The China Edition #1: Alpine White's Growth in the Chinese Market - A Delicate but Sustainable Approach
Amy Weng • September 10, 2024
"The China Edition" series provides insights into Swiss companies that have entered the Chinese market, highlighting their challenges, strategies, and success stories within the world’s largest consumer market.
In this first edition, we explore Alpine White, a Swiss oral care brand founded by brothers Reto and Alexander Wälchli in 2014. Alpine White offers a safer teeth-whitening alternative, developed with Swiss dental experts. By 2021, they have decided to enter the Chinese market, establishing a successful presence on T-Mall Global and key social media platforms like RED, WeChat and Weibo. And they have many more exciting plans to expand in China. This article explores their decision to enter the Chinese market early, the challenges they faced, and the lessons learned along the way.
Navigating the Complexities of the Chinese Market
Entering the Chinese market is not without its challenges. Here are hurdles Alpine White had to navigate:
- High Competition: The Chinese beauty and personal care market is extremely competitive, with numerous global brands fighting for consumer attention.
- Sophisticated Consumers: Chinese consumers are well-informed and trend-savvy, making them adept at finding the best products and deals.
- Dynamic Marketing: The fast-paced nature of trend development in China demands that brands continually adapt their marketing strategies to stay relevant.
Achieving Sustainable Growth in China
To succeed in the competitive Chinese market, Alpine White had a clear strategy to address the challenges they faced. By focusing on key priorities, they built a strong foundation and adapted effectively to the local landscape, ensuring steady progress and growth.
1. Targeting a Niche Market
- Identifying Market Gaps: Alpine White recognized a gap in the Chinese market for high-quality, specialized teeth-whitening products. By focusing on solutions tailored for sensitive teeth, they addressed a specific need that was not being adequately met.
- Leveraging Swiss Quality: The brand capitalized on the strong reputation of Swiss-developed products, known for their safety, reliability, and premium quality. This helped Alpine White differentiate itself in a crowded market and appeal to Chinese consumers who value premium products.
- Consumer Education: Recognizing that introducing a new product category requires building trust, Alpine White invested in educating consumers about the benefits and proper use of their products. This was crucial in fostering understanding and acceptance among their target audience.
2. Identifying the Target Audience
- Focused Targeting: Instead of competing with large brands for mass exposure, Alpine White adopted a reverse funnel approach. They conducted targeted marketing tests to identify and refine their ideal consumer base.
- Influencer Collaborations: Partnering with influencers and Key Opinion Consumers (KOCs) who aligned with their brand values, Alpine White was able to build credibility and effectively communicate their brand’s message to the right audience.
- Long-term Strategy: Understanding that building a loyal customer base takes time, Alpine White committed to a sustained and patient marketing approach.
3. Maintaining an Agile Approach in China
- Continuous Experimentation: Alpine White embraces a mindset of ongoing learning and adaptation, recognizing that not all strategies will succeed but viewing each attempt as a learning opportunity.
- Market Response: They keep a close eye on consumer feedback and competitors’ strategies. The brand maintains agility, allowing them to quickly adjust their strategies in response to new developments.
- Act Quickly: Their ability to respond rapidly and accurately to market changes has been crucial to their success.
Key Takeaways: Why is Alpine White successful in China?
- Deep Market Knowledge: Alpine White identified a critical gap between existing offerings and consumer needs in China. By addressing the demand for teeth whitening solutions that are gentle on sensitive teeth, they met a significant market need.
- Innovative Product: By leveraging their Swiss heritage, Alpine White created a high-quality product that resonated with Chinese consumers. The emphasis on Swiss quality helped differentiate their offering in a crowded market.
- Strategic Use of Social Commerce: In a market where digital presence is crucial, Alpine White excelled by testing various social media (RED, WeChat, Weibo) and e-commerce channels (T-Mall Global, Douyin) to discover what resonated best with their audience. Their agility and willingness to continuously adapt their strategy ensured they stayed ahead of the curve in a fast-evolving digital landscape.
Wrapping up, Alpine White’s success in China highlights the value of a sustainable and strategic approach to market entry. Rather than pouring vast amounts of resources into a single platform or strategy, they adopted a measured, data-driven method. By carefully testing and refining their efforts across various channels, they were able to identify what truly resonated with their target audience. This approach not only minimized risk but also allowed them to build a solid foundation for long-term growth. Alpine White's experience underscores the importance of adaptability, thorough market understanding, and strategic decision-making in achieving success in a competitive environment like China. Their journey offers valuable lessons for other companies looking to enter and thrive in this dynamic market.
At Think East, we help brands build a strong presence in the competitive Chinese market. We evaluate your sector, analyze competitors, and identify what your product needs to succeed. Our team crafts a branding strategy to connect with your audience, boost visibility, and build trust. From refining messaging to choosing the right platforms and collaborations, we offer the expertise needed to thrive in China.
Stay tuned for our next China Edition, and connect with us on LinkedIn or via email—we’d love to hear your thoughts and questions.
See you next time!
Formula 1 returned to Shanghai this weekend to a sold-out circuit and 221 million Chinese fans. Luxury brands have been paying close attention. The sport's China moment has arrived. On Sunday afternoon, Kimi Antonelli crossed the finish line at the Shanghai International Circuit to claim his first Formula 1 victory. The youngest Grand Prix polesitter in the sport's history converted pole position into a commanding win before a capacity crowd. Lewis Hamilton took his first podium in Ferrari red at the circuit where, twelve months earlier, he had claimed a sprint victory before a disqualification ended his Grand Prix weekend. The racing was close, unpredictable and genuinely dramatic. In the stands, 220,000 spectators watched a sport that, in China, has become one of the most significant luxury marketing opportunities of the decade. The spectacle on track was compelling. The story in the grandstands is arguably more so. 221 Million Fans and Counting The scale of Chinese F1 fandom is not widely understood outside the industry. According to Formula 1's own 2025 season review, China now has 221 million self-identified fans, second only to Europe as a market, and representing a 39% increase in a single year. This weekend's Grand Prix sold out entirely. Formula 1's Chinese social media platforms, including Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and WeChat, grew 35% in 2025 alone. The profile of the Chinese F1 fan matters as much as the scale. According to Formula 1's 2025 Global Fan Survey, 46% of Chinese fans are female and 40% are aged between 16 and 34. Over half came to the sport within the last five years, most through social media and streaming rather than broadcast television. This is a young, digitally fluent, predominantly urban consumer base that discovered Formula 1 as a cultural phenomenon: something to follow, attend, discuss, and wear. The parallels with China's luxury consumer are not coincidental. They are, to a remarkable degree, the same person: young, urban, educated, spending on experience and identity as much as objects. The F1 fan in China and the luxury consumer in China overlap in ways that the most attentive brands have already begun to act on. What Luxury Brands Understood First In October 2024, LVMH announced a 10-year global partnership with Formula 1, reportedly valued at more than $100 million per year, making it one of the largest sponsorship agreements in the history of sport. Louis Vuitton, TAG Heuer, and Moët Hennessy are the three Maisons leading the activation. TAG Heuer replaced Rolex as the sport's official timekeeper. Moët & Chandon returned to podium celebrations. Louis Vuitton now crafts the bespoke trophy trunk handed to each race winner, including the one presented to Antonelli in Shanghai on Sunday. The partnership, as framed by Bernard Arnault, was premised on Formula 1 having become one of the most desirable sports in the world. The China dimension is central to that logic. Louis Vuitton's recent Shanghai activations, including The Louis concept space at HKRI Taikoo Hui and its maritime heritage exhibitions, have already demonstrated the brand's understanding that Chinese luxury consumers want cultural experience as much as product. An annual Grand Prix in Shanghai gives LVMH a moment of live, shared spectacle in the market that matters most. The trophy trunk is a piece of brand communication as much as it is a piece of luggage. Other brands are moving with equal purpose. Ahead of this weekend's race, Tumi brought Lando Norris, the reigning world champion, onto a Douyin livestream to engage Chinese fans directly. It is a precise articulation of the opportunity: a global sports star, a platform built for the Chinese digital consumer, and a brand repositioning itself for a younger audience through the cultural equity Formula 1 now carries in China. The activation required no translation. The audience already knew who Norris was.
China accounts for about 62% of the world’s self-made women billionaires, according to the Hurun Global Rich List. At the same time, data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's 2023/2024 report shows that China is among the rare economies worldwide where women's startup rates match or exceed those of men, and it has a generation of university graduates that is now majority female. It is also a country where the government actively encourages women to marry earlier, have more children, and return to domestic life. The she economy lives in the tension between those two realities. China's female consumer base controls an estimated $1.4 trillion in annual spending, according to Accenture research. They influence 70% of all household purchases and, in a shift that would have been culturally unimaginable a generation ago, now direct a majority of their personal spending toward their own needs rather than those of their families, according to JD.com research. Who They Are The she economy did not emerge from a single city or a single demographic. Its most visible architects sit at the very top of global wealth rankings. Zhong Huijuan left a job as a chemistry teacher to found Hansoh Pharmaceutical in Jiangsu, building it into one of China's leading oncology and psychotropic drug companies; by mid-2025 she ranked first in Asia and third globally on Forbes' list of self-made women billionaires, with a fortune of approximately $19.7 billion. Wu Yajun arrived at entrepreneurship from a different direction: factory floor technician earning $16 a month, then property journalist, before co-founding Longfor Properties in Chongqing in 1993, a company that grew into one of China's largest real estate developers. Wang Laichun, chairwoman of Luxshare Precision Industry, spent years on Foxconn's assembly lines before building the company that now manufactures Apple's AirPods and rivals Foxconn across Apple's supply chain; the 2024 Fortune list ranked her the most powerful woman in business in Asia. The geographic picture is equally important. A significant share of Chinese female internet users now live outside the traditional tier-one cities. Hangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, Xi'an, Nanjing: these are not secondary markets. They are where consumption habits are being formed, where new platforms find their earliest adopters, and where brand loyalty, or its absence, is decided. A 32-year-old finance professional in Hangzhou and a 28-year-old designer in Chengdu may have similar purchasing power and entirely different ideas of what makes a product worth owning. Spending on the Self The founders described above illustrate the female economic power at the top. The same shift is also visible in how women are spending. One of the most structurally significant shift in the she economy is the direction of spending. In 2023, Chinese women purchased 8.23 million vehicles, up 10.6% year-on-year, according to Yiche Research Institute, a category that was almost exclusively male-dominated a decade ago. Women are also increasingly central in homebuying decisions. Surveys suggest that more than 80% of property purchases now involve female decision-makers. Wellness, travel, and self-education have become the fastest-growing spending categories among urban women under 40. This is not consumption for its own sake. These spending patterns reflect a generation of women who came of age in a different educational and economic environment. Women now account for 63% of all higher education enrolment, outnumbering men at undergraduate level and in several postgraduate disciplines, according to China's Ministry of Education. They are applying the same rigour to purchases as to careers. The luxury resale market is part of this logic: platforms like Plum, which specialises in pre-owned luxury goods, are overwhelmingly female-driven, combining value-consciousness with the kind of careful curation that defines this cohort's relationship with objects.
When Adidas released its Tang jacket ahead of Lunar New Year 2024, it was intended as a limited regional drop for Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Instead, it became one of the most recognizable fashion phenomena in China’s modern streetwear scene. Queues formed outside flagship stores, social media buzzed with styling posts, and resale prices surged. By 2026, the jacket had evolved from a seasonal item into a cultural symbol. Its resonance, however, came from more than design alone. It captured a pivotal moment in China’s emotional landscape. Post-COVID Reconnection with Cultural Identity The pandemic reshaped how many Chinese consumers view identity, heritage, and consumption. Lockdowns, limited travel, and global tension prompted renewed appreciation for domestic craftsmanship and cultural symbolism. Young consumers began favoring products that reflected confidence and continuity rather than globalized trends. This mindset drove movements such as Guochao (国潮) and Neo-Chinese (新中式) fashion. The Tang jacket fit naturally within this shift, offering a modern, wearable link to tradition. Reimagining Tradition for Everyday Wear The Tang jacket draws from Tangzhuang (唐装), garments whose roots trace back to styles popularized during the Tang dynasty, a period celebrated for cultural openness and artistry. Adidas incorporated traditional details such as Mandarin collars, frog-button closures (盘扣), and symbolic knot fastenings into its signature three-stripe silhouette. The collaboration with Chinese designer Samuel Guiyang further grounded the project in local aesthetics, combining his contemporary tailoring approach with Adidas’ streetwear identity. These features, traditionally associated with harmony and fortune, were reimagined with modern proportions and materials, creating a garment that felt both authentic and current. This balance made it appealing to fashion-forward youth and culturally mindful consumers alike. Overseas Chinese and Global Amplification A major factor behind the jacket’s rise was its enthusiastic reception among overseas Chinese communities. For diaspora consumers, cultural symbols hold heightened emotional weight. Living abroad often deepens one’s sense of heritage, and the Tang jacket became a stylish conduit for connection. On Xiaohongshu, Instagram, and TikTok, users abroad showcased it as both fashion and pride. That content flowed back into China’s digital sphere, fueling a cross-border feedback loop that transformed a regional launch into a global cultural trend. Platform-Driven Storytelling and Scarcity The product’s spread reflected the dynamics of China’s integrated social platforms. Users posted unboxings, Lunar New Year family photos, and reunion clips featuring the jacket, telling stories grounded in emotion rather than advertising. Algorithms amplified these personal narratives, while limited inventory created natural scarcity. The result was a self-perpetuating cycle of desirability and visibility. Adidas did not need aggressive promotion, as community storytelling and peer validation drove success organically. From Sportswear Brand to Cultural Participant Adidas’ emerging cultural role became clear in October 2025, when it closed Shanghai Fashion Week SS26 with its “Power of Three” showcase. Merging traditional motifs with innovative performance fabrics, the event signaled the brand’s transformation from an international sportswear supplier to a meaningful participant in China’s fashion ecosystem. Adidas was no longer adapting to cultural trends; it was helping shape them.