Chinese Mega Influencer Cherie and Her XUELI Apparel Brand

Cherie, or Xue Li (雪梨) in Chinese, is one of China’s mega influencers in China with 13.2 million followers on Weibo. She first stepped into the spotlight over 10 years ago as the girlfriend of Wang Sicong (王思聪), son of Wangjianlin, founder of Wanda Group and one of the richest men in China. While she originally gained her fame as Wang’s girlfriend, after the breakup she leveraged that fame to launch her own Taobao store Chinstudio back in 2010 and quickly became one of the top fashion stores on Taobao. In 2018, Cherie made the move from being a Taobao seller to a fashion brand by re-branding and re-launching her store as XUELI.

During Double 11 in 2020, XUELI achieved over 480 million RMB in sales. In 2020, the brand’s number of customers broke 27 million and it did a total of 2.3 billion RMB in sales. The XUELI Tmall store has almost 9 million followers.

In 2019, with the rise of Taobao livestreaming, Cherie also launched her career as a livestreamer, selling products for other brands as well as those from her own brands. She is now also one of Tmall’s top live streamers alongside Viya and Austin Li.

Cherie started as a small Taobao seller and now she has a multi-billion RMB apparel brand. What’s more, she has been able to survive in China’s tough fast fashion industry for 10 years. By looking at XUELI’s development, we can learn the development of the Chinese apparel industry.

Why Traditional Fast Fashion Fails to Reach Consumers?

In the past, fashion was not accessible to everyone in terms of decision making. Brands organized press releases to announce their new collections.

However, with the Internet and consumers’ growing confidence, consumers began to show and voice their aesthetics and opinions which can affect brands’ decision-making process.

As Cherie said in a documentary called Chaoliu China (潮流中国), though there are many apparel brands emerging in China every day, they may grow quickly but they can also die quickly, for the fact that the industry is changing too fast to satisfy young consumers’ needs.

Why Can Cherie Grow Her Apparel Business?

Capture & respond to consumers’ needs

Early on, Cherie noticed the trend that fashion brands are no longer the dictator, and they will need to value consumers’ opinions in order to survive. The main thing she has been doing for XUELI is to make the brand an accessible one by handing over some of the decision-making power to its customers.

She said herself in the documentary that she had been talked to “all the girls”. From Renren, Mogujie (蘑菇街), Meili Shuo (美丽说) to Weibo and to livestream, she’s always stepped into the newest platforms where consumers are gathering in order to connect with them.

Offering Styling advice

Cherie noticed that Chinese consumers want suggestions for entire outfits instead of brands’ presenting individual clothes. For example, when they were watching a popular TV series called My Best Friend’s Story (流金岁月), they wanted to immediately copy and paste one of the main actress’ outfits and purchase them.

Once she noticed this need, Cherie stared having XUELI present its products as a whole outfit. XUELI also has its own stylists to help consumers design their looks. This builds loyalty among consumers and increases the repurchase rate of the brand.

Actively working with IPs

Working with IPs has become a trendy thing among brands in China. It gives freshness to its consumers and has great potential to turn the IP’s fans into the brand’s customers.

XUELI is also actively collaborating with IPs. For example, it once worked with Warrior, a Chinese shoe brand that has 94-year history. Within 4 hours, XUELI sold more than 110k pairs, and it achieved over 20 million RMB sales in a week.

Develop Mature Supply Chains

This actually belongs under the previous section, “Why Cherie is Able to Grow Her Apparel Business?”, as it is a key element for XUELI’s success. But since there is so much to cover it demands its own section.

Why made Cherie decide to improve her supply chains?

Back in 2013 Cherie realized that if XUELI (back then called Chinstudio) solely relied on what was already available on the market, her brand wouldn’t be able to stand out.

First, Chinese consumers are pursuing personalized products instead of one that looks exactly the same as what other vendors are selling. Second, sourcing goods from apparel vendors makes it hard to control price and quality. And lastly, sourcing pre-designed apparel from vendors doesn’t leave room for creativity.

Since then, Cherie has been devoted to building and improving her supply chains. Her KOL incubator and e-commerce company Chen Fan has over 1,000 supply chain vendors. XUELI also has its own, and whenever Cherie’s team decides to launch new collections such as down jackets, jeans or jersey, those vendors react quickly and assemble their resources to accommodate Cherie’s needs.

It is known in the industry that Cherie’s supply chain system has big changes every year. This is because she keeps only 30% of her supply chain vendors and weed out unqualified ones.

Benefits of a mature supply chain

The most direct effect that the supply chain brings for XUELI is higher efficiency. For example, the preparation of this year’s 618.

It started on May 10, when the team began designing products. Two weeks later, the design work was finished. Since May 15 and the rest 5 days, supply chain vendors were preparing materials. In the next two weeks, manufacturers were busy mass producing the new designs.

In total, the whole process takes around 40 days. That’s very “China speed”.

This speed and control over the process also allows Cherie to change designs based on feedback from customers. For example, earlier in May, Cherie posted images of her wearing a dress on Weibo. In the comments area, she noticed a user saying that she’s not comfortable with a hole in back, because that looks backless, that she would prefer a version of the dress without a hole.

After Cherie saw the comment, she screenshotted it and sent it to her designer. The designer quickly removed the hole and update the design to the user’s preference. With XUELI’s supply chain, a new dress was quickly launched in the store.

At the moment, it only takes 5-7 days for XUELI’s team to restock spring & summer collections, and 15-20 days to restock fall & winter collections.

Tapping into the Guochao Trend

Most recently, XUELI launched a new line called CU focused on apparel that incorporates Chinese design elements, a trend called Guochao. The company teamed up with 11 artists, illustrators, and independent designers to create the first set of designs. Guochao clothing has become very popular among young Chinese consumers over the past several years and so far XUELI’s CU line has been well received.

Read more: 从仰视到平视，雪梨的十年猛进