A DTC brand breakdown of Huel using the WWW.HER framework (customer, product, marketing, brand story). The Huel business model paired a nutritionally complete product with recurring orders and an owned community to reach £214m in revenue, and is now under a reported near €1bn Danone acquisition.

A DTC brand breakdown of Augustinus Bader using the WWW.HER framework (customer, product, marketing, brand story). The Augustinus Bader strategy inverted the standard DTC playbook to build a US$1 billion premium brand. Here is what Chinese brands going global can actually take from it.

In May 2026 Proya paid 351 million yuan to lift its stake in Flower Knows to 51 percent, valuing the brand at 2.83 billion yuan on a 595.76 percent appraisal premium. This is why the most-watched Flower Knows acquisition of the year was rational, what Proya was really buying, and how it marks a split in how Chinese consumer giants do cross-border M&A.

SHEIN paid US$100 million for Everlane, and CEO Alfred Chang has already promised Everlane will stay independent under SHEIN ownership. We unpack why the business case is clean, why the integration temptation will be enormous, and which leading indicators over the next 12 months will tell us whether SHEIN can stick to its promise or quietly drift toward full absorption.

Anta is now the largest sportswear company in China, ahead of Nike. But the more interesting story is what it owns abroad. Arc'teryx, Salomon, Wilson, Descente, Maia Active and a fresh 29% stake in PUMA: a portfolio that looks less like Nike and more like LVMH in sport.

Six months ago, Lululemon's China business looked like the cleanest premium-import story of 2025: comparable sales surging in the +30s, US$1 billion in revenue, a textbook portfolio bet against a softening US business. Today, with Calvin McDonald gone, growth decelerating, and lower-tier expansion meeting domestic incumbents, the bet looks less clean.

While Florasis opened flagships in Tokyo and Flower Knows raised growth capital, Proya, China's largest pure-play beauty company, has barely opened a counter abroad. Instead, it bought a Japanese hair brand, took a Series B stake in Flower Knows, opened a Paris R&D center and filed for a Hong Kong IPO. Inside Proya's patient capital playbook for going global, and what it tells us about the next phase of Chinese beauty's international ambition.

Most 'clean beauty' brands market on aesthetic. Tower 28 turned three independent medical-association seals into a moat: NEA, National Rosacea Society, and National Psoriasis Foundation. The Sephora-exclusive brand doubled sales in 2024 and became the retailer's highest-productivity brand. Inside Amy Liu's six-year operator playbook for building unfalsifiable consumer trust.

The #独居生活 hashtag on Xiaohongshu gained over 400 million views in just 90 days, signaling a dramatic shift in how China's growing solo population consumes, lives, and seeks brands. From RIO's micro-buzz cocktails to Heytea's KOC seeding, leading brands are designing for the solo occasion rather than marketing solo living as a lifestyle. Inside what international brands can learn from Japan's ohitorisama economy and the new Xiaohongshu Solo Living seeding playbook.