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PH5 is bringing its colourful, whimsical knitwear to London. Its new month-long pop-up in Selfridges underscores the global opportunity facing Chinese brands, as they work to dispel associations with low-quality, cheap labour.
Founded by Wei Lin and based between China and the US, PH5 joined the department store’s wholesale roster in July and soon started talks about a pop-up retail space. The visual merchandising was inspired by the brand’s area in Tube Showroom’s multi-brand retail concept in Shanghai. After several months of revisions — Selfridges’s stringent sustainability requirements include the use of approved materials for the build, for example — the pop-up offers a peek into PH5’s sleek yet textural world.
It also marks the first-ever PH5 pop-up in the UK. The brand ships to the country from its global e-commerce site and has three wholesale stockists; the other two are Harvey Nichols and Koibird.
The fit-out is based on PH5’s signature wavy prints in a digitally coded gradient. “It’s safe to say that I’ve never seen a render like this before [for a pop-up],” says Raffaella Sheehan, buying manager for menswear and womenswear at Selfridges. “The essence of the brand will be felt not only through the collection, but also through the build.”
The pop-up features the resort 2024 collection, designed by creative director Zoe Champion. It’s a quirky trompe l’oeil affair that plays with a faux denim print across perfectly engineered jacquards in shades of pink, grey and a black and green gradient. Running from elevated streetwear to eveningwear, the assortment includes a crop top retailing at £185, a dress in barbie pink for £430, a £525 oversized knitted denim jacket, and the brand’s signature wavy dress — this time with sequins — retailing at £515.
“Knitwear is a very challenging area so a brand with a confident use of colour and a strong stylistic vision in this field immediately piqued our interest,” says Sheehan. “PH5 has had the most incredible response from our discerning clients.”
China propped up PH5 during Covid, Lin says, but currently the domestic sector accounts for only 1 per cent of business. The bulk of annual turnover, which sits slightly under $2 million, comes from the UK and Europe, the US and the Middle East (each making up around 30 per cent). The remainder comes from Singapore and Australia (where Champion resides). London-based Arddun Agency is working with PH5 on its global wholesale strategy, which will include launching at US department store Neiman Marcus in 2024. Currently, it has 35 stockists globally with plans to increase this in 2024 through a focus on North America. Pop-ups are planned at Ssense, Holt Renfrew, Shopbop and Harvey Nichols.
Reinventing ‘Made in China’
Run by four shareholders based across the US, China, Australia and Korea (Lin, Champion, Juwon Kim and an anonymous partner), PH5 is the ultimate next-gen brand: global and digital. “We are all Zoom buddies,” Lin explains on a call from Guangdong Province. “We have no office and work virtually 99 per cent of the time.” This affords it a certain nimbleness — and reach. The brand shoots its upcoming lookbook in Paris next week and Lin will next see Champion in Singapore where they will start to work on Autumn/Winter 2024. “What part of that is Chinese?” she laughs.
Lin, who says she essentially grew up in her mum’s clothing factory close to Hong Kong, is aware of the negative connotations associated with Chinese brands. There, she witnessed millions of sweaters being produced yearly for Western companies. Today, she lives between Guangzhou and New York. “I spent more than half my life in the US. I’ve had to justify myself and my brand’s presence there for years. The ‘Made in China’ label means a lot to me and I’m aware of how negatively that’s still being perceived. Cheap, low-quality, copycat, etc. This is an ongoing struggle,” she admits.
Still, Lin is proud of her Chinese heritage. “On our Instagram, we say we’re based in the US and China. I don’t hide the fact that I’m Chinese or that we have a Chinese factory.”
Experts say having a dual nationality may be beneficial for Chinese brands seeking to expand globally. “It might be challenging for Chinese brands to gather traction abroad if they are based exclusively in China and if their PR and retail collaborations are, likewise, mostly present in China,” says Lucrezia Seu, founder of Plush Consulting, a brand strategy and marketing agency based in Shanghai. A number of other design-led Chinese brands are breaking out from bases in the US, such as Private Policy and Bad Binch TongTong.
“PH5 also focuses on innovation and really provides a fresh product offering; I think this unique positioning stands on its own without necessarily relying on their country of origin,” adds Seu.
One of PH5’s biggest strengths is that it owns a factory in Dongguan, China, which is run by Lin’s mother. The factory is not set up for high volume production, but instead enables the brand to experiment with technical knitting techniques. For example, it has created UV-reactive knitwear that changes colour under the sun, and hyaluronic acid sleepwear that moisturises the skin. This provides the brand an edge over global competition, says Seu. “Since launch, they have been investing in textile innovation as well as fully harnessing the knowhow and talent from their own factory; they refer to it as their ‘atelier’,” she says.
It also speeds up lead times. “This agility enables the brand to quickly re-stock retailers with the best-selling styles that frequently sell out,” says Joseph Petchelco, managing director of Arddun.
Frustration with fashion week
The idea to test markets through pop-ups came from a frustration with the fashion week system. After PH5’s New York Fashion Week runway debut in October, Lin spoke to Vogue Business about the difficulties of mounting a show (as opposed to a presentation) and the lack of industry support. “Fashion weeks are failing in terms of how much effort they require from a young brand. It’s not fruitful for us,” she reiterates.
A pop-up held in New York the summer before was far more beneficial in terms of “meeting customers, Instagram followers and new people”, she says. Fashion weeks don’t have the same ROI. “Only industry insiders are following them. Other than, say, online TikTok stores, the day-to-day consumer cares more about the physical store experience.”
In December, Lin will travel to London to meet customers and find out what makes them tick. Long-term, she wants to change perceptions of knitwear. Recalling all the sweaters in her mother’s fast fashion factory, she says that over the years, they never changed; unlike the PH5 factory, which specialises in cutting-edge designs. “[Fast fashion] lags behind in terms of creativity and innovation. I realised I should be the one creating new things for this category. This is where the name PH5 comes from. It’s based on the chemistry value and science. We are trying to be a lab for knitwear experimentation.”
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