Case study on brand's principlesfrom @davidkylechoe

Transcript

This founder is building the Hermes of good and taking over China. Welcome to behind the rank, which is a series that uncovers the founder principles that become the unfair advantages of outlier businesses. Today, we're talking about Laopu Gold. Laopu Gold is a Chinese luxury jewelry brand founded in 2009 with 48 stores globally and growing nearly 200% year over year with over 350,000 repeat customers and lines out the door. How is LaoPu breaking out into China despite such established competitors? It's breaking out because the founder, Xu Gaoming's principles and brand strategy that's allowed LaoPu to grow into what it is today. So here's Gaoming's key founder principles. The first principle is a no competition state of mind. While LaoPu is often compared to Cartier or Hermes, Gaoming never considered them competitors from the start. He said that the values, customers and channels are on a completely different track. This philosophy has allowed them to be the first Chinese gold brand to break through the competitive landscape of high end foreign rank. Principle number two is every store is a mountain. I love that. Xiaomi has been laser focused on the efficiency and location of each store. They have 48 total stores and are in nine out of 10 top shopping malls in China. His goal is that the average store should exceed a $144,000,000 in sales. And on top of that, he has a rule that if a store doesn't reach $69,000,000 in sales, it'll be eliminated. He's setting the standard that every store is an outlier. Principle number three is guard the heritage better defy tradition. He's been able to maintain this balance of deep connection to Chinese tradition while building something new. He says it like this. We won't create something neither Chinese no Better or culturally incoherent. For China's intangible heritage, we maintain its purity. We also defy tradition. Beyond following basic brand and business logic, everything we do is anti traditional and disruptive. This is all to support his vision that every family would have a piece of Lao Pu good that can be passed through the generations. Principle number four is stay in the trenches. While Good Ming is the chairman and CEO, he is also the chief designer and personally leads 20 designers and spends 70% of his time on rank d. By staying connected to design they've been able to create 2,000 original designs almost two fifty patents and two twenty tier overseas patents all while growing 200% year over year only spending point 4% of revenue on marketing. So what do you think about Kaoming and Lao Pu? Do you think that they can expand into the better market and still see the same level of success? Let me know in the comments