International brands haven’t read the Chinese market correctly. Mass-market fashion in China has not followed the traditional western-consumer model, where cheap clothes are bought by shoppers from Walmart or Target or Primark. In China, nearly all value-end of the market is now found online.

Moreover, young Chinese consumers are far less brand conscious than generally assumed. They are accustomed to choosing based on looks alone, traditionally from small sellers selling nameless, unbranded clothes at wholesale clothing markets. International mass-market brands have lost out partly due to the first-mover advantage of domestic brands, which produce cut-price fashion at ultra-fast speeds.

So the young generation doesn’t necessarily like foreign brands just for namesake, compared to the older generation. With the older generation, the semiotics of a purchase and what it would mean to people around them and their social standing were more important than the actual functionality of a product. This is not seen nearly as much with Chinese millennials.

However at the luxury end of the market, there is a huge premium on a Made in Europe label. Even here, many international companies entering the Chinese market have mistakenly regarded big eastern-seaboard cities like Shanghai as being representative of the rest of the country – which is far from being the case.