What kind of people are those who buy "Pines at the Foot of the Mountain"?
The TV drama Shanghai Women's Atlas once says, Shanghai is the very place where plane trees cast shadows over your head. Now this promotional line needs to be updated:
The location where people stepping on PANE, holding a Songmont bag and wearing perfume from To Summer stay, that is the real Shanghai.
Specifically, this version of Shanghai refers to the area under the administration of Huaihai Middle Road Sub-district in Huangpu District, Shanghai, where the character Jian Xi in Tiny Times queued up to buy the limited-edition Adidas Originals sneakers for Lin Xiao. These three local brands are known as Shanghai's specialty consumer goods. Foreign tourists stream in along Huaihai Middle Road, and the queues outside the stores can circle around the entrance three times.
In September 2025, Bernard Arnault, the head of LVMH, visited Shanghai. The old gentleman first stopped by Laopu Gold, left a comment of "interesting", then hurried to Songmont immediately and bought two bags on the spot to get a taste of Oriental aesthetics [1].
However, Arnault was still a visitor from out of town after all. He checked in at the Songmont store in Taikoo Hui Qiantan, and failed to witness the grand queuing scene on Huaihai Middle Road, which is a big pity.
French haute bourgeoisie visiting Laopu Gold
What did Arnault go to Songmont for? From 2019 to 2023, about 80% of the growth in the luxury goods industry came from price increases. The entry price of some bag models of the seven major luxury brands rose from 1320 US dollars to 2040 US dollars, an increase of about 55% [3].
The middle class who could once afford LV with a little stretch now need to make a much bigger effort. From 2022 to 2025, the number of global personal luxury consumers dropped from 400 million to 340 million, with a loss of 60 million people in three years [4].
Two paths diverge in the woods: one leads to luxury goods with big logos, the other leads to no-logo quiet luxury, and the middle class chose Huaihai Middle Road.
The question Arnault wants to figure out is: even if you don't buy LV, why on earth do you refuse to buy Polène, the authentic old Parisian brand that LVMH invested in last year and opened its first China store in June this year, but run to Huaihai Middle Road to buy Songmont bags?
Brand Expansion and Globalization
Speaking of Songmont, most people may associate it with Shanxi, elderly grannies and hand-sewn craftsmanship. But at the very beginning, Songmont did not have such a clear positioning and rich brand storylines.
In 2013, Fu Song, who returned to the workplace after giving birth, could not find a suitable laptop bag, so she decided to design one by herself, and invited her grandmother to make it.
At that time, the brand was not named Songmont yet, with the English logo songmont, and its business model was relatively rough, taking social media as the core and relying on huge private domain traffic to carry out social sales, which was basically the Wechat retail model.
Around 2018, Songmont tried formal e-commerce channels, and its business scale gradually expanded. Later, founder Fu Song set up a professional team to run the brand full-time.
This stage was the golden period for Songmont to build its brand influence, which was divided into offline and online sectors.
Offline, the brand focused on natural geography education. Its two stores in Shanghai and Beijing were designed according to natural landforms, making customers feel like standing on a high hill looking at Shanxi, as if the bag was sewn right in front of them by the Shanxi granny.
Chinese middle class queuing to select Songmont bags
The brand also made huge investments online: it sent actress Yong Mei back to Inner Mongolia, sent actress Wen Qi to Nepal, and launched its own podcast Sound Under the Mountain. The episode featuring Wen Qi got 440,000 total plays, with no mention of the products at all, but successfully made the brand widely known.
The fashion track focuses on brand marketing, precisely targeting the corresponding crowd and converting them strongly.
Although every consumer brand boss likes to say they never do marketing, this statement is just like saying "to be fair", whose next sentence is definitely fallacy.
As a peer of Songmont, the founder of Qiu Zhen once said "to hell with branding, marketing can go away first". But later after reaping the benefits of being promoted by Dong Jie on Xiaohongshu, he immediately adjusted the brand strategy, continued in-depth cooperation with Dong Jie in 2023, and the sales volume exceeded 100 million yuan for the first time.
Since then, Qiu Zhen has fully embraced marketing: it invited Xi Mengyao as brand ambassador, invited Tan Yuanyuan and Teng Congcong to shoot advertisements. Its spiritual life positioning fully aligns with Songmont: it implanted its products in the movie All Ears, invited Niao Niao and Chun Xia to record podcasts. At the same time, its material level was also upgraded synchronously, with stores moved from Tianzifang to Taikoo Hui Xingye.
However, it is far from enough to claim you are premium by yourself. In the division of labor of the global fashion industry, Paris defines premium, Milan manufactures premium, and Yiwu replicates premium. To be part of this system, you still need praise from foreigners.
PANE, one of the three local specialty brands, focuses on the footwear track. It started operating Instagram in 2023, and cooperated with overseas fashion/lifestyle bloggers with 20,000 to 50,000 followers to unbox its products. When the global official website was launched last October, the brand had already accumulated a group of potential customers [2].
Before the shoes were officially rolled out to global sales channels, there had been piles of outfit sharing and shopping reviews on the overseas internet. Creating demand first and then fulfilling orders can be regarded as the basic skill of internet marketing in the era of domestic products going global.
American petite bourgeoisie receiving promotion for Songmont
For the same pair of domestic shoes, if a Chinese blogger says it is comfortable to wear, people will think it is paid promotion; but if a Parisian blogger says it is comfortable, it will be recognized as international fashion certified. Not to mention that foreign tourists specially travel to Huaihai Middle Road to queue up, whose communication effect is comparable to a large-scale consumer performance art.
Some people are trying to go to Paris, while some people have already been in Paris.
Since 2024, Songmont has held the "Sound from Distant Mountains" exhibition during Paris Fashion Week for three consecutive years to tell good Chinese stories. In the first year, the theme was camel bells in the desert; the second year, it was temple bells in mountain temples; by 2026, the brand simply moved an art installation modeled after an ancient pagoda in Shanxi to Paris. It might as well not be called "Sound from Distant Mountains", but directly named "Protectorate of the Western Regions".
The fashion brand ICICLE opened its global flagship store on Avenue George V in Paris, located in the famous Golden Triangle, near Avenue Montaigne and the Champs-Élysées. Later, it entered Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, becoming a neighbor of the traditional luxury retail blocks in old Paris.
A brand does not need a century-old history, but it must have an authentic luxury brand as its neighbor, which follows the same logic as the red carpet standing arrangement. Miniso has already handed in its answer sheet --
Fake it till you make it.
Approaching the Quiet Luxury Trend
Local specialty brands like Songmont represent a global consumer trend: Quiet Luxury.
What is quiet luxury? The TV drama Succession explains it very clearly. This drama tells the story of the American tycoon Logan Roy and his four children fighting for control of the family business.
Logan Roy is a media tycoon. The choice of the media industry is very deliberate, as he deals with celebrities every day, just like domestic workplace romance dramas all cluster in the advertising and finance industries. If you randomly pick the technology industry, you will easily make a joke like the scene in My Chinese Chip where people smelt chips with test tubes and flasks in the great leap forward style.
The Roy family's wealth level is basically beyond the imagination of ordinary people. They belong to the top 1% of the 1%, pure-blood old money, top-tier old money. They have private drivers when going out, beach mansions for vacation, and family gatherings are often held in top New York apartments or private estates.
Daily outfits of American haute bourgeoisie
However, as the orthodox old money, the way the family shows off their wealth is very down-to-earth:
On the old man's birthday, the whole family played baseball for entertainment. His son Roman casually wrote a 1 million dollar check, telling the staff's child that if he hit a home run, the check would be his, and if he missed it, he would tear it up on the spot.
Daily entertainment of American haute bourgeoisie
In one episode, Logan Roy held a private birthday party. His grandnephew Greg brought a female companion, who carried a classic Burberry check large bag, priced at about 2890 US dollars, equivalent to nearly 20,000 yuan.
American petite bourgeoisie attending the private party of haute bourgeoisie
Logan's assistant broke down on the spot and reminded Greg, we are in the house of one of the richest people in the world, "not a fucking Shake Shack".
Tom, the son-in-law, also lost his temper and followed up immediately:
"Because she brought a ridiculously large bag. What on earth is in this bag? Flat shoes to change into for the subway? A lunch box?
Greg, this thing is a total monster, it's absurdly big. You could even take it camping, or use it to push the stolen money across the floor after robbing a bank."
The son-in-law who married into the haute bourgeoisie makes sarcastic remarks on his fellow petite bourgeoisie from the same class
Tom himself is a son-in-law who squeezed into the Roy family through marriage. He was once laughed at by Roman, the son who tore up the 1 million check, for wearing a Moncler down vest, asking if he stuffed all his hopes and dreams into it.
Unexpectedly, Tom, who groveled to his father-in-law on weekdays, turned around to label Greg's female companion to draw a clear line from the old class, completing a loyal class oath.
Burberry's check pattern was another reason why she was excluded. The Roy family's aesthetic concept is low-key luxury, hidden wealth, that is "stealth wealth". If you expose your Hermès belt outside all day, you will not end well.