123The weather is getting hot. What are everyone's thoughts on cross-border categories?
Overseas consumers' search interest in essential summer categories is visibly surging, especially swimwear. Every year, May to July is the peak sales season.
The overseas brand we're discussing today comes from Shenzhen and is called Blooming Jelly (Chinese name “不明觉厉”).
Image source:Blooming Jelly
Since joining TikTok Shop in December 2023, the brand has accumulated nearly $12.6294 million in sales, with over 3.8892 million units sold. Their bestselling one-piece swimsuits have repeatedly topped TikTok's US weekly sales charts.
On Amazon, Blooming Jelly's annual GMV has exceeded $200 million, firmly ranking among the top swimwear sellers in North America.
Talking about the brand's achievements, let's first look at its origins.
Image source:fastmoss
From Domestic Price War Quagmire to Breakthrough in Overseas Markets
Blooming Jelly was founded in 2014. The founder Neo initially focused on the domestic e-commerce women's apparel market. Anyone familiar with the domestic e-commerce environment at that time knows the situation—extreme competition.
Neo later recalled this experience in public sharing: “We went through the era of extreme competition and ‘9.9 yuan free shipping’. At that time, inventory backlog was high, return rates were high, and cost pressure was especially great.”
Even though product design and fabric quality were not inferior to international brands, in the domestic e-commerce price war system, brand value had almost no foothold. The team realized that relying on low prices to get orders wouldn't work, especially since women's apparel had high return rates, slow inventory turnover, and razor-thin profits. Continuing would only lead to slow death.
Image source: Brand official website
Around 2017, Blooming Jelly gradually shifted its focus to cross-border e-commerce, targeting Amazon's European and American markets, focusing on swimwear and casual women's apparel.
With precise pattern design, high cost-performance, and a full-size strategy covering XS to 4XL, the brand quickly established itself in Amazon's swimwear category, with annual GMV exceeding $200 million.
But Amazon's “shelf logic” means the relationship between brands and consumers is “search + transaction.” Consumers buy and leave, and brand awareness is hard to build. Around 2022, the team made another key decision: all in on social e-commerce, making TikTok the core overseas battleground.
Image source:Amazon
Seizing the Trend,All in Social E-commerce
In December 2023, Blooming Jelly officially entered TikTok Shop US, just in time for the platform's rapid traffic surge.
Swimwear is already a hot category on TikTok; the content naturally attracts attention. Just the #swimsuit and #swimsuitcheck hashtags have accumulated over 2 billion views, equivalent to a ready-made, massive traffic pool.
More importantly, TikTok Shop connects content and consumption. Users see outfit videos, get inspired, and place orders—all within a few seconds.
Image source:TikTok
Meanwhile, the global swimwear market is in a period of steady growth. According to Research And Markets, the global swimwear market value in 2024 is $20.8 billion, expected to reach $34.1 billion by 2034, with a CAGR of 5.1%.
North America, as the world's largest swimwear market, has a market size of $10.69 billion in 2024, expected to grow at an annual rate of 5.9% to $18.96 billion by 2034.
Against the backdrop of market expansion, there's also a more crucial shift in consumer trends: In recent years, European and American societies' reflection on “body anxiety” is accelerating the push toward aesthetic diversity. This change has directly fueled the continued rise of plus-size women's apparel.
It can be said that the shift in consumer trends has naturally boosted the overseas expansion of brands like Blooming Jelly.
Image source:globenewswire
How to Win on TikTok? Dual Engine of Emotional Marketing + Influencer Matrix
After discussing the background, let's talk about Blooming Jelly's specific tactics on TikTok. After all, achieving over ten million dollars in sales from scratch relies not on a few viral videos, but on a replicable operational logic.
First, brand positioning comes first: from“clothes look good” to “they look good because you wear them”
Blooming Jelly always emphasizes a core value proposition on TikTok: “Dressing for Yourself”—not the traditional sexy marketing route, not emphasizing slimness and curves, but repeatedly conveying the idea that “every body deserves to be seen.”
Looking at the brand's top-selling videos from the past 30 days (April 14–May 13), every top-ranked video conveys the same emotion—don't worry about your body, wear the swimsuit you like.
Image source:globenewswire
For example, TikTok influencer @ashleighmtz's video precisely hits this emotional point.
At the start of the video, she candidly points out her own body's “shortcomings” to the camera, directly resonating with many girls who avoid swimsuits due to body anxiety, making them feel “she's just like me” from the first second.
First, pose the problem, then recommend Blooming Jelly swimwear. This not only showcases the swimwear's advantages but also allows users to naturally complete the psychological substitution: “She looks better after wearing it → I should look good too.”
Image source:TikTok
It is precisely this “resonate first, then inspire” content logic that has made this video, since its release in April this year, accumulate over 10.5 million views on TikTok and generate $73,100 in sales, becoming one of the brand's most effective recent sales videos.
This is the embodiment of the “golden three seconds” of short videos—leave a hook at the beginning that's attractive enough, and conversions naturally follow.
Image source:kalodata
Second, refined influencer matrix layered operations
TikTok's cooperation model usually follows the 80/20 rule: top influencers boost brand awareness, mid-tier influencers drive sales. Blooming Jelly is no exception.Also no exception.
According to data, in the past 28 days, the brand has collaborated with 2,712 sales influencers, of which mid-tier influencers with 10,000–50,000 followers accounted for 69.38%.
Top influencers boost brand awareness, mid- and lower-tier influencers drive actual sales. The combination results in high conversion efficiency and controllable costs.
Image source:fastmoss
This can also be seen intuitively in the data.
As shown below, mid-tier influencers with 10,000–50,000 followers contributed $638,000, accounting for 50.25% of total sales; the 50,000–100,000 range contributed $114,400 (9.01%). In other words, nearly 60% of sales come from these mid-tier influencers.
This also confirms a fact: On TikTok, follower count does not equal sales power. Authenticity and trust are the keys to conversion.
Image source:fastmoss
Third, grasp the seasonal rhythm and concentrate the explosion
Swimwear is a highly seasonal category, and the North American market's sales window is concentrated in May–July.
Blooming Jelly adopts a “preheat + concentrated explosion” strategy, laying the groundwork before the peak season by densely publishing outfit videos through the influencer matrix, then sprinting at key moments.
For example, in the just-concluded April, the brand launched a month-long promotion, inviting influencers to participate in a challenge.
Image source:TikTok
With rewards comes motivation. Influencers' creative enthusiasm was fully ignited, and a large number of authentic, diverse body try-on videos emerged, driving attention and imitation among ordinary users.
Traffic and conversions followed. As shown below, after entering April, the brand's sales began to rise sharply, peaking in mid-April, with single-day sales on April 19 exceeding $100,000.
This event not only raised early peak season sales, but also kept the brand's TikTok topic heat rising, accumulating a solid audience asset for the core sales window of May–July.
Image source:fastmoss
A Bit of Extended Thinking
The Blooming Jelly case shows us that today's overseas markets are waiting for more Chinese companies with product and brand strength to enter. The swimwear track's $20.8 billion to $30+ billion imagination space is just a microcosm. Looking at apparel, home, consumer electronics, and other categories, the incremental space in the global market remains considerable.
Looking back at the progress of Chinese companies going overseas in recent years, similar “lane-changing overtaking” cases are increasingly common. In the past, everyone thought going overseas was “selling cheap domestic goods abroad,” but now the story is completely different.Of course, overseas markets are fiercely competitive, but the fiercer the competition, the more space there is for brands that truly respect, understand, and serve users.
For companies wanting to go abroad, instead of hesitating in place, it's better to take the first step—even if it's trial and error, it's more valuable than missing the opportunity.
