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Pictured right here is Louis Vuitton’s new cruise ship-shaped retailer in Shanghai, China, on June 28, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Photographs
BEIJING — China’s financial slowdown is not discouraging U.S. and European manufacturers from revamping their methods to succeed in Chinese language consumers.
As an alternative, the attract of the world’s second-largest client market is forcing corporations to adapt within the face of rising competitors from native manufacturers.
Within the case of Kraft Heinz, getting extra folks in China to purchase ketchup this yr additionally meant hiring an area company to assist create catchy campaigns — adorning subway station columns to imitate ketchup bottles and selling the condiment as a contemporary twist on a well-liked dish: stir-fried eggs and tomatoes.
It is a onerous market to deal with, even for Shanghai-based advertising agency Good Thought Progress Community (GGN). The company has witnessed at the least 5 totally different waves of client traits in its 14-year historical past, founder Stephy Liu, stated in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. “The gameplay retains on altering.”
However GGN has succeeded even after rejecting an acquisition supply from British promoting large WPP, Liu stated, noting that about half of her shoppers are international manufacturers.
Whereas Kraft Heinz is not finished with its China ketchup marketing campaign but, the corporate reported second-quarter web gross sales in rising markets climbed by 4.2% from a yr in the past, serving to offset declines in North America.
WPP explored a possible acquisition of GGN however didn’t find yourself going far within the course of, based on an individual accustomed to the discussions.
Kraft Heinz didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Localized social media
“Amongst worldwide manufacturers in China, the winners are sometimes dedicating greater than 40% of income to advertising, particularly content material and platform-first advertising, whereas additionally iterating merchandise domestically based mostly on market knowledge,” stated Jacob Cooke, co-founder and CEO of WPIC Advertising + Applied sciences, which helps international manufacturers promote in China.
This yr, Cooke stated that Below Armour has created merchandise beneath 100 yuan ($14) with a purpose to entice a mass of consumers on-line, whereas utilizing livestreams with devoted customers to then construct health communities and promote extra premium merchandise offline.
ByteDance-owned Douyin has grow to be an e-commerce power in the previous couple of years since celebrities and firms began utilizing the app for livestreaming gross sales throughout the pandemic. And by the numbers, there’s little query that leaping into the Xiaohongshu and Douyin world is worth it for companies.
Adapting to that new social commerce ecosystem has grow to be the largest problem for manufacturers within the final two years, GGN’s Liu stated. “International manufacturers will assume, ‘Is not this simply TikTok?'”
She warned that success requires a posh technique that may contain altering the whole lot from how a workforce is structured to the sorts of merchandise offered. However the payoff is important.
“In half a yr, it may well show you how to promote greater than you offered on [Alibaba‘s] Tmall in two years,” Liu stated.
Knowledge is energy
Along with social media, a important consider many corporations’ methods is entry to hordes of knowledge on what shoppers in China are shopping for.
Chinese language e-commerce platforms, together with Alibaba’s Tmall, share way more knowledge on what’s fashionable than Amazon.com does, WPIC’s Cooke stated. In China, “folks typically know what their rivals are promoting and what they’re promoting for.”
With that granular knowledge, Chinese language make-up model Excellent Diary was in a position to succeed by figuring out a market ache level and making a lipstick focused at that lower cost phase, Cooke stated. He famous that is pressured international manufacturers to create China-specific merchandise as effectively, a giant shift over the past 5 years.
E-commerce platforms in China additionally typically present tough figures on what number of orders had been positioned per product, whereas third-party corporations akin to Syntun supply important quantities of product rankings and different on-line gross sales knowledge without cost.
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Within the case of Apple‘s iPhone 17 launch on Sept. 19, it was Chinese language e-commerce firm JD.com that launched gross sales knowledge for mainland China. The electronics-focused platform introduced that the primary minute of iPhone 17 collection preorders surpassed the first-day preorder quantity of final yr’s iPhone 16 collection.
Apple’s story additionally underscores the way it’s attainable to reignite native curiosity regardless of dropping market share to home competitors. Some prospects in Beijing advised CNBC that they favored the iPhone’s new cosmic orange coloration, and that extra locals meant to purchase their first iPhone this yr since they’d heard about new engaging options akin to bigger inner storage.
China’s factories had been fast to leap on the development, releasing iPhone circumstances with an analogous orange hue even earlier than the 17 mannequin was out.
“Successful manufacturers are people who have established native R&D facilities and on-the-ground product groups,” stated Ashley Dudarenok, founding father of ChoZan, a China advertising consultancy. “This permits them to identify traits early, develop merchandise tailor-made to native wants, and launch them in months, not years. This can be a important departure from the previous, the place international merchandise had been typically merely rolled out within the Chinese language market.”
Cultural connection
Even with the precise knowledge and social media platforms, cultural integration is changing into more and more necessary, particularly as Chinese language manufacturers discover success in tapping the nation’s personal historical past of artisanal craftsmanship.
“Manufacturers are transferring past superficial nods to Chinese language tradition,” Dudarenok stated. She identified that Loewe partnered with jade carving masters, whereas Burberry teamed up with bamboo-weaving artists.
And regardless of declining gross sales in China’s luxurious market, LVMH this summer time opened an attention grabbing ship-shaped retailer in Shanghai — instantly producing a lot native buzz.
In distinction to LVMH’s luggage-shaped retailer in Manhattan, the Shanghai location faucets into the Chinese language metropolis’s historical past as a port of entry for worldwide vacationers to Asia roughly a century in the past.
The brand new retailer additionally captures the European model’s roots in hand-crafted journey trunks — which contrasts with Chinese language manufacturers’ lack of ability to supply the identical emotional enchantment, Joe Ngai, chairman of better China at McKinsey, identified in a LinkedIn put up.
“As Chinese language prospects develop of their confidence and need for native components,” he stated, “creating extra crossovers between West and East is among the distinctive alternatives for multinationals in China.”
— CNBC’s Eunice Yoon contributed to this report.
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