recycled plastic bottles to make a pair of high-value environmentally friendly shoes", the VIVAIA brand focuses on fashion and environmental protection, which is one of its "killer weapons" to conquer European and American consumers.

With the widespread spread of the concept of green economy, the concept of low-carbon and environmentally friendly life has gradually penetrated into all aspects of consumers' lives in overseas markets. European and American consumers are increasingly preferring environmentally friendly, recyclable materials and low-energy consumption footwear products. In particular, Generation Z (born between 1995 and 2010, the first generation to grow up in the era of smartphones) spends more on sustainable products. VIVAIA uses environmental protection, comfort and timeless design as its brand building principles and concepts, and uses recycled environmentally friendly yarns from plastic bottles and other natural materials to create more than 60 styles of shoes covering 8 major categories.

Focusing on women's shoes, taking environmental protection as the entry point, and relying on social media and celebrity effects to expand brand influence, VIVAIA can be said to have developed a track with unlimited potential in the evergreen hot-selling category with fierce competition. In addition to the highly innovative products, the company behind VIVAIA is also very impressive.

Public information shows that VIVAIA is a brand of the cross-border e-commerce Shenzhen Starlink Network Technology Co., Ltd. (STARLINK, hereinafter referred to as Starlink). Starlink was established in 2017. It sells a variety of light industrial products worth more than hundreds of millions of dollars to the world through its own global official product website and third-party online and offline channels. Such as clothing, shoes and hats, home furnishings, toys, etc. The business scope covers more than 100 countries including North America, Europe, and the Middle East. It obtained the GRS environmental certification in 2021.

It is understood that since its establishment , Starlink Technology has maintained a high revenue growth of more than doubling, with revenue exceeding 100 million in 2018, exceeding 1 billion in 2019, and exceeding 2 billion in 2020.

Starlink 's strong ability to attract capital has attracted the attention and investment of top global investors. In August 2020, Starlink received a RMB 300 million Series A investment led by Sequoia Capital and ByteDance, with participation from Tiantu Capital, Xiangfeng Investment, and Lingxi Capital. In 2021, it received an additional investment of over RMB 700 million led by Sequoia Capital and ByteDance.

Starlink has several well-known brands in the global market, including VIVAIA, an environmentally friendly shoe brand , Soulmia, ADORAWE, VonDeRich, Fanka, etc. These brands target consumer groups in different countries and provide distinctive clothing and footwear. ADORAWE mainly focuses on the Middle East market, providing men's and women's clothing, shoes and bags, etc., and its development momentum is very rapid; Soulmia is benchmarked against the fast fashion giant SHEIN.

Amazon US site ranked first , Meimai Technology's annual revenue exceeded 3 billion

The footwear category contains multiple sub-tracks, including women's shoes, men's shoes, children's shoes, sports shoes, sandals, loafers, leather shoes, environmentally friendly shoes, technological shoes ... Each track has broad development opportunities, and Meimai Technology is the winner in the technological track.

Miracle Miles , headquartered in Xiangjiang New District , was founded in 2009. It is a technology-based footwear company with product lines covering vertical subcategories such as women's shoes, men's shoes, and outdoor shoes. Its products are sold to more than 10 countries and regions including North America, Europe, and Asia. It has currently served more than 20 million users and achieved revenue of RMB 3 billion in 2022. It is expected that its future performance will continue to maintain rapid growth.

The company's business layout includes online brand independent sites, Amazon, eBay and Walmart channels. It owns independent brands such as Dream Pairs, Bruno Marc, Nortiv8 and Dream Pairs Kids. Among them, Dream Pairs, Bruno Marc and Nortiv8 are among the top 100 shoe brands on Amazon. Taking Dream Pairs as an example, it mainly sells sandals, flat shoes, high heels, hiking shoes, boots and other types of fashionable women's shoes. It is now the number one independent shoe brand on Amazon's US site . By analyzing the development history of Meima Technology , we can find that:

2014-2017: Exploring and developing online channels Amazon and eBay.

2018-2019: Independently developed ERP system to realize informatization of the entire business process; deeply explored segmented categories and established BRUNO MARC and NORTIV8 brands; expanded markets such as Europe and Canada, and GMV exceeded US$100 million.

2020-2022: Establish an independent product design and development department and upgrade the supply chain; establish an independent brand website, with business covering more than 10 countries and regions around the world; serve more than 16 million users, and the GMV in 2021 will be approximately RMB 2 billion.

Yienjun learned that Meimai Technology has a young product technology research and development team that mainly relies on technological innovation to create high-quality products. For example, the shoes use dynamic temperature regulation technology 37.5® TECHNOLOGY, which helps to maintain the body temperature at the ideal core temperature of 37.5℃, and can more effectively keep the feet dry, so that the feet remain comfortable during long walking periods; biodegradable technology is used to solve the damage to the environment caused by non-degradable polymer materials such as traditional plastics.

The company adheres to a product-oriented brand approach and continuously improves its global user insight capabilities. On the one hand, it emphasizes data-based product selection, and on the other hand, it has a professional team of designers and a process-based design system, which can better grasp fashion trends, quickly launch new products, and have a high success rate for explosive products. Data shows that Meimai's new product development success rate is as high as 60%, and the new product development cycle is only 30 days. After the product is initially recognized by the market, the team will combine sales data and user feedback to continuously iterate and optimize the product to further enhance the consumer experience. It is worth mentioning that by adopting a data-based architecture and building its own digital system, the company has opened up all links from product research and development to sales, improving the efficiency of full-link management.

In 2022, Meimai Technology completed a US$100 million Series A financing, led by Sequoia China and IDG Capital, with Star Capital serving as the long-term exclusive financial advisor. After this round of financing, the company plans to complete the global footwear market strategic layout in the next 2-3 years, covering more categories, entering more countries and regions, and becoming a world-renowned technology footwear group.

In December 2023, Meimai Technology received investment from Jiayu Capital and completed its A+ round of financing.

In 2023, Hurun Research Institute released the "2023 Hurun Global Future Unicorns", which listed the world's gazelle companies, that is, high-growth companies established after 2000 that are most likely to reach a unicorn-level valuation of US$1 billion within three years. Meima Technology is on the list.

The footwear industry is supported by a number of OEM factories, which are on the road of transformation and upgrading

To sum up the similarities between Meima Technology and VIVAIA, both of them have set their sights on the field of environmental protection, focusing on products and niche areas, and attracting the attention of capital with sufficient strength.

In fact, the success of both companies depends on the support of the footwear industry.

Starlink positions itself as a technology-oriented innovative enterprise, mainly using technology to optimize and integrate China's high-quality supply chain to sell high-quality and cost-effective "domestic products" to the world. According to news in 2021, Chengdu is Starlink's largest workplace, with one-third of its employees working here. When it comes to Chengdu, in addition to hot pot, I believe that many industry insiders will immediately think of a name: China's women's shoes capital.

The Chengdu women's shoes industry belt, together with Wenzhou, Quanzhou and Guangzhou, is known as the "Three States and One Capital" (the Pearl River Delta shoemaking base centered on Guangzhou, the production bases in Jinjiang, Shishi and Putian centered on Quanzhou, the production bases in the Wenzhou area centered on Wenzhou, and the Chengdu shoemaking base mainly producing women's shoes). From raw materials such as leather to shoemaking and sales, it currently covers the entire upstream and downstream industry chain. The scale of the industry is based on the third largest in the country. There were once more than 1,500 production-oriented enterprises, more than 3,000 shoe-related enterprises, and about 100,000 shoe industry practitioners, with an annual output value of 50 billion. Chengdu is also a wholesale distribution center for shoe brands in western China, with exports accounting for one-third of the country's women's shoes and sold to more than 120 countries and regions around the world. The rich soil has given birth to independent brands such as Kameiduo, Aiminer, and Amo Women's Shoes , and has also attracted well-known brands at home and abroad such as GUESS, Belle, Daphne, and Qianbaidu to come here for OEM production.

Meimai Technology has offices in Changsha, Shenzhen, Fuzhou, Chicago, Los Angeles and other places. Among them, Fuzhou, Fujian is responsible for the construction of the footwear supply chain. In addition, Meimai Technology has also posted job openings in Wenzhou, Quanzhou, Dongguan, Huizhou and other places.

These places are precisely the famous footwear industry belts in my country.

Huidong County, Huizhou City, Guangdong Province is a famous production base for fashionable women's shoes in China (of which synthetic leather shoes account for more than 97%). In 2021, the county produced 900 million pairs of shoes, accounting for about 20% of Guangdong's shoe production, 6.7% of the country, and 4.3% of the world. Huidong shoes are very well-known and influential . It is said that "three out of ten pairs of shoes in Guangdong are made in Huidong" and "one out of every ten women in the world wears Huidong shoes . "

The footwear industry in Quanzhou, Fujian is a traditional advantageous industry. It is known as the largest sports shoe production base in China. In addition, it also produces various types of men's and women's fashion leather shoes, outdoor casual shoes, sandals, boots, various children's shoes and traditional embroidered shoes. The leading sports brands Anta, Xtep, Huanqiu, Buick, 361 Degrees, Hongxing Erke and Jordan originated here. The footwear industry in Quanzhou is mainly concentrated in Jinjiang, Putian, Shishi, Hui'an, Nan'an and other places. Among them, Jinjiang City has more than 3,000 footwear production and operation enterprises, with an annual output of more than 700 million pairs and an annual output value of more than 20 billion yuan. The products are exported to more than 80 countries and regions in the world.

Wenzhou, Zhejiang, mainly produces leather shoes. One out of every seven pairs of women's shoes in the world is produced here. In 2001, it was awarded the title of "China's Shoe Capital". There are more than 4,000 shoemaking companies, which produce more than 1.3 billion pairs of shoes of all kinds throughout the year. Well-known brands such as Aokang, Red Dragonfly, and Yierkang were born. Wenzhou has proposed to achieve the "double thousand" goal by 2025 - the sales revenue of the shoe industry will exceed 100 billion yuan, more than 1,000 shoe companies will be transformed into intelligent ones, and the global shoe supply chain center will be built.

Dongguan, Guangdong mainly produces sports shoes and leather shoes . It is currently the world's largest shoe production base . About 65% of the world's high-end or famous shoes come from Dongguan. Sports shoes alone account for 1/4 of the world's sports shoe production. For every 400 million pairs of sports shoes in the world, 100 million pairs are produced in Dongguan.

POSEE's supply chain is mainly in the Dongguan factory. In recent years, POSEE has opened e-commerce platforms such as TikTok Shop, Shopee, Lazada, Amazon, Temu, and opened independent overseas sites, with remarkable achievements. It took only 8 months for it to enter the TikTok Shop Thailand site and won the first place among cross-border footwear brands.

The report "Global Footwear Market Size from 2017 to 2027" released by Statista pointed out that in recent years, the global footwear market size is expected to grow significantly, reaching about US$508 billion by 2027, and the European and American markets are the main markets for footwear sales. According to data provided by Euromonitor, the average annual growth rate of the US footwear industry market size is predicted to be 4.1% from 2023 to 2028, and the market size is expected to reach US$111 billion by 2028. It is expected that by the end of 2025, the European footwear market is expected to sell 3 billion pairs of shoes, of which online sales account for 41.6%.

In addition to Meimai Technology , VIVAIA, Puxi, etc., there are many well-known domestic and foreign brands that rely on the advantages of the footwear industry belts in various parts of China to expand their brand influence. For European and American consumers, Belle International, a leading domestic footwear company, has launched the women's shoe brand NewBella, which is mainly sold through independent station channels. Li-Ning, Anta and other brands have also long laid out cross-border e-commerce and other overseas channels.

"Dongguan shoes are mostly classic series of famous brands, Putian shoes are more popular, Chengdu women's shoes are mostly handmade and expensive, Huidong shoes are relatively low-end..." Industry insiders said that the shoe and boot industry belts in different regions come with various "labels" with obvious advantages and disadvantages, but in recent years they have been constantly filling in the gaps and breaking through innovation. Batches of factories in the industry belts have seen the development opportunities of cross-border e-commerce and become part of the army going overseas.

A seller from the Putian footwear industry belt said that they began to transform into a cross-border e-commerce Amazon in 2015. During the operation, they found that the overseas large-size shoe market was vacant but demand was strong, so they quickly seized the market through differentiated strategies. Now their annual output value is as high as 300 million yuan.

"The online penetration rate of footwear products is increasing year by year. New consumption trends in footwear continue to emerge. In addition to the popularity of environmentally friendly shoes, the consumption of smart sports shoes is on the rise, and the new trend of 3D printing is also emerging. More and more overseas consumers tend to prefer personal customization. In addition, shoes with original patterns such as dinosaurs and giraffes are also popular . A number of brands have risen with the trend and become bigger and stronger. " Industry insiders said that the overseas consumption capacity of the footwear market is far beyond imagination.