Jing Daily’s top 10 brands of 2025

Platform regulation, homegrown Chinese brands, and China-first localization defined 2025’s brand landscape. Based on Jing Daily's page view data from January to November, these 10 brands commanded the most reader attention — revealing the forces reshaping China’s luxury and consumer markets. Chinese social media dominated luxury attention Xiaohongshu (#2) and Douyin (#6) claimed top positions — not as brands in the traditional sense, but as the infrastructure enabling or disrupting market access. When ecosystems shift, professionals need to understand the ground beneath them. Xiaohongshu’s trajectory throughout 2025 tracked multiple strategic shifts. January’s TikTok refugee wave brought beauty brands flooding to the platform, but by mid-year the conversation had evolved: beauty brands were redefining influence strategies entirely. Over 90% of beauty content now comes from everyday users rather than brand accounts. The platform’s transformation into a product-discovery engine (77% of beauty searches are product-focused) demonstrated how infrastructure had become essential rather than experimental. Expert KOLs now drive triple the engagement of celebrities, while timing matters more than frequency: users research weeks before official campaigns launch, forcing brands to abandon broadcast models for cultural agility. Douyin’s strong showing reflected commerce integration stories — the collision of content, e-commerce, and creator economy tensions revealing a platform evolving beyond entertainment into complete commercial infrastructure. Chinese consumer brands challenged the global market Pop Mart (#5), Anta (#9), and BYD (#10) comprise a category that didn’t exist at scale a decade ago: Chinese consumer brands with global ambitions and domestic cultural fluency that Western players can’t replicate. Pop Mart’s July surge captured the peak of Labubu mania — when the plush toy sparked 5am queues in Los Angeles, commanded 627% premiums on StockX, and caused enough chaos in U.K. stores to trigger temporary bans. But the real story was how Labubu redefined luxury adjacency: hanging off Hermès bags as status symbols, and inspiring Louis Vuitton to create its own competitor with Vivienne Fashionista charms. Exclusive blind-box releases and unpredictable rarity fueled a dopamine loop that elevated the toy from collectible to cultural currency. By year's end, reader interest remained high as sustainability questions emerged. Anta’s ranking reflected patient global expansion through strategic acquisitions and aggressive sportswear power plays. When Arc’teryx — an Anta-owned brand — faced an environmental scandal in Tibet over a high-altitude fireworks show that contradicted the outdoor brand’s conservation values, the response revealed the complexity of managing global brands under Chinese ownership. While Arc’teryx China quickly acknowledged the project “deviated from its intended presentation” and pledged third-party environmental assessments, a separate statement from the brand’s overseas team drew accusations of insincerity and blame-shifting. The mixed messages highlighted insufficient coordination between regional teams — underscoring how crisis management failures can erode trust even when remediation efforts follow. BYD’s top 10 appearance reflects the year’s broader EV boom, with Chinese automakers increasingly setting the pace for global luxury mobility rather than following it. The localization premium: How global brands won mindshare Louis Vuitton (#3), Burberry (#7), and Adidas (#8) earned their positions by understanding that China isn't a market to enter — it’s a market to belong to. Louis Vuitton’s March peak aligned with coverage of its Chengdu localization strategy, a case study in how tier-two cities demand bespoke approaches rather than replicated flagship formulas. Sustained attention across the year showed readers weren’t just tracking one campaign — they were monitoring a long-term repositioning. Burberry’s rebuilding around “timeless British luxury” drove June’s traffic spike, proving transformation narratives outperform maintenance stories. Brands in motion attract more attention than brands maintaining position. Adidas demonstrated the localization premium through cultural fluency: May’s pet economy collaboration and year-long Gen Z engagement strategies showed a brand willing to move beyond product drops and into lifestyle adjacency. Melt Season claimed the #1 spot by becoming the reference point for China’s indie fragrance boom. The brand appeared repeatedly in broader stories about L’Oréal and Estée Lauder’s investments in local niche houses, experiential retail innovations, and the category’s rapid professionalization. Sometimes brands win through category positioning — by becoming the clearest example of a trend readers care about. 3.1 Phillip Lim’s #4 ranking stands out as an anomaly. The brand dominated October and November reader interest without major campaign launches or headline-making collaborations, raising questions about what repositioning efforts were capturing professional attention beneath the surface of typical luxury coverage. What this means for brands in 2026 Three patterns emerge from the year’s data: Platform adjacency matters more than brand heritage. When ecosystems shift, infrastructure commands as much professional attention as the brands operating within it. Understanding Xiaohongshu and Douyin isn’t optional — it’s foundational. China-first brands are no longer the exception. Pop Mart, Anta, and BYD show that homegrown players can match or exceed global luxury in specific moments, not through scale alone but through cultural precision. Localization isn’t a nice-to-have. The brands that held attention across multiple months — Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Adidas, Melt Season — all deployed China-specific strategies, whether through city-level customization, category redefinition, or sustained cultural engagement. Brands that tracked these shifts in real-time and moved fast to adapt won reader attention and market momentum in 2025.

Sectors

Insights

Company

Jing Daily’s top 10 brands of 2025