54In earlier years, many merchants could not earn ideal profits. The root cause was that the product itself was limited by scenarios—it could only be used at specific times and in specific places, with the next repurchase nowhere in sight. This directly caused sales to fail to rise, and profits were naturally meager.
However, as consumption concepts evolved, young people in Europe and the US are especially averse to fixed labels:People refuse to be defined, and so do products.
Take yoga apparel as an example. In the past, the public's fixed impression was that it belonged only to the gym, worn only when practicing yoga or working out.
Image source: CRZ YOGA
Nowadays, activewear has moved into daily life, with applicable scenarios continuously expanding. It can be worn for commuting, shopping, and taking kids out. "One garment, multiple wears" has become the core demand when purchasing.The user base has been enlarged, and the market boundaries are also continuously expanding.
However, this niche segment has long been firmly occupied by high-end established brands like Lululemon. It is quite difficult for new players to break through and get a share.
In China, there is a local activewear brand from Guangzhou. With product quality comparable to major brands and affordable pricing, it has successfully opened up overseas markets and carved out its own space.
It isCRZ YOGA。
Next, let's take a look atthis dark horse bestseller with annual sales reaching 1.5 billion, and how it gradually seized market share step by step?
Image source: CRZ YOGA
From OEM workshop to own brand: using "big-brand alternative" to pry open a niche market.
According to public data, the CRZ YOGA brand was born in Guangzhou in 2017. Its parent company, Guangzhou Qianluo Trading, was established as early as 2006 and initially mainly provided OEM manufacturing services for European and American sports bra brands.
In 2010, Qianluo Trading began testing cross-border e-commerce, joined the eBay platform, and successfully ranked in the TOP10 of China's lingerie category; in 2012, it further expanded to Amazon and officially launched cross-border sales business.
However, this stage was still dominated by OEM and white-label products, and the company had not yet built its own brand.
Image source: CRZ YOGA
During business development, the team observed that overseas high-end yoga apparel brands had extremely high brand premiums. Many consumers sought the same level of fabric and tailoring but were unwilling to pay the high brand costs.
Seeing this market opportunity, the company decided to jump out of the pure OEM model and officially launched its own brand CRZ YOGA in 2017, fully shifting to the yoga apparel track.
Image source: CRZ YOGA
The brand abandoned inflated brand premiums, delivering products of equivalent quality at about 1/3 the price of major brands. It did not take the low-price, poor-quality path of cutthroat competition, focusing instead on high-quality affordable alternatives.
In addition, CRZ YOGA also developed its own Butterluxe (naked-feel high-stretch) fabric and launched the Ocean Y eco-friendly series, using recycled ocean fibers. This aligned with the prevailing sustainable consumption concept in overseas markets and created a distinct product differentiation advantage.
The product line has also expanded from solely yoga apparel to sports bras, sports dresses, menswear, etc., continuously broadening the user base and amassing a large number of loyal consumers.
Image source: CRZ YOGA
Omnichannel layout: public traffic acquisition + private user retention
With the rise of the overseas DTC model and the online shopping habits of young overseas consumers, CRZ YOGA established a channel strategy of capturing public-domain traffic through third-party platforms and accumulating private-domain users through its independent website.
The brand has entered Amazon and laid out core marketplaces in the US, UK, Canada, etc., with refined product Listing operations. Many products have consistently ranked on the BSR list; best-selling items such as yoga pants and sports bras have also accumulated tens of thousands of user reviews, rapidly bringing massive public-domain traffic to the brand.
Image source: Amazon
In addition, CRZ YOGA has gradually entered third-party platforms such as eBay, Walmart, AliExpress, and Lazada, continuously expanding its user coverage.
While achieving scale through third-party platforms, the brand also built an overseas independent website.
The independent website serves multiple functions, including brand image display, private-domain user retention, and new product testing. The membership subscription system built into the site continuously drives repeat purchases by offering members exclusive discounts.
Image source: CRZ YOGA
Relying on this omnichannel approach, CRZ YOGA achieved rapid growth in overseas markets.
It is reported that the brand's annual sales exceeded 1 billion yuan in 2020; in 2023, annual sales climbed to 1.5 billion yuan, making it a leading benchmark seller in the niche cross-border yoga apparel track.
Social media seeding drives purchases: the “visual + real-person” combination on TikTok
Currently, overseas social media has become a core battlefield for brands to achieve explosive growth. Influencer reviews and scenario-based short videos directly drive potential consumers' purchasing decisions, which also provides Chinese cross-border brands with a low-cost opportunity to overtake competitors.
CRZ YOGA naturally seized this trend, deeply cultivating platforms such as TikTok and relying on social media seeding to drive purchases.
On TikTok, the brand established its official account @CRZ YOGA, which currently has 54,600 followers and 35,600 likes.
Image source: TikTok
The account content mainly revolves around two directions: visual appeal and real-person try-on tests.
1. Strong visual content grabs users' attention
Overseas consumers have a high sensitivity to color, so CRZ YOGA selects drinks and fruits that match the color scheme of its yoga apparel to compose shots and create video covers, using the similar-color visual impact to arouse users' curiosity.
This expression not only achieves a good promotional effect, but also conveys the brand's natural, healthy, eco-friendly, and life-oriented tone.
Image source: TikTok
Moreover, many young overseas consumers have a “collect all colors” mindset. After purchasing one color, they are willing to buy the same style in other colors.
Based on this consumer psychology, many videos published on the @CRZ YOGA account focus on displaying multiple color options of the same product, enriching user choices and further stimulating orders.
Image source: TikTok
2. Real-person try-on alleviates users' decision-making concerns
For apparel categories, fabric comfort and rich color options can only generate initial interest. To push potential customers to complete a final order, real-person try-on demonstrations are essential.
Therefore, the @CRZ YOGA account has produced a large number of short videos featuring real-person try-ons, intuitively showing the effect of wearing the outfits, dispelling users' concerns about buying clothes online, and driving conversions.
Image source: TikTok
In addition to content operations on its own account, CRZ YOGA also extensively collaborates with lifestyle niche influencers, leveraging their real usage experiences to strengthen the persuasiveness of the products being comfortable and easy to wear.
In terms of influencer strategy, the brand prefers mid-to-small-sized influencers. Although such accounts do not have a large fan base, they can deliver impressive communication results.
For example, TikTok influencer @zoe nizzia, with only 9,940 followers, shot a short outfit-sharing video for the CRZ YOGA brand a few months ago.
Image source: TikTok
In the video, the influencer shared her wearing experience of multiple CRZ YOGA yoga outfits one by one, sparking heated discussions in the comment section. Many interested followers commented that they had always wanted to try this brand's yoga wear, and some users were successfully sold after watching the share.
As of now, this promotional short video has reached 248,000 views and 29,300 likes. For an account with around a thousand followers, the data is outstanding.
It is not hard to see that real experience sharing by mid-to-small influencers has high credibility and is more likely to gain emotional resonance from target users, efficiently completing product seeding and driving actual purchase conversions.
Image source: TikTok
Conclusion
Looking back, the yoga apparel track is far from saturated overseas. Demand for athleisure clothing in European and American markets continues to grow, and consumer psychology is undergoing subtle changes.
They are no longer blindly chasing logos, but rather value the combination of fabric, tailoring, comfort, and cost-effectiveness.This presents a structural window of opportunity for the Chinese supply chain.
The growth trajectory of CRZ YOGA has confirmed a fact:
In mature overseas markets, latecomers still have opportunities.The prerequisite is that you must solidify the supply chain foundation, position the channel pieces correctly, and find the right way to communicate with users on social media. These three links are indispensable.
