ICICLE, PANE and other similar brands have broken through the market bottleneck, moving one step closer to the vision of "Chinese luxury brands".

A growing number of new brands have emerged in many well-known commercial districts in Shanghai. Pioneering labels including ICICLE, PANE, Qiu Zhen, Shanxia Yousong have successively occupied prime locations along Middle Huaihai Road, West Nanjing Road and other high-value business corridors.

The positions once occupied by European and American luxury brands are now being replaced by Chinese brands in batches. ICICLE even opened its store on the Place Charles de Gaulle of the Champs-Élysées in Paris, right next to Hermès, making it a new trendsetter in the fashion industry. These brands share common features: outstanding design capabilities, unique brand culture and huge growth potential, which have earned them a lasting place in consumers' minds.

This is undoubtedly a huge encouragement for China's apparel industry. To be frank, there have not been many new success stories in the apparel industry over the years, which is directly reflected in the retail sales data of consumer goods. Since 2026, the total retail sales of footwear and apparel have maintained positive growth, but the growth rate has shown a trend of being high at the beginning and low afterwards, slowing down month by month. In the first 6 months of this year, the total retail sales of clothing, footwear, hats, knitwear and textile products across the country reached 770.9 billion yuan, up 6.7% year on year; among which the retail sales in June alone was 128.5 billion yuan, representing a 3.9% year-on-year increase.

Against such a general backdrop, brands of high quality like ICICLE, PANE and Shanxia Yousong have attracted widespread attention both inside and outside the industry. Such recognition is backed by impressive data. Lijin released a tracking report in August, investigating the "brand search popularity data" (brand keyword search volume / category keyword search volume × 100%) of 15 domestic mid-to-high-end apparel brands from January to July this year, finding that all 15 brands outperformed the industry average and were approaching the luxury benchmark line.

Image source: Lijin

The long-held consensus that "there are no high-end domestic apparel brands" is also being broken. In the past, the industry long believed that domestic apparel brands could not do well in the price range above 1,000 yuan, and the high-end market was the territory of international brands. Previous 618 data shows that a number of domestic brands have achieved a steady average unit price of over 1,000 yuan, with consumers willing to pay for their products and keep repurchasing (repurchase rate over 40%). Consumers do not only recognize international brands — they will recognize and pay for domestic brands when the quality and design of these domestic brands are truly up to par.

This forms a stark contrast with the overall development of the broader apparel industry market.

Zhong Xian, General Manager of E-commerce at ICICLE, shared her insights in a recent interview with 36Kr to explain this contrast: "The current consumption environment is not a simple downgrade, but a rational stratification of K-shaped consumption. The middle and high-income consumer groups have not stopped purchasing, but have disenchanted with the 'logo tax' of traditional luxury brands, and started to re-explore the standards of 'worth buying'. They are still willing to pay for good design, high-quality fabrics, perfect tailoring and emotional value. ICICLE's breakout success comes precisely from our accurate grasp of this shift in consumption structure."

To seize this rare golden development period, ICICLE has decisively increased the proportion of high-end fabrics imported from Italy, and used extreme "cost-performance ratio" and a stable aesthetic system to meet the rational consumption demands of this group who refuse to compromise. In her view: "When consumers recognize our value, growth will come naturally."

In ICICLE's story, high-quality products and great experience are of great significance. High-quality products are the foundation for brands to retain consumers, and the supply chain is responsible for stabilizing product quality; great experience requires providing emotional value to consumers, which means "cultural power". If there is only a strong supply chain, the brand will have excellent product quality but insufficient bargaining power. The two together constitute the "brand power".

There is no need to compete for traffic and low prices any more, the good era of the apparel industry has truly arrived.

Build brand first, then scale up

In the past, the path to build a brand was usually to expand scale first, then build brand influence. But domestic high-end brands represented by ICICLE choose to build consumer mindshare first, then expand scale.

This has to mention ICICLE's product methodology.

ICICLE was born against the backdrop of sharply rising life pressure in modern society, when "comfortable and environmentally friendly commuter wear" became a new demand for urban white-collar workers. Natural fabrics have become ICICLE's first choice. Natural fabrics are skin-friendly, comfortable and environmentally friendly, but the production of such fabrics is very difficult and requires much higher costs. In the early stage of brand development, ICICLE attracted widespread attention by using unique ramie materials, so that consumers would automatically associate ICICLE with the "natural" concept.

Over the past few years, ICICLE has integrated the concept of "natural" and "comfortable" from fabric selection to the entire supply chain. Behind this is a set of strict supply chain selection criteria. In the past, manufacturers that met the criteria were mostly overseas enterprises. For example, the earliest fabrics that met these two requirements came from Sojitz Corporation of Japan.

More than 20 years ago, ICICLE began to purchase cotton and linen fabrics from Sojitz, and later Sojitz fabrics once accounted for 40% of ICICLE's fabric usage. After that, ICICLE set up its Paris center, and established in-depth cooperation with more than a dozen top Italian fabric suppliers such as LORO PIANA, REDA and PIACENZA. Until last year, 40% of ICICLE's fabrics still came from Italy, and 10% from Japan. In addition, ICICLE acquired the OEM supplier of MaxMara, which is very good at handcrafting double-faced wool coats and silk techniques.

The HUG down jacket is also a signature product of ICICLE, which uses natural fabrics such as cashmere, wool or silk camel hair as the outer layer, and is filled with Hungarian goose down. The workshop ceremonial dresses are designed by the Paris Design Center, made of heavyweight silk with excellent draping property, suitable for important occasions, with precise tailoring and exquisite details emphasized in craftsmanship.

In the eyes of founder Ye Shouzeng, Chinese manufacturing is the most mature resource in the world and deserves to be seen. Therefore, ICICLE has built a complete self-owned supply chain in the field of natural materials since 2005, for example, it built a factory in Shanghai. Its Nature Way capsule series uses environmentally planted cotton, linen, silk, Xiangyun gauze and other materials, and also adopts plant dyeing, food dyeing and other techniques, many of which are local sustainable processes.

Years of deep cultivation in the supply chain have led to the result that ICICLE's raw materials such as cashmere, wool, organic cotton and linen all come from a controllable origin cooperation network. It adheres to environmentally friendly dyeing and low-carbon processing in the production process, and its fabrics are practical, wear-resistant and easy to take care of in daily life, which fully meet the needs of urban life.

It is precisely with the endorsement of high-quality supply chain and design level that ICICLE can sell a double-faced wool coat at 40,000 yuan, a price that was previously unreachable for domestic brands.

In its newly launched outdoor capsule series, ICICLE still adheres to the principle of being natural and comfortable on the premise of ensuring outdoor functionality, which is highly consistent with the concept of outdoor enthusiasts who pursue high wearability, comfort and environmental friendliness.

With high-quality products, a good brand also needs a unique brand concept that can resonate with consumers, and find a good way to "tell stories". Different from many traditional brands, ICICLE has adopted many unconventional communication strategies in brand building.

While European and American luxury brands are reducing the number of stores and opening more small shops, ICICLE took the opposite path. It opened an offline garden store in Shanghai in 2024, as offline scenarios are still indispensable for brands, especially high-end brands, to build consumer mindshare.

ICICLE's garden store is built at the core of the Hengfu Historical and Cultural Conservation Zone in Shanghai, as its first multi-brand flagship complex, building a symbiotic space for man-made creation, humanity and nature. Customers can experience a richer variety of products and scenarios. They can not only buy clothes, but also drink coffee, hold parties, read books and appreciate ceramic art, which is a complete one-stop experience.

ICICLE hopes consumers can have a complete cognition and understanding of the brand, and also hopes to obtain more complete insights into consumers: "For the middle and high-income consumers, what things do they interact with every day, what experiences do they need, so that we can have a more comprehensive understanding of the concept of this brand and this group. The concept is not only reflected in clothing, coffee, catering, books and ceramics can all reflect a person's taste."

In recent years, ICICLE has completely cut its marketing budget for airport, high-speed railway and outdoor advertisements, and instead invested the budget in its annual brand book. The annual brand book is a high-quality art photo album, with the founder as the chief editor, presenting ICICLE's fabric traceability and sustainability concept through images and essays. Many top luxury brands also issue brand magazines and periodicals in similar ways.

ICICLE has a unique definition of marketing: "Doing marketing is not only about increasing exposure and creating hit products, but also about telling the story of products well, because marketing is top-down. It is very important how consumers perceive ICICLE."

In addition, the reason why brands like ICICLE can become mid-to-high-end brands may also lie in their different understanding of e-commerce channels.

As we all know, luxury brands that are used to operating offline stores have always been relatively cautious about e-commerce channels. It was not until 2017 when Tmall's luxury platform Luxury Pavilion was launched that Burberry settled in as one of the first brands, GUCCI did not settle in until 2020, and LV has not settled in any e-commerce platform so far.

ICICLE actively embraced e-commerce very early, but it never regards e-commerce as a channel to boost sales volume or clear inventory. Zhong Xian, General Manager of E-commerce at ICICLE, said: "Seven years ago, we decided to operate the Tmall flagship store as an offline boutique, and insisted on outputting content to cultivate consumers' brand mindshare."

Even in online scenarios, ICICLE clearly defines that the brand should build a high-quality product shelf, which is due to the tremendous changes in the path of brand construction: Operating long-term business on a mature platform. Big promotion events and high-exposure nodes should not only be outlets for selling goods, but also windows to amplify brand tonality.

For example, ICICLE uses e-commerce as a "new product showcase for brand series", and integrates intangible cultural heritage culture and quality lifestyle into live broadcast narratives through IPs such as "Tmall Super Fashion Show". This show-style store live broadcast and consultant-style anchors not only maintain the brand expression, but also directly convert aesthetic recognition into transaction results, realizing the integration of brand effect and sales performance.

Coincidentally, ICICLE is also the brand selected for the first Tmall Chinese Fashion Award — this award is not ranked only by GMV, but also evaluated by design, product strength and brand potential.

Behind this is a change in the industry incentive structure. In the past, most of the traffic and resources of many e-commerce platforms were allocated according to GMV. A brand of medium scale would find through calculation that investing in brand building requires large input, long cycle and uncertain return, which is not as good as concentrating resources to create hit products. So it is not that brands do not want to build brand influence, but the incentive structure does not support it.

The evaluation criteria of the Chinese Fashion Award shows that Tmall has shifted part of its traffic and support from "the brands that sell the most" to "the brands that make good products". Once this signal is verified, brands' business decisions will change accordingly — investing in product development will also bring returns.

During this year's 618 shopping festival, ICICLE's average unit price rose from 2,700 yuan to 3,200 yuan, with the repurchase rate reaching 68%, and it climbed from outside the top 400 of Tmall women's clothing to Top 9. These figures show that the apparel industry has found a new path: starting from design, establishing foothold by product strength, gaining continuous purchases from consumers, and achieving business growth.

No competition for low prices and sales volume, unique e-commerce operation methodology

These newly rising Chinese high-end brands accumulate mindshare faster than expected by traditional models. A set of data shows that some domestic high-end brands have approached the level of luxury brands in a shorter period of time. For example, on e-commerce channels, Shanxia Yousong achieved 70% search popularity in the bag category in 13 years, while the figure for luxury brands is 73%; ICICLE also reached 51% in the women's clothing category, compared with 55% for luxury brands.

Traditional international luxury brands rely on path dependence to tell long historical stories, open thousands of stores, and continuously launch performance-based advertising. However, the rising local high-end Chinese apparel brands have taken a different path.

On the one hand, the new generation of middle and high-income consumer groups have disenchanted with international brands. They no longer need to prove their own value through the logos of overseas top brands, which provides broad mindshare soil for "Cool China". National confidence has promoted their trust in local mid-to-high-end brands, which is evolving from superficial impulse to deep trust.

On the other hand, China's mature e-commerce ecosystem provides systematic infrastructure support and payment trust for these brands. These e-commerce platforms usually help brands efficiently complete the closed loop of "targeting the right people, retaining them, and expanding to more people". In particular, the membership system represented by Tmall 88VIP helps brands accurately target the domestic population with strong purchasing power, so that the compound interest effect of brand power can be quickly manifested. In addition, the combination of recommendation algorithm and search improves the efficiency of reach and conversion.

Obviously, a new path for brands to build brand power is taking shape: Official online flagship store operation + content platform marketing + Tmall search conversion + private domain repurchase precipitation. PANE achieved 47% search popularity on Tmall in 3 years, ICICLE's average unit price rose from 2,700 yuan to 3,200 yuan with a repurchase rate of 68% far exceeding the industry average, all proving that the new path is feasible.

Brands like ICICLE also have a different understanding of live streaming. They never regard it as a tool to boost sales volume.

Consumers can fully understand the brand, including brand updates, core series and new series launches,