Changing 'Made in China': Hung Huang on Worldmakers
Drawing comparisons to Oprah Winfrey and Anna Wintour, Hung Huang has made a significant impact on the Chinese market, vocalizing modern cultural values of the Chinese youth generation and bringing a uniquely dual perspective of western and eastern cultures. Hung joined me on a special Worldmakers episode filmed in Beijing to talk about the globalization of China, the evolving notion of 'Made in China,' as well as fashion and the future of the country's brands.
As an editor, blogger, and owner of iLook, China’s most important fashion magazine, Hung shared some insights for Chinese companies: “Chinese brands need to get their brand philosophy out first – they need to tell people what this is for.”
Watch the video below to hear our conversation and her advice on brands in China:
---
Hung Huang sits down with JWT's Bob Jeffrey
Modern China is about cultural collision. From Shanghai’s stock exchange to Beijing’s ancient treasures, the world’s best brands know that to succeed here, you must do more than speak Mandarin – you must understand the motivations unique to this market and the people. Today, we’ll learn what it takes to be WORLDMADE in China. Welcome to Worldmakers.
Bob Jeffrey: Welcome to Worldmakers. Today, I’m sitting down with Hung Huang –writer, fashion editor, blogger, and champion of local brands. Huang owns a successful media company and runs iLook, one of the country’s most important fashion magazines, and has also been named China’s most influential female blogger. Over 6 million people follow her blog, and she has millions of fans on Weibo, which is China’s version of Twitter. Huang, welcome.
Hung Huang: Thank you very much.
BJ: So I have to start out – you have a very pedigree background. I know you actually did spend a lot of time in the US. You went to the Little Red School House in Greenwich Village, you attended Vassar…I’m just curious, having had that background, in hindsight, how do you think that influenced how you live in China now and your perspective on the world?
HH: I think it has influenced me a great deal because I am sort of in between two worlds and two cultures, and two different political systems, and two different sets of political beliefs. It is not easy to adjust one to the other; however, I did spend most of my formative years in the United States. In many ways, I think more like an American when it comes to social issues, political issues, and sometimes, international issues and so on and so forth. I think the reason I do actually have the followers I have is that China is being globalized at a tremendous speed. With a lot of introduction of Western business came Western culture and Western values. I think I was able to vocalize that for a lot of them, and that is why I’m popular; it’s not because I’m the only one in China who sees certain values, but it’s because the Chinese population in general, especially the young population who are on the Internet, are changing very quickly and they are very globalized, and it’s a lot less difference than one would think.
BJ: Made in China outside of China means one thing: it means manufactured. What made in China doesn’t mean is an iconic brand from China that can be seductive to the West. Do you see that changing in the next four or five years?
HH: I do think that that’s starting to change because it starts with an awareness on the part of successful Chinese manufacturers and CEOs in the fashion industry that they start to focus on brand building, focusing on working with a consumer and they’re all very very keenly aware of that.
BJ: But speaking of building brands, you have your own brand. I went to your store last night, Brand New China, which I thought was really cool in terms of the merchandise – what made you think of that?
HH: As you know, I publish iLook, and so eight years ago, we decided to focus on local Chinese design. We talk about local Chinese design, and we keep getting phone calls from our readers to say: “Look, on page 139 you mentioned this designer and I really like him – where can I buy him?” So we would call the designer and say, “Where can a reader buy your clothes?” and they say, “Oh, tell them to email me and come to my studio.” We sort of say: “Well, don’t you have any stores?” and they would say, “No, opening a store is too expensive, and we don’t have the manpower, and we don’t really want to go into retail.” We realized that even though we had good designers, a lot of them are not meeting their customers because there’s no platform for them.
BJ: Let me ask you a question: you have a lot of influence online, you’re very knowledgeable and passionate about the fashion industry here in China. How does a brand, in a good way, leverage your influence online and the following that you have to really get that ubiquity and equity and awareness?
HH: Chinese brands need to get their brand philosophy out first – they need to tell people what this is for. For example, we worked with Zuczug (素然). The designer did a new series of prints called “The Vegetable Market,” which is great. They took little, very quintessentially Chinese things, like a very classic scale that they use to weigh fish – they took all these and they made it graphically into workable fabric. They printed t-shirts and things like that, which are fun because it’s part of our daily lives – it’s the vegetable market, and so on and so forth. What we did with them was we got people to take their photograph of their favorite object from a vegetable market, be it a Chinese cabbage, or a zucchini, or a tomato, and we sent it into the designer and they make it. We do it on the Internet so people can volunteer their photographs, and also when the shirt came out, we worked together to promote it on the Internet. It was for last summer, and I talked to their designers and they said it was one of the best sellers of the series they have done.
BJ: Thank you, Huang. This has been amazing – I’ve learned so much. And thank you for joining us here in Beijing for Worldmakers.
选择“Disable on www.wenxuecity.com”
选择“don't run on pages on this domain”
