Chinese brands find a test market in foreign tourists

On a weekday afternoon on Shanghai’s Yongyuan Road, the longest queue on the block belongs not to a global sneaker giant but to Pane, a homegrown footwear label just four years old. Many in the queue are international tourists who had added the store to their shopping itineraries before arriving in the city. They are part of a broader inbound tourism wave. China logged more than 150 million inbound trips in 2025, up 17% year-on-year (YoY), while international visitors spent over $130 billion, up 40%, reported Xinhua News. Increasingly, that spending is reaching physical stores. In Shanghai, sales under the departure tax-refund program rose about 80% YoY in 2025, with refund applications tripl, according to the Shanghai Municipal Tax Service. These travelers point to a different overseas expansion strategy: build international demand in China first, then use that demand to guide growth abroad. The souvenir economy: Inbound shoppers discover Chinese brands Pane offers the cleanest model. At its Shanghai flagship, overseas shoppers account for about 30% of daily foot traffic and 35% of revenue, rising sharply over holidays. Founded in Shanghai in 2022, the footwear label broke through with a German Army Trainer-inspired sneaker that went viral on overseas social platforms. “With relaxed visa policies and growing inbound travel, overseas visitors rely heavily on TikTok and Instagram rather than traditional travel guides,” says Ran Li, China account manager at Luxurynsight. “Overseas creator ‘hauls’ and Shanghai store-vlogs turn these homegrown boutiques into must-visit destinations, embedding local brands directly into travel itineraries.” Pane has expanded its distribution in step with that demand. It launched a global website in late 2025, drawing audiences in Japan, Thailand, and the U.S., and plans to open its first overseas shop in Bangkok this year, with showrooms in Europe and the U.S. to follow, founder Chen Ning (陈宁) told media. The logic is simple: desire drives demand, following a clear sequence from overseas social discovery to inbound destination retail, global direct-to-consumer (DTC) demand, and eventually physical stores abroad. What makes that desire exportable is the brand’s design and quality: a consistent design code, well-crafted materials and packaging, and a visual language that reads as premium in any market. Without flagging its Chinese origin, Pane lets the product speak first, then converts attention into demand. Domestic retail as a pre-export proving ground For a wider group of emerging brands, the first “global” showroom is still in China. By attracting inbound tourists, these brands are building product awareness, reshaping category perceptions, and testing global appetite before expanding physically overseas. The traffic that feeds them is structural. About 5.15 million foreign nationals crossed through Pudong International Airport in the first five months of 2026, up 24% YoY, led by travelers from South Korea, Russia, the U.S., Thailand, and Malaysia, according to Shanghai General Station of Immigration Inspection. Beauty retailer Harmay, which made its name on warehouse-style stores stocked with deeply discounted international and homegrown labels, has become a popular stop on foreign visitors’ Shanghai itineraries. Streetwear label Masonprince draws shoppers who arrive with screenshots of specific pieces. Meanwhile, leather-goods maker Muva, which entered Southeast Asia in 2023, now draws visitors who first discovered the brand in Thailand to its Shanghai store. According to Ran, inbound visitors are “inherently early adopters, highly receptive to contemporary Chinese style,” pointing to a broader Chinese fashion wave gaining traction on platforms such as TikTok. “They don’t just want to observe the local scene; they want to participate in it and wear the trend,” she added. This is the demand-first playbook taking shape: inbound interest offers an early signal of overseas appeal, but not proof of a scalable market. Domestic retail becomes a testing ground that can inform selective overseas moves through distribution, activations, and retail. Building cultural authority abroad The more sophisticated model follows the same demand-first logic but leads with narrative. Brands first build equity at home, then use a distinct Eastern narrative to attract global audiences and establish cultural authority abroad. Inbound retail provides an early proof point, while global DTC sites, overseas activations, and selective store openings convert that interest into market presence. This is a staged expansion model that builds demand and cultural relevance before committing to scale. In particular, Chinese brands are pushing into leather goods, a category long dominated by the West on the strength of craftsmanship and technical barriers. That advantage is starting to erode, as a handful of premium local labels with deep cultural roots post accelerated growth. Songmont is among the category’s most visible challengers, according to the Bain & Company and Altagamma Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study 2026. The demand shows up abroad before stores do. Songmont’s Instagram boasts about 630,000 followers, while foreign shoppers already fill its Shanghai flagship — as much as 70% of foot traffic at peak, local media reported. The brand’s moves abroad have been measured: two Paris Fashion Week presentations, in 2024 and 2025, and a Bangkok pop-up in 2025. Yet its DTC site ships worldwide, with the U.S. its largest market among more than 150 countries. Ran says that visitors are “actively seeking high-quality, aesthetically universal products that capture the pulse of modern Shanghai’s fashion scene as functional souvenirs.” An Eastern design language, carried consistently across the brand’s channels, becomes the engine of that demand, compounding it before a single overseas store opens. To Summer runs the same play through scent, composing fragrances around traditional Chinese ingredients — Pu’er tea, aged tangerine peel, osmanthus — and embedding each in a broader cultural narrative. Its international recognition has grown less through a single viral moment than through the steady development of a coherent brand world; overseas consumers have described its fragrances as “a scent from a Chinese poem.” In 2025, the brand began converting that narrative equity into broader market expansion, joining the 2025 Paris-Shanghai Perfume Show. Its 800-square-meter Causeway Bay flagship, opened in September 2025, offered another gateway to consumers beyond mainland China. It continued that trajectory in June 2026 with a limited-edition fragrance created with French fashion house Isabel Marant. That Eastern aesthetic, carried consistently across every channel, is how desire is manufactured. The coherence is what draws a global audience and grows the wanting gradually: distinctly Chinese, yet desirable without translation. What demand-first expansion means for brand builders For brand builders, the strategic question has shifted. It is no longer “when do we open abroad,” but “what makes us desirable, and can inbound demand validate it before we invest?” As Ran put it, “Global perception of ‘Made in China’ has shifted from cheap manufacturing to high design, superior quality, and competitive pricing.” However, the risk is mistaking a moment for a market. Inbound demand and viral scarcity are signals, not durable overseas positions. Converting that interest into sustained growth requires brands to understand precisely what drives their appeal and recreate it abroad rather than assume it will travel. For Pane’s founder, success is ultimately about belonging: a passerby in Paris sees Pane alongside a local label and feels that it fits. That is the longer-term test. When a Chinese brand arrives abroad and feels at home rather than foreign, the demand-first playbook has done its job.

Chinese brands find a test market in foreign tourists

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Chinese brands find a test market in foreign tourists

How 2026 welcomed ‘Too Cool’ back