China Signals: Nike resets, Plustwo folds, a Brooks KOL cheats, Tiffany flips

Revenue at Nike’s Greater China business fell for the ninth consecutive quarter as the company announced a restructuring that folds China into a broader Asia-Pacific region. Chinese fragrance brand Plustwo shut down all operations after sales collapsed more than 98% from 2021 levels. Brooks China dropped a fitness influencer with 530,000 followers after she was photographed riding on the back of a bicycle during the Berlin Marathon. And Tiffany's mooncake dispute reversed course after a customer's online campaign drew a backlash over the harassment of frontline staff. Nike rejigs China business after ninth straight quarterly revenue decline Market intel: Nike’s Greater China revenue fell 26% year-on-year on a currency-neutral basis to $1.18 billion in its fiscal 2027 first quarter, the ninth straight quarter of decline. Wholesale sales dropped 31%, while Nike Direct fell 18%. CEO Elliott Hill said on the earnings call that Nike is working to become a more premium and culturally relevant brand in China and to cut deep discounting. He said the majority of its partners’ physical stores in Greater China have not been refreshed in the past seven years. Weakness in China came as Nike’s broader Performance business — including running, soccer, training, tennis and golf — posted high-single-digit growth globally. Nike now expects fiscal 2027 revenue to decline by a high-single-digit percentage, and CFO Dave Denton said the pressure on revenue would continue into fiscal 2028. Under its new “Pace” restructuring program, Nike will consolidate its four global regions into three from fiscal 2028, combining Greater China with Asia-Pacific to form a new Asia-Pacific and Greater China (APGC) region. Cathy Sparks, vice president and general manager of Greater China, said the change puts the two businesses under a single leadership team and that China’s strategic importance to Nike is unchanged, China Daily reported. The company is also expanding its China product creation team and plans to give local teams more ownership of their markets. Pace targets approximately $2.5 billion in cumulative savings through fiscal 2031. From January 2027, Nike will gradually exit most partner-operated online stores in China and concentrate digital sales on its own website and app and its official flagship stores on Tmall, JD.com and Douyin, Xinhua reported in July, citing the company’s Greater China head. Market indicator: Alarming as the headline number is, the restructuring tells a more complicated story. Many online reactions framed the move as Nike retreating from China. Nike argues the opposite: Hill said the new structure will cut layers and give local teams more ownership, and Sparks said China’s importance to the company is unchanged. Whether a merged region leaves the China team with more say over product and channels will only be clear once the structure takes effect. Pulling back from partner-operated online stores is the more consequential move. For years, Nike’s e-commerce business in China relied heavily on stores run by partners on third-party platforms — a model that provided reach but diluted brand control and pricing discipline. By concentrating digital sales on owned channels and official flagship stores, Nike is betting that tighter control will rebuild brand equity, even if it costs short-term volume. Hill’s acknowledgment that most partner stores have gone seven years without a refresh shows the physical network needs investment too. Relevance is the harder problem. Nike’s struggles in China go beyond operations: the brand has lost ground with younger consumers who now gravitate toward On, Salomon, Descente and domestic players such as Anta and Li Ning. Channel restructuring can fix distribution, but it cannot manufacture desire. The expanded China product creation team will need to produce items that feel designed for Chinese consumers rather than adapted from global lineups. Whether Nike can achieve that by fiscal 2028 is the central question. Chinese fragrance brand Plustwo shuts down as C-beauty hype model falters Market intel: Chinese fragrance and personal care brand Plustwo has shut down its Tmall, Douyin and rednote stores and ended its offline operations, six years after it began selling on Tmall. Started in 2018, the brand gained recognition for integrating fragrance into personal care products and is best known for its Moon Balm solid perfume. Funding of tens of millions of RMB came in an angel round led by Capital Nuts with Zhonghui Capital, reported in January 2021. Sales across major e-commerce platforms then declined sharply — from 35.6 million RMB ($4.9 million) in 2021 to 675,300 RMB ($94,000) in January–August 2026. Both investors transferred their combined 15% stake back to the founders and the operating company, according to an April 2025 trade report. Its founding team has since developed a separate fragrance brand, Soulvent, launched in 2022 with a focus on modern natural fragrance and higher-priced home fragrance products. The closure points to the difficulties facing China’s emerging fragrance brands, which rely heavily on online channels and paid traffic. Market indicator: Plustwo’s shutdown is a pointed reminder of how quickly early buzz can evaporate. The brand arrived on Tmall in 2020, had an early hit with its solid perfume, and attracted attention from younger consumers and investors. But it struggled to convert that initial interest into sustainable sales. Fragrance is one of the hardest beauty categories to build in China. Skincare brands can drive repeat purchase with efficacy claims and ingredient stories. Fragrance depends on personal taste and brand storytelling, where domestic brands still trail established international players. Repurchase rates are low and the cost of educating consumers is high, a fragrance industry veteran said in the same trade report. Plustwo’s “fragrance in personal care” positioning was clever, but it did not create a durable moat. For C-beauty, the implications are sobering. Over the past few years, a wave of domestic brands has generated excitement through strong aesthetics and social media savvy. But hype is not a business model. The brands that survive will be those with real product differentiation and unit economics that hold up once the novelty fades. Soulvent, the founding team’s newer venture, targets higher-priced home fragrance — a sign the founders have concluded that survival requires higher margins and clearer differentiation. Early buzz buys other emerging brands time, and little else. Brooks China drops fitness influencer after Berlin Marathon cheating exposes KOL vetting gaps Market intel: Abeeeer, a Chinese fitness influencer with about 530,000 followers on one social platform, has apologized after being photographed riding on the back of a friend’s bicycle during the Berlin Marathon on September 27. She finished in 4 hours and 53 minutes and initially claimed a personal best. Photos showing her on the bicycle around the 38-kilometer mark — together with a 35-40km split of 30 minutes and 49 seconds, her fastest of the race — raised questions about her result. She initially said she had gotten on the bicycle because she felt unwell and was considering withdrawing, and that she returned to the same spot to resume running without skipping any of the course. In an apology on October 3, she said riding during the race broke competition rules and that concealing it in her post-race content was dishonest. She apologized for violating the principles of fair competition and said she would accept public criticism. After her apology, sponsor Brooks China (布鲁克斯) said on October 4 it had terminated its partnership with her and would not work with her again. It apologized for checking only her finishing result and not her split data, and promised to strengthen its partner selection and event risk-management procedures. Market indicator: Influencer scandals escalate quickly, and this one shows how exposed brands are when they tie their marketing to individual creators. The offense itself was contained: a stretch on a bicycle during a marathon, admitted and apologized for. But Abeeeer had built her online persona around fitness and running, so the revelation undermined the credibility that made her commercially valuable. Speed defined Brooks China’s response. It announced the termination a day after her apology and acknowledged it had failed to check her race data. That admission matters: it shows a brand accepting accountability for the partners it chooses as well as the products it sells. When consumers scrutinize brand associations, a sponsored influencer’s misconduct becomes the brand’s reputational problem. Due diligence is the underlying issue. Brands have developed sophisticated vetting for A-list ambassadors, but key opinion leaders (KOLs) can fall through the cracks. Sponsorship contracts need to provide for performance verification, and marketing teams need a process for validating claims before amplifying them. A marathon time and its splits can be checked; a brand that amplifies them unchecked is taking an unnecessary risk. Expect more rigorous verification to become standard as influencer marketing in China grows. Tiffany & Co. mooncake dispute flips as online sentiment turns against the customer Market intel: A dispute over a Tiffany & Co. (蒂芙尼) mooncake gift has escalated in China from a customer service complaint into a wider debate over online harassment and the boundaries of consumer rights. The customer, who had spent more than 200,000 RMB ($28,000) at Tiffany’s Chengdu store, was promised a gift box of mooncakes (月饼), the pastries exchanged at the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节). It went to the wrong address, and staff offered loose peach pastries (桃酥), an inexpensive local biscuit, in its place. She posted about it on Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote) and created 20 group chats to share updates, each capped at 500 members and reportedly full — about 10,000 people in total. Tiffany’s response came in stages. An investigation note the customer made public on September 29 admitted the address had been copied wrongly and that staff had communicated poorly, and set out staff handling, process changes and an in-person apology, Chinese media reported. Tiffany China said on September 30 that its internal investigation was complete and that it would upgrade its service and privacy procedures. The customer said the brand had promised that no employee would be fired. Personal information and photos of two employees involved were circulated online, prompting criticism that the campaign had gone beyond a legitimate consumer complaint. The son of one employee said he had contacted a Beijing law firm to preserve evidence, and that any legal action would be decided with the two employees and their lawyer. The customer said she set up the groups only to share updates and had not exposed anyone’s personal information. She later removed all group members, and the groups are no longer visible on her profile. It also emerged that the deputy store manager had sent the customer a bouquet worth more than 1,000 RMB ($140) before the pastries were offered, a gesture her posts had not mentioned. Market indicator: Luxury service controversies usually run one way, and this one reversed. It began as a familiar story: a high-spending client slighted by a luxury brand, with public sympathy leaning toward the customer. As the campaign grew to 20 chat groups and frontline staff had their personal details exposed, sentiment turned. Commenters began asking why they should side with a wealthy client against employees who had tried to make amends. The bouquet is the detail that changed the story. It showed staff had tried to apologize before the pastries were offered, undermining the picture of an indifferent luxury brand ignoring a valued customer. Once that emerged, commenters began identifying with the sales staff, and a consumer rights dispute took on the character of class resentment. Luxury brands, often perceived as aloof, should study that dynamic. Operationally, speed still matters. Tiffany’s investigation and its admission of the address error were necessary, but by then the story was being shaped by forces outside its control. Public opinion in China does not automatically side against corporations: consumers distinguish legitimate complaints from excessive campaigns. Brands that handle such disputes best will respond quickly and protect their frontline staff.

China Signals: Nike resets, Plustwo folds, a Brooks KOL cheats, Tiffany flips

How 2026 welcomed ‘Too Cool’ back

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China Signals: Nike resets, Plustwo folds, a Brooks KOL cheats, Tiffany flips

How 2026 welcomed ‘Too Cool’ back