China signals: Xintiandi laces up, Outopia picks up pace, gems go big, down goes DIY

Four stories this week show where Chinese consumers will pay a premium and where they won’t. In Shanghai’s Xintiandi (新天地), sportswear labels including Salomon, Lululemon and On are taking prime sites once held by fashion and luxury brands. Trail-running label Outopia (遨托邦), founded by former LVMH and Lululemon executives, opened four stores in three cities in late September after closing a Series B round in February. Imports of finished lab-grown diamonds rose 37.8% in 2025 as falling prices put bigger stones within reach of younger buyers, and some brands are now competing on design instead of carats. Down jacket buyers are pushing back on price too, buying loose down and fabric online and sewing their own. Sports brands take over Xintiandi as China’s affluent consumers embrace active lifestyles Market intel: Shanghai’s Xintiandi shopping district is becoming a destination for high-end sportswear as sport and fashion retail converge. Salomon, Hoka, On, Wilson, Lululemon and Descente have all expanded in the area, taking prime locations once held by fashion and luxury labels. Wilson opened Qingdi (青邸), a tennis concept store with a café and a racket-stringing workshop, on September 29, Jing Daily reported. Hoka’s first global brand experience center, a three-story space of more than 1,200 square meters, has been open nearby since May 2025, according to the Shanghai government. Xintiandi Dongtaili (东台里), the district’s eastern extension, added more outdoor flagships when it opened in September 2025. Among them are The North Face’s first Asia-Pacific member center and Under Armour Outdoor’s first China flagship. Rising demand for running and outdoor sport among China’s affluent urban consumers is behind the shift. Several of these stores sell services alongside product, such as fitness testing at Hoka and racket stringing at Wilson, to give shoppers a reason to come back. Rents in the area range from 7 RMB to 35 RMB ($1.04 to $5.21) per square meter per day, a property agent told Jiemian. Stand-alone buildings such as Hoka’s sit at the top of that range. Market indicator: Xintiandi’s tenant list has long tracked what its affluent shoppers want to be seen buying. The district made its name with restaurants and fashion boutiques before beauty and fragrance brands moved in. Dongtaili still houses La Mer, Helena Rubinstein and Darphin concept spaces. Sportswear’s arrival suggests that fitness and time outdoors now confer the kind of status fashion once did. Labels moving in are paying for visibility along with floor space. A Hoka experience center or a Wilson concept store in Xintiandi signals that these labels belong alongside luxury houses. Running clubs and in-store services give people reasons to return between purchases, and in sports retail that sense of belonging now does as much selling as the product. Whether the model holds up is less certain. Prime flagships are expensive to run, and each new sports tenant makes the next one harder to tell apart. Brands that turn their stores into places where people gather will have the easiest time justifying the rent. For now, Xintiandi is betting that luxury retail’s next customer walks in wearing running shoes. Outopia courts urban women and casual runners as China’s trail-running brand adds four stores Market intel: Outopia (遨托邦), a Chinese trail-running brand, opened four stores across Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen in late September, Luxe.co reported. That brings its total to 11 stores in seven cities. Two of the new stores are in Shanghai, at HKRI Taikoo Hui and West Bund Central. Its store at Beijing APM is its second in the capital, after Longfusi opened in September 2025. In Shenzhen, Outopia tested demand with a pop-up at MixC World (万象天地) before opening at Shenzhen Bay MixC (深圳湾万象城), its first permanent store in southern China, according to Qujie Business. Founded in Shanghai in 2021 by former LVMH and Lululemon executives Hou Xi (侯曦) and Aaron Jackson, Outopia made its name with technical merino wool trail-running apparel. Its stores double as bases for its running community, where members try on gear and sign up for races. The brand is now courting urban women and newer runners. Its Haoye Sisters (好野姐妹) events offer shorter, beginner-friendly routes, and this year it launched Volare, a women’s line. Investors have backed the brand through five funding rounds, according to corporate registry data cited by Guancha. The latest, a Series B in February 2026, was led by Meridian Capital (华映资本), with Challenjers Venture, Ventech China and Shunwei Capital participating, 36Kr reported. The expansion comes as more Chinese consumers take up outdoor sport and brands compete for their spending on performance apparel. Market indicator: Its founders’ backgrounds help explain how a niche label can scale in China. Hou held retail and merchandising roles at LVMH Asia-Pacific and Lululemon China, and Jackson ran raw-materials development at Lululemon’s Canadian headquarters. That gave the brand early credibility on both premium positioning and community building. Luxury retail teaches how to make a product desirable, and Lululemon showed how to build a following around a way of life. Courting urban women and casual runners makes commercial sense. Hardcore trail runners are a small, committed market. Recreational runners who want technical gear that also looks good are a far larger one. Stores where runners meet for events and pick up race kits build loyalty that outlasts any single product. That is Lululemon’s playbook, which turned yoga pants into a cultural movement. Shunwei Capital, co-founded by Xiaomi founder Lei Jun (雷军), has now invested in three consecutive rounds, a sign of investor confidence in the category. The harder test comes with scale. The more stores Outopia opens, the harder it becomes to keep its running clubs feeling like a group of friends. Few young brands in China’s sports market are better placed to try. Cheaper lab-grown diamonds put bigger engagement rings within reach of China’s Gen Z buyers Market intel: Lab-grown diamonds are winning over young Chinese consumers, particularly for bridal rings, as falling prices put larger stones within reach. China’s imports of finished lab-grown diamonds rose 37.8% to $243.5 million in 2025, according to customs data compiled by the Gems & Jewelry Trade Association of China (GAC). Prices have fallen sharply as production capacity has expanded. A high-quality one-carat loose stone now sells for about 3,500 RMB ($521), down from a peak of about 8,000 RMB ($1,191). Uncertified one-carat stones go for 800 RMB to 900 RMB ($119 to $134), according to public data cited in a report on The Paper’s Pengpai platform. In the same report, Li Yang (李扬), Greater China head of US lab-grown brand Vrai (芮爱), said the brand’s sales have grown by double digits in recent years. Bridal rings make up 65% to 70% of them. Competition on price has dented the category’s premium image. Some brands are responding with distinctive cuts and better craftsmanship instead of bigger stones. Charles said cheaper stones free up budget to develop proprietary fancy cuts that shoppers can’t buy elsewhere. Younger buyers are also putting less weight on the rarity that has long justified natural diamond prices. Market indicator: Younger Chinese consumers are rethinking what makes a diamond worth the money. For their parents’ generation, a natural diamond’s value rested on rarity and permanence, captured in De Beers’ slogan “A diamond is forever.” Gen Z and millennial buyers do the math differently. A lab-grown stone has the same physical and chemical properties, so why pay a premium for one that is simply older? Vrai’s Li sees a value calculation at work. Shoppers who choose lab-grown haven’t cut their budgets, he said; they spend the same money on more carats. One buyer in the report paid 8,000 RMB ($1,191) for a three-carat lab-grown ring in August. With bridal rings making up most of Vrai’s sales, the appeal is strongest for weddings, where size makes an impression. Falling prices also threaten the premium positioning that drew buyers to lab-grown stones in the first place. As capacity grows, the category risks becoming a commodity. Brands that sell design and a brand story stand a better chance of holding a premium than those selling carats. When scarcity is off the table, meaning is what is left to sell. Rising down jacket prices push value-conscious Chinese shoppers to sew their own Market intel: Shoppers in China are making their own down jackets to get around rising retail prices, a sign of growing price sensitivity in winter apparel. The average down jacket price rose from 438.6 RMB ($65) in 2015 to 656 RMB ($98) in 2020, according to the China National Commercial Information Center (中华全国商业信息中心), as cited by Kuwan Lab (酷玩实验室) in a report republished by Jiemian. A separate survey of listed prices across 10 domestic brands by NetEase Data (网易数读) put the average adult jacket at 881 RMB ($131) in 2023. Kuwan Lab also put the market at 250 billion RMB ($37.2 billion) in 2025. Tutorials started appearing online in winter 2024 and have returned with every cold snap since. On Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote), the topic has drawn about 27 million views and 100,000 discussions. Users buy down and jacket shells separately, then fill them using homemade tools rigged from plastic bottles and hair dryers. One Changsha mother spent 120 RMB ($18) on materials for a child’s jacket, compared with 368 RMB ($55) for a similar store-bought one. Reusing down from old bedding or coats can bring an adult jacket under 200 RMB ($30), the report said. Raw material prices have started to ease. On October 23, 90% white duck down was quoted at 540,000 RMB ($80,400) per tonne, about 7% below its 580,000 RMB ($86,400) peak. The equivalent goose down fell about 18% over the same period, to 940,000 RMB ($140,000), Kuwan Lab reported. Middlemen who stockpiled down at high prices are now selling at a discount, as garment makers cut inventory and move to made-to-order production ahead of a forecast warm winter. Market indicator: Home-sewn down jackets make for a lighthearted story with a serious message for brands. Shoppers are getting the warmth they want at a fraction of the price. They are also showing that when prices outrun what they see as fair value, they will find another way. Premium domestic brands such as Bosideng (波司登) have pulled prices up across the category. DIY shoppers are pushing back. They are questioning how much of a jacket’s price pays for materials and how much pays for branding and marketing, and some have decided the premium isn’t worth it. There is a ceiling on premiumization. Shoppers will pay for quality and brand prestige up to a point. Once the gap between price and perceived value grows too wide, they look elsewhere, whether to lab-grown diamonds or a bag of loose down. Cheaper raw materials may relieve some of the pressure, but the pragmatic mindset behind the DIY trend is likely to outlast it.

China signals: Xintiandi laces up, Outopia picks up pace, gems go big, down goes DIY

TUMI’s new growth playbook: From travel expertise to lifestyle performance

Upgrade to Pro

Sectors

Insights

Company

China signals: Xintiandi laces up, Outopia picks up pace, gems go big, down goes DIY

TUMI’s new growth playbook: From travel expertise to lifestyle performance