Founder's Interview | The Gen-Z Beijing Girl Shi Liu Reveals Her Secrets of Fashion Entrepreneurship

The 21-year-old Shi Liu (Pomegranate in Chinese) created the floral-themed womenswear brand Pom & Co and obtained a personal investment of 2 million yuan from a limited partner at Hongtai Fund in March 2016. In September that same year, she obtained multiple million-yuan investment led by Jing Wei Venture Capital and followed by Zhen Fund. Pom and Co’s current monthly turnover reaches 2 million yuan. Recently, they successfully obtained tens of millions of yuan Series Pre-A investment from a well-known domestic womenswear enterprise, Ribo Holdings.

As a new fashion startup, Pom & Co has made rapid progress in gaining popularity and financing compared to peers. The founder Shi Liu, a Generation Z from Beijing, share with us her journey with Pom & Co.

Shi Liu, Founder of Pom & Co.

Originally Shi Liu was fascinated with Qipao, the traditional Chinese dress also known as Cheongsam. She did a one-year-long personal behavior art with this traditional dress. From 2014 to 2015, she had worn Qipao for 365 days and travelled through 30 cities on three continents. In January 2016, Shi Liu quit her studies in Art History at the Ivy League University, Brown University. In the next month, she published a book “But I am in love with Qipao”. This book was sold more than ten thousand volumes within two months and was reprinted twice afterwards. This success inspired her to create a fashion brand featuring Qipao. However, she soon realized that the niche market for this traditional dress was rather limited, and she quickly switched her focus to the floral-print fashion market.

In March 2016, Shi Liu established the internet-based womenswear brand, Pom and Co, featuring original floral prints. Her business partner, who helped with her book writing previously, was a design director and had over ten-year experience in the fashion industry.

Like many Beijing girls, Shi Liu is very direct and outgoing. She said that she was born to be an entrepreneur. Her dad is a business man. She joked that she believed she would do better than her dad. With a good mentality, she is also talented in social marketing. Without zero spending, she sold more than 600 dresses through three WeChat articles.

Luxe.Co: How do you position and price your products in the market when you started the brand?

Shi Liu: As we know, everyone is talking about consumption upgrade. However, we think there are still a lot of potentials in the mass market. Different from other new bands with entry prices over one thousand yuan, we set our price range at around 500 yuan. We analyzed our customers’ profile. Our customers are women from 22 to 35 years old, with a monthly income from 7,000 to 25,000 yuan. Considering their stage of life, they have many other expenditures on housing and transportation, in addition to fashion shopping. Therefore, they may not be willing to spend more than 1,000 – 1,500 yuan on a single piece of clothing. We also considered the characteristics of online distribution, where the unit price of clothing is usually lower. Therefore, we set our price range more affordable for the mass market.

Luxe.Co: Pom & Co has gained a lot of media attention since establishment. How did you make the public notice and remember your brand?

Shi Liu: Our brand concept is “Bloom in Ordinary Life”. Therefore, we made a product mix combining both floral-print and non-floral-print patterns to create a picturesque visual. We think that a new brand need to fit in a sizable product category, then to quickly draw traffic and make the brand identifiable, and afterwards to create a comprehensive product mix to maintain customers.

As a fashion startup, we are experts in marketing by leveraging on social media with very low costs. For example, a good article on social media will become popular and be reposted by a lot of other media.

Luxe Co：Who oversees brand marketing?

Shi Liu: Me! (Smiled) We have professionals in design and online platform. I oversee marketing and business development. I am also the brand spokesperson. In this regard, I must keep fit to showcase our dresses and to help reduce additional workload for photo editing staff.

Luxe Co：As a new startup, how do you promote your brand fast and at low-cost?

Shi Liu: I think the writing must be simple, colloquial and easy to circulate. We obtained and accumulated our original customer base through PR articles and self-media operation. Good copywriters are rare. We spent a year finding one.

Luxe Co：What do you think of marketing through celebrities and KOLs?

Shi Liu: We worked with numerous fashion bloggers previously. The marketing effect was satisfactory. From last month, we have started marketing through celebrities by tailor-making dresses for them. In the process of working with celebrities and KOLs, I realized that we need more skills, instead of simply following the mindset of traditional fashion brands. In the future, we may set up a separate team of 3-4 people focusing on fashion social media and working with celebrities for videos and street snap shootings.

Luxe Co：What is the USP for Pom & Co’s products?

Shi Liu: Different from traditional floral-print brands, our floral patterns were designed by international designers. Pattern design is a mature industry in the global market. There are many professional studios dedicated to pattern prints. We don’t have this specialty in China currently. Many university graduates work for household product brands instead. Our internal design team apply these print patterns on garments and create beautiful dresses.

Luxe Co：Do you think floral prints will limit your product and consumer mix？

Shi Liu: We don’t simply apply floral prints to all products. There are partial prints, positioning prints and embroidery products. At times, we also launch single-color products to style with floral-print skirts. As well, we adjust our product design according to seasons. In autumn-winter collection, we will use partial embroidery because people don’t usually wear full-range florals in winter. Therefore, our products are not limited to floral-prints. The product mix include both floral and non-floral products.

Luxe Co：Pom & Co is very successful in fundraising and has received so much financial support from institutional investors. What’s your thoughts?

Shi Liu: Every time when I meet with investors, their questions are very valuable and inspiring for me to think. With their involvement, I must think every question from a financial point of view. I need to understand which category is bestselling and which category is more profitable.

Luxe Co：What is your next step?

Shi Liu: Our plan is to expand our product category. After trial-run results, we will expand our product categories. This will be a great challenge and opportunity for us.