Streetwear brands reach new heights

When Chinese sports brand Li Ning and CLOT, the streetwear brand that was launched by Hong Kong actor Edison Chen, debuted at New York Fashion Week in 2018, many within the fashion industry saw this development as an indication of the growing success of homegrown street fashion labels.

Market research has also proved this to be so.

According to a report co-released by OFashion, an e-commerce brand, and global research firm Nielsen, at Shanghai Fashion Week in 2018, the consumption of streetwear and hip-hop related brands had increased by 62 percent from 2016 to 2017. In contrast, the rest of the fashion genres only experienced an average growth of 17 percent.

Meng Bingan, the co-founder of Roaringwild, a Chinese streetwear brand based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, can attest to this rise in popularity.

"When I established the brand in 2010, our sales were barely 40,000 yuan ($5,966) per year, but surged to 30 million yuan last year," says the 28-year-old, who launched Roaringwild with five friends during his college years.