Unlike many academic authors or books, my perspective on China’s brand evolution comes not from theory but from ten years of ground‑level experience and observation.
The current wave of consumer brands with genuine global ambitions traces its roots to the VC frenzy of 2015–2019. To me, that’s no surprise—political headwinds simply delayed what should have happened earlier. What many call a “sudden breakthrough” or a “quiet boom” was, in reality, not an accurate words, its more like the “overdue result of relentless trial and error”—stumbling from one obstacle to the next - and it is still on the way of exploring and growing.
For more context, I’d suggest reading my previous piece before diving into this one.
Side note: Consumer electronics and automobiles are mainly not part of this discussion—they’re durable goods that build trust heavily through specs and performance. But FMCG can’t rely on rational parameters alone; they need more emotional connection—aesthetics, culture, and shared values.
As with my earlier coffee piece, I see a real absence of insider perspective in the market — so here’s my take. And trust me, you won’t read this anywhere else—so go ahead, dive into what’s actually unfolded for Chinese consumer brands in the last ten years 👇
The Three Phases of Chinese Branding Over the Past Decade
Phase One: Branding = Visibility = Communication (pre‑2015)
Keywords: Saturation Attack, Super Symbol, Massive Coverage
This isn’t an example I enjoy citing, but it’s a typical pathological specimen.
For a long time, Western brands were worshipped like gods in China. They had powerful brand impact, cool products, and targeted the middle class and above.
To compete from a position of weakness, Chinese companies at that time largely aimed at lower‑spending demographics or addressed the needs that global brands cant solve. That’s how “white‑label” 白牌 products emerged.
But many companies refused to settle; they wanted to build real brands that could stand shoulder to shoulder with Western players.
To that end, many companies started to accept a new concept — called “saturation attack 饱和式攻击”—originating from the West but deeply resonating locally, based on the agrarian philosophy of “hard work plus brute force.” 大力出奇迹.
Simply put, on top of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) theory introduced by the west, they applied overwhelming force to win over rivals — Good logic.
Hua & Hua 华与华, a well‑known strategic consulting firm specializing in local branding (don’t underestimate them—their consulting fees run into xx millions of RMB per case), precisely captured the needs of a crude — they introduced a theory called “ super icon 超级符号”, the idea comes from the west, but amplified by this wild agency in China — putting big icons or KVs with big reach and big voice, most importantly, repeatrepeatrepeatrepeatrepeat.
In their vocabulary, brands didn’t need sophistication or respect; the secret recipe was “no afraid of losing face 做生意不能要脸” The key objective was to make viewers remember through repeated exposure, whether they liked it or not. They believe even if you find someone annoying at first, sticking around long enough will eventually make you accept or even like them.. emmm. again, good logic.
Such strategy highly resonated with local entrepreneurs who are anxious about expansion and sales. And they have been told “this is branding.”
Yes, you might despise it—this marketing doctrine that bends over backward to cater to poorer taste just to move product. It stumbles in a world of picky consumers, and a middle class that now craves emotion and beauty.
However, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon—especially now, with weak consumption, brands’ sales pressure mounting and aesthetic education still largely absent in China’s domestic market, it remains surprisingly effective.
At the very least, their strategy helps a company sell fast, make money quickly, and absorb manufacturing capacity — think of it as the Pinduoduo of the marketing strategy world, and you’ll immediately understand why it exists.
See the Chinese brands that heavily collaborated and consulted by Hua&hua 👇
Mixue is a classic case — and it's exactly that vibe. I'll spare you the visuals or the earworm here. You can find it online everywhere.
And, seriously, they practice what they preach —their own ads are everywhere too. Chances are, you’ll see them as soon as you step off a plane, even outside China. For ex, Singapore👇
Joking aside, Hua & Hua’s impact on Chinese enterprises is far greater than most realize. On the one hand, they’ve helped many companies achieve massive scale and profitability; on the other, they’ve inadvertently delayed the broader upgrade of Chinese brand-building under the global context, especially for many who actually have a cross-nations’ ambitions.
Phase Two: Brand-building as a Tactic (2015–2020)
Keywords: DTC Arbitrage, Tactical Mindset, Path Dependency,
The driving force of this phase was the plateauing of digital economy. Everyone was hunting for the next growth engine, watching U.S. DTC brands seemingly overtake incumbents with low‑cost traffic, and wanting to copy the formula.
While the U.S. model was “independent website + media spend,” and China’s was “Taobao as official site + social media spend,” the underlying DTC playbook was remarkably similar: capital‑driven internet traffic arbitrage, cutting out intermediaries, and rapidly building a closed‑loop marketing machine.
What made this phase particularly interesting was the composition of founders.
Most front‑runners were either tech‑savvy professionals from the internet industry who understood digital marketing better than others, or disciples from ad agency/FMCG backgrounds, well‑trained in fancy theory.
Some of these brands survived into the next cycle; others died just before the final dawn.
This is because though these brands bore obvious internet‑symbiotic characteristics and began to show some brand and aesthetic awareness, most of them also shared glaring, common weaknesses 👇
Strong in visuals, marketing, starting to care about aesthetics —but weak in product, supply chain, and R&D.
Unlike Hua & Hua’s “Big Big Big, but everything is ugly” play book, this generation of consumer brands was particularly good at developing visual identities that resonated with younger consumers digitally.
This was largely because international agencies had created an oversupply of graphic designers while tech companies trained too many digital-savvies.
However, their common trait was placing too much weight on “visuals, well-structured marketing digitally, with many big ideas ,” while still lacking holistic thinking as a cross-functional leader 👐, especially within product design and supply chain sectors.
So, to amplify their talent, they all share the same creed: marketing above all else.
And they’ve successfully sold that belief to investors—many of whom only realized too late that the real game is about product, supply chain and the sustained operational capacity — throwing money at ads is easy; but heavy back-end and operational excellence can’t be built overnight.
Well, there’s the other camp: the ones indoctrinated by in‑house brand teams. They know the tough process of brand building—from consumer insights, to product development, to brand-building — and in that regard, they’re a step ahead of the previous group. They think more holistically, more maturely, and they have patience.
However, some of them also face a significant challenge: a lack of bold innovation.
Many believe, “Why invest so much in innovation when it’s so difficult?” They’d rather mine the “historical case studies” of industry giants for inspiration and leave it at that.
This point is absolutely critical, and I'll keep coming back to it — it has everything to do with a founder's ambition, which ultimately sets the ceiling for the brand's growth.
Obviously, the corporate training at giants, especially the MNCs, is highly polished, yet it doesn’t teach you how to make something better.
As a result, the second camp’s products are typically much better in quality than the first camp’s. But many still lack real innovation and strong moat—so in general, product homogeneity was impossible to ignore across all of them.
The bottles and jars may have looked different, but their contents and formulas were often remarkably similar. It was therefore no surprise that brands had to work hard to differentiate themselves through visual presentation and storytelling.
In fact, there’s also another significant force at that moment — the Ivy‑plus crowd ... They’re brilliant at strategic thinking, telling mind-blowing stories and raising capital, but they’re often a bit clueless about the local market dynamics and hands-on dirty works. They may be the victims of the VC-faded environment — rules have been changed, because without big money, many ideas never get off the muddy-ground.
Branding was “tacticalized.”
Some founders treat branding and brand‑building as just one marketing tactic among many—a function they see as complementary to performance marketing or sales—and never elevate it to a strategic level. Under this mindset, branding work becomes overly dependent on skilled employees, agencies, and even gig workers.
For example, Seesaw’s most critical brand upgrade during this era, as I recall, was handled by Ogilvy professionals on a short‑term contract. Once the contract ended, they left—leaving behind nothing but an empty brand shell.
At that moment I already knew this brand was in big trouble—because something as crucial as brand strategy, which the founder should have personally owned, was handed to a temporary worker. Unthinkable. It fully exposed not only a misalignment in understanding brand building, but also a likely flawed view of the entire business.
Of course, a significant number of marketing‑background founders do possess sophisticated brand‑building skills—they understand positioning, category dynamics, product strategy, design, brand architecture, and modern consumer‑centric brand theory. Yet many of them fell into another trap 👇
“Chinese brand fatalism.”
Many well‑trained founders who had drunk deeply from the fell into severe path dependency. Beyond what I mentioned earlier, some had not thought deeply about product, model, culture or any meaningful innovation. The deeper reason was that they were afraid to.
Publicly, they have a set brand narrative, but privately, they are very direct in expressing their belief that most Western brands are almost invincible.
Whenever the conversation turned to a brand’s ultimate ambitions, someone would inevitably ask, with deliberate emphasis on the moat of MNC brands and how long their brand lifespans are, almost impossible to match.
The unspoken second half—“Forget it, we’re only good for being an alternative or getting acquired—we can never surpass them, ever”—was always swallowed back, leaving a thin veneer of decency in the room.
Clearly, their perspective and thinking mostly revolve around “how to leverage MNC experience to build a brand and scale the business within China,” rather than “creating a better brand and reshapes the industry landscape.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Starbucks’ products are mediocre at best. Calling the brand that challenge to Starbucks ‘nationalism’ misses the point – the fact is, Starbucks simply falls short. Consumers are looking for better products and experiences, plain and simple.
But ask a Starbucks China employee, and they’ll never admit it. Even if they recognize the problems deep down, they have no idea how to address them, because they simply aren’t trained to think that way.
Heytea, ChaGee, M Stand, Luckin, and Manner are all capable of taking on Starbucks. But take a Starbucks employee — and ask them to make something better or, more visionary, change the coffee industry to a better version? I guarantee most of them will give you a long list of reasons why it can’t be done.
The result: many people took VC money to experiment, but never bought into breaking superstitions, more ambitious strategic beliefs, or more first‑principles thinking.
P.S. Of course, this is the story as we understand it today. If U.S.–China relations had not evolved the way they have, I imagine the story would have taken a very different path. But I won’t spend time exploring that counterfactual—there is no “if.”
Phase Three: Brand-building as Strategic Core (2020–present)
Keywords: Return to Product, Supply Chain Amplification, Cultural Translation
After 2020, the pandemic, weak consumption, and capital retreat forced companies to shift from “how to grow” to “how to survive.”
Many outsiders saw this as a disaster for Chinese consumer brands — but the opposite was true. It was a critical moment for the sector to reshuffle, collectively reflect, iterate, and figure out who they are and where to go.
To survive in China internally — or abroad amid policy headwinds—you definitely need “two brushes 两把刷子” as we say in Chinese—meaning real killing-points. In other words, core competitiveness.
What are—and could be—the core competitive strengths of Chinese brands?”
Product and the Supply Chain Behind.
In today’s China, cultural brands with weak products are bound to suffer. People here have become much more aware of the weaknesses in many giants’ products. As I’ve said repeatedly, I may still feel an emotional attachment to Nike and Starbucks, but I can’t deny their products no longer offer any clear advantages over those of their Chinese counterparts.
I wouldn’t rule out the influence of state / CPC -led academic research and guidance, but that is beside the point.
What matters today is the conclusion and shared consensus:
As I mentioned, many leading brands are powerful cultural brands, and some west academia tends to treat the brand asset as something distinct from the product itself — branding is more abt culture, narrative and the metaphorical universe painting, while product is more about function, design and usable.
However, given China’s supply-chain advantages, and booming both graphic and product design talent pools, but comparatively weaker cultural power, it makes more sense at this stage to build strong product brands — It's not that cultural narrative doesn't matter. It's that the product has to stand on its own first. Build the narrative on top of that. Don't flip it around and make the narrative far more important than the product itself.
Indeed, brands relies on supply-chain advantages may face intense competition at home, precisely because everyone is operating with access to similar capabilities. But once these brands stand out over others by innovation (it doesn't have to be disruptive, but it must bring something new to the table.
Otherwise, you'll just get stuck in endless homogenized competition.
While expanding internationally, their advantages become much more visible: most brands from other countries simply do not possess such good product empowered by same combination of scale, speed, flexibility, and manufacturing depth.
This echoes something I have written elsewhere: national strength determines brand strength. Great brands never emerge in isolation. They are products of a nation’s rising power — the ultimate expression of its factor endowments and the commercial extension of a strong civilization.
This is exactly the hidden force behind the rise of a new generation of Chinese brands. And, we are seeing both:
Efficiency-driven supply-chain brands: SHEIN, Pinduoduo/Temu, and Luckin
Quality-driven supply-chain brands: Pop Mart. Songmont and To Summer.
I assume my readers are already familiar with the efficiency of China’s supply chains, since I have repeatedly used SHEIN, PDD, and Luckin as examples in my previous articles.
So here, I would like to explain more on the quality dimension.
Take Songmont, for example.
One of Songmont’s advantages lies in its ability to draw inspiration from Shanxi’s folk craftsmanship and visual traditions, then incorporate them into the modern design and standardized production of modern leather goods — context: China has a very mature supply chain for luxury leather goods — Its products are neither purely handmade nor purely mass-produced. Instead, they embody what might be called “scalable scarcity 可以被量产的稀缺性”: a sense of uniqueness that can nevertheless be produced at scale.
The same principle can be seen in Pop Mart, although in a different form.
Its products possess a distinct aesthetic appeal and are often sold out or fiercely sought after, giving them the aura of scarce collectibles.
Yet behind this perceived scarcity is a highly capable supply chain that allows Pop Mart to launch products, test concepts, and iterate at remarkable speed. It may not be able to match SHEIN in terms of production speed, but it is almost certainly the fastest producer in the designer-toy sector. This enables Pop Mart to identify the most promising products at exceptional speed—one of the reasons its success rate in developing IPs is so high. Over time, the more data it accumulates, the stronger its moat becomes.
Such quality supply chain allows the company to achieve scale without sacrificing a sense of uniqueness, or more perceived added values. I’m not entirely sure whether Pop Mart’s production or craft processes are simpler than Songmont’s, but the underlying principle is the same: using supply-chain capabilities to make distinctiveness scalable.
This will be the most fundamental competitive advantage for the future growth of Chinese brands — the ability is beyond purely scalability and efficiency, but to take a complex crafted product and bring it to life at scale through design and industrial capabilities.
One thing not to overlook — as factories empower brands and their products to continuously evolve, their own industrial systems are evolving at the same time.
A brand can train a supply chain system that is stronger than its competitors', like Shein. But over time, this capability will be learned, adapted, and challenged by latecomers, which will make it even more transparent and turn it into a new industry standard, pushing the entire industry to revolutionize itself into the next version.
Cultural Assets & Translation
Deconstruct culture and reshape its aesthetics across products, spaces, and every brand message, unifying them through a shared visionary language.
Beyond maximizing their supply-chain advantages, many Chinese brands are beginning to adopt best practices from European, Japanese, and Korean brands—many of which have likewise built their brands on a strong product foundation.
More specifically, the greatest inspiration has come from neighboring predecessors—Japan and South Korea.
Cause - they are also late‑developing nations with similar cultural roots, comparable social challenges, and more advanced thinking on paths as a non-west brand.
In short, these two countries have been teachers to China in branding in many ways —especially in cultural translation: not forcing national symbols onto products or slogans, but selectively infusing globally resonant cultural languages.
Japan has successfully sold its products and lifestyle to the world through “restraint, order, craftsmanship, and long‑termism.” Korea has sold its understanding of “trend, emotion, visual identity, and self‑expression” to the world.
This distilled language is at once culturally specific and universally understood. It moves beyond the product into the space—and across all brand content—through a visual message that resonates with global audiences.
This is where this generation of Chinese brands woke up: they can’t run “patriotic campaigns”— that’s too cheap and annoying — nor can they treat Chinese culture as decorative stickers, plastering it onto Western product forms in the old “Guochao” (national wave) mindset — that’s ugly.
What they need is not only a translation but more like a transcreation: the purpose is not diluting their cultural identity, but transforming everything, if local culture could be embedded is better, into a sense of “premiumness”, “chill”, ”cool” and “ease” “pleasure” — any universal meaning that global consumers can perceive without complex context.
Founder’s Will
Dare to Challenge the Impossible and willing to prioritize the branding work
One thing that might be understated— if supply chain is hard power and cultural translation is soft power, then the “local / even wild” backgrounds of these rising founders are the “invisible X factor” that fuses the two.
Look closely, many of today’s leading Chinese consumer-brand founders do not have extensive international backgrounds. Some might argue that a number of them have indeed been trained within MNC systems—sure, that force remains important, and well-trained professionals inevitably bring many unique methodologies that are absolutely worthy of respect and emulation — But you could also see many founders who did not even attend university—extremely wild.
The reason is perhaps just that simple: local talent has richer on‑the‑ground experience, making it easier to read China’s existing strengths and potential, more willing to explore the country’s yet‑unformed advantages, and willing to growth the brand embedded with national roots or strengths.
At the same time, this less glamorous background has, to some degree, freed them from being intimidated by long‑ingrained frameworks—pushing them toward bolder execution.
However, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with professionals or the talent of higher education. It’s just that different people are good at different things. You can see this in people like Steve Jobs, Jack Ma, Elon Musk and even Ford, Chanel, and Disney — the core is, whether you want to break some rules or uphold them, it sometimes has no direct connection to where you come from, but directly relates to who you want to become.
As Jack Ma said, “Because you believe, you see,” not vice versa.
One more thing — after several years of painful experimentation with brand building, the founders who survived have generally learned one fundamental lesson from the failures around them: the founder must take primary responsibility for the brand and make it the company’s highest strategic priority, at lea So called “brand-building is founder’s project （品牌是1号位工程）. Such project is not something that can simply be delegated to others; the founder must do it by themselves.
Cause — In theory, the tactical problems involved in brand building seems can be delegated. In practice, however, everyone is doing this for the first time. Without prior experience, how can you know which issues matter and which do not—or which are strategic and which are merely tactical?
Many theoretical frameworks are simply summaries written after the fact. But how many ready-made models are there in China for companies to copy? Few. In most cases, founders have to work through the process themselves and learning by doing along side the way around, to refine the purpose, distill the narrative, ensure the consistency, master details and etc….
That is why you may see Pop Mart’s founder spending a long time in a meeting discussing something as seemingly minor as a shopping bag. This is simply the stage Chinese brands are currently at.
Don’t misunderstand me—this doesn’t mean all these cool Chinese brands were founded after 2020. Nor is it saying that everything about them suddenly awakened at some specific point in time. In fact, many have a decade of history, but for the majority, ideological evolution in the branding sector has been gradual.
Take Songmont and Pidan, for example—both born around the 2010s. From the very beginning, their products already carried a strong sense of aesthetics, and aesthetics was always part of their product. But truly starting to promote themselves and reach a wider audience came later. Look up their first brand message posts on Xiaohongshu (RED) / Instagram—they were all published around 2021–2022.
And before 2020, many people didn’t understand at all what brands like Pidan and To Summer were doing — many was worried they would suddenly go bankrupt, let alone pay attention to a low-key brand like Songmont that started from a small niche circle.
A Delayed-Breakout is Not a Destination
If the past decade has taught us anything, it’s that brand is not a binary “done/not done” outcome—it’s an ongoing process of growth. A breakout can be late, but growth happens every single day—as long as you keep going
I’ve been thinking about this a lot—we still need a simple frame of reference to see where we stand.
Let’s roughly break Chinese brands down into few stages, for the sake of discussion 👇
1. Rookie Brand – survival and profitability is the top priority; product is core, branding is nice to have.
2. Matured Brand – stable product, aesthetics, and core audience; the brand begins to develop a recognizable “personality.”
3. Scaled Brand – big impact across regions, categories, and cultures; systematic delivery capabilities.
4. Leading Brand – not just No.1 or 2 in the category, but defining the category, setting standards, even shaping aesthetic trends.
5. Timeless Brand – transcending multiple cycles, generations, and cultures—becoming a critical part of human civilization.
By this measure, virtually all of today’s Chinese consumer brands—including those that are repeatedly written about and widely praised—are still somewhere between stages 1 and 2. In reality, however, most brands are still at the 0-to-1 stage, or even moving from -1 to 0. Only a very few have reached the threshold of stage 3. Almost none have firmly established themselves at stage 4, let alone stage 5.
That’s why I wrote earlier that I think Chinese brands are still remarkably humble—and highly conservative. As a major global power, our systemic capacity to produce world-class brands at scale remains remarkably weak. There is plenty of visible activity, but very few brands have truly broken through — most remain content to sell quietly, and many struggle even to make themselves truly marketable.
I’m glad more and more brands have brought such incredible color to the world in recent years—but my expectations for them extend far beyond that.
They still have a long, long way to go.
Climbing the Smile Curve – The Hard Way
As discussed, Chinese companies didn’t suddenly become good at branding.
The “Big Big Big “大传播时代” phase before 2015 was a weak player’s crude worship of scale.
The “well-considered but merely tactical “战术品牌时代”” phase from 2015 to 2020 was largely a rigid imitation of Western theories.
The post-2020 phase, when branding became a strategic core “品牌=企业最高战略时代”, marked a cognitive leap—one forced by mounting headwinds in international markets.
I’m not even taking into account the period before 2010. I have no firsthand experience of that era, only what I’ve learned from books.
Clearly, none of these steps were easy or smooth. They were battle‑scarred, only to eventually present the audience with their most beautiful work, experience, and most romantic stories. OFC - I hope you enjoy them.
The bigger picture — True brand‑building capability is never found in university textbooks, other people’s “words.” or even the experience as a top-employee. That’s just “技术.” — Good to know but not enough at all.
In truth, a true brand begins with a deep desire to change something — with painful decisions, self-discovery, brutal battles, and standing on the front lines of uncertainty. It is forged through an obsession with every detail, the unglamorous grind, and countless sleepless nights. Over time, these experiences give rise to an unreplicable business model, a defensible product moat, and a distinctive philosophy of life, as well as the convincing stories .
Such a philosophy, worldview, or value — distilled from practice and unique in its kind — is then embedded back into every detail of the brand including narratives, visuals, and its products.
This virtuous flywheel is the true “天道” of brand building.
Not a superficial process, but the inevitable result of what the founder’s believes, builds, and endures in everything single day.
In the end, as per talked, beyond the founder’s thinking and expression, the brand flourish is also the best evidence of a civilization’s competitiveness, creativity and energy. At both ends of the smile curve, China will secure not only the left side but also the right—that is China’s resolve, and the collective mission of those beloved brands.
Thanks for this. Chinese brands are killing it with thoughtufl strategy – but storytelling and cultural resonance? That’s still their weak spot, I’d say.
The distinction between scalable efficiency and scalable distinctiveness is especially useful. One question I would add is how to observe when a brand has actually crossed from visibility into durable demand, rather than assigning the phase retrospectively. A dated evidence trail could compare first-party moves, consumer comparisons, pricing and channel behavior, and repeat-purchase proxies before and after an inflection point. Songmont and To Summer would make an interesting pair because their cultural translation is visible, but the commercial evidence may tell different stories.