Here, we – Aung Crown, a custom clothing manufacturer since 1998 – will introduce 10 top casual clothing brands in China launched by Maigoo. All data were collected and analyzed by the CN10 ranking list technical research department and the CNP brand data research department together. Here are the 10 top casual clothing brands: Uniqlo, Peacebird, Semir, HLA, EIFINI, Mark Fairwhale, GAP, ONLY, Vero Moda, and GXG.  

1. UNIQLO

Parent organization: Fast Retailing

Founded: September 2, 1974, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan

Founder: Tadashi Yanai

Headquarters: Yamaguchi, Yamaguchi, Japan

CEO: Tadashi Yanai (Nov 2005–)

Number of employees: 30,000+ employees

Website: https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/

UNIQLO is the core brand of Fast Retailing, which has insisted on providing modern, simple, natural, high-quality, and easy-matching merchandise. The “fashionable yet versatile” theory that it advocates has become famous worldwide. The full name of UNIQLO is Unique Clothing Warehouse, and its inner meaning, a warehouse store that abandons unnecessary store decoration, is to adopt a self-shopping way to provide reasonable, trusted prices for consumers.

Fast Retailing was established in 1963, and it was a store for selling suits. Masayoshi Yanai, the current chairman and general manager of Fast Retailing, graduated from Waseda University with a degree in economics in his early years and joined the company in August 1972. In September 1984, he became the chairman and general manager of the company. In 1982, Masayoshi Yanai became the managing director of Fast Retailing and was inspired by the American Warehouse sale on campus during his on-the-spot investigation. After returning to Japan, he proposed clothing store could try self-shopping at a warehouse to sell clothing and bring hypermarket-style clothing sales by unique merchandise strategies, a sourcing and selling system to operate stores at low costs.

UNIQLO warehouse boutique was opened in Hiroshima, Japan, in June 1984. At that time, the Japanese economy was in a period of depression, and the sales strategy of UNIQLO was to offer stylish, casual clothing for all consumers at low prices. To gather consumers at the beginning, UNIQLO offered a free breakfast – milk + bread for consumers who came for shopping, which attracted a large butch of consumers. During that time, there were lots of people gathering at UNIQLO in line to get a free breakfast and entering the store to shop.

In 1991, Fast Retailing quickly started its chain business and proposed establishing 1,000 boutiques to make the UNIQLO chain business. American Limited and GAP with national features became the example that UNIQLO took its experience from. In 1994, UNIQLO was listed on the Hiroshima Stock Exchange, and later it was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. In 1998, UNIQLO opened its boutique in Harajuku and successfully promoted the sale of wool sweaters. After that, UNIQLO started the era of casual clothing, directly facing consumers. The era of casual clothing directly facing consumers, namely amended business processes including strategies, productions, populations, and sales, to build a business model that caters to consumers. The key to this era was to make products massively by consumers’ requirements. That’s the development way of UNIQLO.

2. PEACEBIRD

Founded: 1996

Founder: Zhang Jiangping

Headquarters: Ningbo, Zhejiang, China

CEO: Zhang Jiangping

Website: https://shop.peacebird.com/

PEACEBIRD is a brand founded in 1996 and listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2017. Its mission is to let everyone enjoy the fun of fashion.

In 1996, Mr Zhang Jiangping led his business partners to create the PEACEBIRD brand based on the dove, a symbol of love and peace. PEACEBIRD carries out its “ladder brand” strategy, whereby each sub-brand complements each other’s strengths through differed style interpretations. At the same time, it has increased its presence in fashion and sports, and tapped into the new elements of the “national trend” through co-branding and cooperation with pioneering designers, thus giving PEACEBIRD a deeper cultural connotation. The new elements of “national trend” are explored through co-branding and cooperation with pioneering designers, which give Pacific Bird a more profound cultural connotation.

PEACEBIRD focuses on fashion and highly pays attention to developing and researching core products. Since its founding, PEACEBIRD has contributed to self-design and self-research team building. Now, PEACEBIRD has a high-quality research team with an international view and more than 500 employees. This team insists on regarding consumers as the center and its brand styles as propulsion, continuously blending fashion elements into production creation to launch more than 10,000 new products on the market. Frequently launch and surprise its consumers.

PEACEBIRD aims to become a fashion tech company, basing on focusing on fashion, driven by data, and stratifying “Internet retail” as its core. PEACEBIRD also insists on continuing self-improvement and hard work to achieve its great vision of becoming a full-fledged, excellent fashion brand retailing company.

PEACEBIRD uses “Fashion, buoyancy, Asia” as its styles. It presents its unique charms through its excellent design theory, fashion design style, keen fashion sense, and endorsement by international supermodels. Its products are full of fashion, buoyancy, and Asian styles, favored by urban people who continuously seek new looks.

“Living my life to the fullest” is the core value of PEACEBIRD, which has contributed to providing quality, affordable, rich, and various products, which can offer more choices for consumers. Let every consumer enjoy the fun of fashion.

3. Semir

Founded: December 18, 1996

Founder: Qiu Guanghe

Headquarters: Wenzhou, China

CEO: Qiu Guanghe

Website: https://semirshop.com/

Semir was founded in 1996 by Qiu Guanghe, who is the CEO of Semir now. Semir has positioned itself as a lifestyle brand for the general public to offer quality, pretty, and affordable products and services for 18 to 35-year-old students or young workers.

Semir is good at finding and creating textured products for daily life to provide various, different one-stop products and services, which can meet the different needs of people of different ages and classes. People can easily get a textured piece at Semir. Moreover, Semir believes that textured lives cannot be reached and depend on daily life.

Since its founding, Semir has adopted a virtualization running model to innovate in practices continuously. It has outsourced its garment production and focused on product designs, spreading the brand, managing its supplier chains, and expanding its channels. In the past 20 years of development, Semir has run under the mind of integration and innovation for win-win development to play these 4 roles – the channel planner, resource integrator, brand manager, and humanitarian practitioner. Semir is based on the clothing industry, based on the domestic market, based on brand building, based on the humanities to lead the international vision of the integration of global advantageous resources, to focus on the mentality and the spirit of perseverance to do the industry, out of a socialization of large-scale production, specialized division of labor and coordination of the road.

4. Heilan Home or HLA

Founded: 2002

Founder: Zhou Jianping

Headquarters: Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, China

CEO: Zhou Jianping

Chinese: 海澜之家

PinYin: Hǎilán zhī Jiā

Website: http://www.hla.com.cn/

Heilan Home or HLA is a national apparel brand that creates quality apparel at affordable prices for people. After 20 years of development, HLA has become a nationally known brand in China with more than 5,000 stores and more than 100 million members. From men’s closets to a national brand, HLA has insisted on becoming a responsible, accompanying national brand to echo empathic resonance with Chinese and grow together.

Blending practice and aesthetic, HLA has integrated comfort and designable senses into each seasonal product for all. HLA always believes that good apparel is vital, which can not only give people a cozy and decent look, but also each Chinese person believes and affirms in their unique value. Therefore, by adhering to the product philosophy of ‘suitable for human body, superior human state, suitable for human needs, and fulfilling human wishes’, we will continue to enhance the degree of inclusive coverage, iterate the degree of design professionalism, follow the changes in contemporary needs, and enhance the power of insight and empathy, to create garments with vitality.

Got inspiration from current trends, never confined to current, from raw materials to fabrics, from production to consumption, HLA pushes the revolution of sustainable fashion. HLA believes that a good piece of apparel should be blended with practice and aesthetics.

5. EIFINI

Founded: 2001

Founder: Zhou Jianping

Headquarters: Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, China

CEO: Zhou Jianping

Chinese: 海澜之家

PinYin: Hǎilán zhī Jiā

Website: http://www.eifini.com/

EIFINI was born in 2001, and the name is derived from the abbreviation of the English words “Elegant I, Faith I, Natural I.” EIFINI takes French elegance, confidence, and nature as its core values to annotate the three roles of women in daily life: tender wife, charmed career woman, and bosom friend.

EIFINI – a women’s apparel brand, mainly focuses on natural color tones – grayish beige, blending earth yellow, orange red, red, and green. In the same color tone, lightening or darkening colors symbolize nature. EIFINI also focuses on detailed designs and usually uses a simple style to present joyful and impressive designs. By using different styling ways to meet females’ demand for different occasions to present the dressing theory of joy, elegance, and fashion.

6. MARK FAIRWHALE

Founded: 2001

Founder: Mark Cheung (张肇达)

Headquarters: Shanghai, China

CEO: Mark

Chinese: 马克华菲

Website: https://www.markfairwhale.com/

MARK FAIRWHALE was founded in 2001, and it has drawn inspiration from ancient culture from home and abroad over the past 20 years. With a contemporary perspective on the art of continuous cross-fertilization and innovation, MARK FAIRWHALE meets the personalized needs of fashion trendsetters to show a new national trend to guide the development of China’s trend brands.

Nowadays, sole fashion brands or spirits cannot meet consumers’ demand for fashion brands. Multi-cultural fashion brands should cater to the social development in a multi-cultural society. To meet the demand of people’s increasingly in personalities, MARK FAIRWHALE breaks through the limited styles of general fashion brands by designing originally with multi-cultural designs, which can meet the wide demands of consumers in fashion brands.

7. Gap

Founded: August 21, 1969,

Founder: Doris F. Fisher, Donald Fisher

Headquarters: San Francisco, CA

CEO: Richard Dickson (Aug 22, 2023–)

Customer service: 1 (800) 427-7895

CFO: Katrina O’Connell

Stock price: GAP (NYSE) $19.49 +0.40 (+2.10%), Apr 22, 4:00 PM EDT – Disclaimer

Website: https://www.gap.com/

The Gap, Inc., commonly known as Gap Inc., is an American multinational clothing and accessories retailer. Gap was established in 1969 by Donald Fisher and Doris F. Fisher and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Founded in 1969, Gap has adhered to redesigning classic and annotated delicate American styles. Entered in Chinese market in 2010, Gap has continuously insisted on its fashion styles – original classic and rich in creation to deliver a bold, simple, real fashion culture to more people.

The Chinese name of Gap was “盖普” and was renamed “盖璞” in October 2010. Gap Apparel brings people a casual temperament and lets people enjoy nature and cozy lives.

8. ONLY

Founded: 1995 

Parent organization: BESTSELLER

Founder: Troels Holch Povlsen

Headquarters: Brande, Denmark

CEO: Anders Holch Povlsen (the son of the founder)

Website: https://www.only.com/

ONLY belongs to a famous Denmark fashion company – BESTSELLER that has engaged in fashion designs, research, retail, and branding. BESTSELLER was founded in 1975, and ONLY was created in 1995, in Denmark. Up to now, BESTSELLER’s sales outlets have reached 46 countries worldwide. Since BESTSELLER’s founding, it has owned more than 2,000 concept shops and over 6,000 branded fashion retailers. The main markets include Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Canada, and other European and American countries. Designers in BESTSELLER are all over Europe and always stand ahead of fashion trends worldwide to create super fashion concepts for urban young people.

ONLY entered the Chinese market in 1996 and up to now, ONLY has 1800 stores among 300 cities in China. 2000 is a significant year for ONLY. In 2000, ONLY initially brought the “fast fashion” concept to make sure that it can always be ahead of fashion trends, and this concept has made ONLY a leader in European fashion brands up to now. The European design with a strong sense of design can let bold, independent urban females show themselves with ONLY apparel.

9. VERO MODA

Founded: 1987 

Parent organization: BESTSELLER

Founder: Troels Holch Povlsen

Headquarters: Brande, Denmark

CEO: Anders Holch Povlsen (the son of the founder)

Website: https://www.veromoda.com/

VERO MODA also belongs to BESTSELLER, founded in 1987. Since 1987, VERO MODA has contributed to creating modern and elegant apparel for modern females worldwide, and VERO MODA sales outlets have reached 45 countries globally.

VERO MODA opened its boutique in Oslo, Norway. Since that, VERO MODA has opened 171 directly managed stores and 2,052 agents in Europe and the Middle East. VERO MODA was introduced to China in 2001, and it has opened more than 200 boutiques in Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities in China.

VERO MODA has been specially designed for females over 25 years old who have super self-awareness and independence. Age is never sensitive anymore at VERO MODE due to its unique sense for women’s fashion. No matter whether females are in office or casual dates, they are always attractive and buoyant, accentuating their leisure, elegance, and urban exotic with VERO MORA apparel.

10.  GXG

Founded: 2007

Parent company: Mulsanne Group

Founder: Ningbo Zhongzhe Mulsanne Holding Co., Ltd

Headquarters: Ningbo, China

CEO: Craig Lemasters

Website: https://www.gxggroup.com/

Established in 2007, GXG has grown into a leading menswear fashion group in China with a powerful online presence, extensive POS coverage, and a highly recognized brand name. Currently, GXG has a portfolio of 4 uniquely positioned brands, including GXG, gxg.

GXG, together with its global brand spokesperson Gong Jun, brings high-quality clothing that is “just right for work”. It aims to enable urban people to enjoy a decent, comfortable, and fashionable zero-pressure commuting life by focusing on urban commuting scenes and separating the brand style from too serious business and too casual sports style.