Between high jewelry and fast fashion lies a vast market in the Chinese Mainland full of untapped opportunities. For years, China’s affordable luxury jewelry market has been dominated by global players like Swarovski and APM Monaco. However, Luxe.CO has observed a significant shift during this year’s Double 11 Shopping Festival on Tmall. For the first time, a Chinese designer jewelry brand, HEFANG Jewelry, founded by Chinese designer Sun Hefang in 2012, has surpassed these long-standing international leaders to claim the No. 1 position in jewelry and accessories sales.
HEFANG’s presence has grown steadily across culture and retail. From actress Liu Yifei wearing HEFANG pieces in the hit drama The Tale of Rose, to its boutiques opening in prime shopping destinations from Beijing’s China World Mall, Nanjing Deji Plaza, and Shenzhen Bay MixC, HEFANG represents a new generation of Chinese affordable luxury.
Designer Sun Hefang founded HEFANG Jewelry in 2012, during a pivotal period when China saw a surge in independent designers. Yet, unlike many who stayed niche, Sun set her sights on building a leading Chinese designer jewelry brand for a broad, rapidly growing middle-class audience.
Compared to major international brands like Swarovski and APM Monaco, which each operate over 200 stores across China, HEFANG has opened just over 70. HEFANG’s disciplined focus on internal development, product excellence, supply-chain agility, and deep local consumer insight has now, after 13 years, achieved a breakthrough by overtaking these global names in the online channel.
Sun Hefang, Founder of HEFANG Jewelry
“I want HEFANG to stand for Chinese design and become a leading brand in premium fashion jewelry.”
Sun candidly shared that becoming the top jewelry brand in sales on Tmall during Double 11 was a complete surprise, and they had made no preparations for the outcome. HEFANG has always been conservative about high-traffic livestreaming tactics. As the founder, Sun prioritizes the brand’s long-term sustainable development, maintaining discipline through consistent pricing, cautious channel expansion, and products that genuinely attract customers, always placing brand health ahead of short-term gains.
Sun’s lifelong passion for jewelry began in childhood, nurtured in her mother’s jewelry manufacturing factory. The factory served well-known international brands such as Disney, and years of collaboration with European and American markets helped it develop a comprehensive production and quality control system that is fully aligned with international standards.
Craftsmanship of the Wedding Tiara & Sparkle Earrings
Sun knows that having a strong supply chain is only the starting point. According to Sun, every HEFANG piece seen by consumers originates from hundreds of hand-drawn drafts and undergoes three to ten rounds of prototyping and revision before it reaches the final stage. Products are selected through internal votes by staff and frontline sales teams. The company has even established dedicated product-testers who wear and trial new pieces for one to two weeks to evaluate comfort, durability, and whether the design snags on garments or irritates the skin.
This level of attention to detail ensures that international-standard quality serves as the foundation for HEFANG’s steady development. In turn, the brand’s growth has also pushed the family’s manufacturing business, which has more than 3 decades of history, to be more agile and innovative. It is a two-way upgrade: better product drives business, and stronger business elevates craftsmanship.
“I want HEFANG to stand for Chinese design and become a leading brand in premium fashion jewelry.” The brand’s integrated supply chain and methodical brand-building are core to Sun’s inner drive.
HEFANG’s Vertically Integrated Supply Chain
Continuous innovation in both design and production has laid the commercial foundation for HEFANG’s success.
When culture sets a trend, HEFANG is ready to meet the moment. In The Tale of Rose, Liu Yifei’s character wore nearly 20 HEFANG pieces, including the iconic Nebula Earrings. On the travel reality show Divas Hit the Road 7, Li Qin and Ma Sichun wore matching versions of the Sparkle Nebula Necklaces in different colors. These were also marketed as a “best friends” pair. With this kind of visibility, HEFANG demonstrated its ability to respond quickly and restock promptly. A key edge in a market where trends move fast, converting cultural moments into commercial outcomes.
HEFANG on Liu Yifei — The Tale of Rose
“Design has always been HEFANG’s primary competitive strength”
The evolution of consumer awareness in China has opened new opportunities for homegrown designer brands like HEFANG. Consumers are no longer blindly pursuing foreign labels; rather, they seek meaningful designs. This greater openness to Chinese brands creates new opportunities for design-oriented domestic brands like HEFANG. HEFANG’s rapid growth has been driven by its alignment with the values and lifestyles of China’s new-generation consumers, who desire products that are practical, versatile, expressive, and emotionally resonant.
Sun describes her creative method as an iterative process — Create, listen, reflect, adjust, then repeat. The brand shares its aesthetic point of view, then actively absorbs feedback to refine what comes next. That co-creative process of mutual growth builds an emotional bond with its customers.
This two-way engagement continues to energize the brand’s design output.
“Understanding consumers and listening to them is the core of building a brand that endures,” Sun emphasizes.
She sees offline retail as a vital touchpoint for understanding real consumers. Sun regularly visits boutiques and serves as “store manager for a day,” a hands-on ritual that allows her to meet and observe real customers in person. She meets women who bought their first pair of HEFANG pineapple studs as university students and continue to return today as they marry, build careers, and become financially independent. Some bring friends to discover pieces together, and others who have followed her on social media for years greet her as if she were someone they’ve known for years and share stories from their lives. These moments reinforce the bond HEFANG has established, people shining individually, yet uplifting one another when connected.
As Sun notes, “Each piece of jewelry is a bridge between me and someone I’ve never met. It’s a kind of magical resonance. Our relationship with users feels like a symbiosis. We shine in our own ways, yet we illuminate one another.”
Sun’s inspirations often arise from everyday life:a keepsake moment before returning home that sparked the Tea Time Collection; playful afternoons with her daughter that evolved into a Barbie collaboration; and immersive concept stores like the “HEFANG Inspiration Library” in Beijing’s Sanlitun, where open books serve as window installations and ceiling art, extending HEFANG’s design logic from jewelry to spatial storytelling.
HEFANG Tea Time Collection
HEFANG x Barbie
HEFANG Inspiration Library, Beijing Sanlitun
From a design perspective, HEFANG’s aesthetic feels naturally attuned to the preferences of Chinese consumers. Sun has observed that while many international jewelry houses gravitate toward abstract forms and distant symbolism, her own instinct leans toward vivid and figurative storytelling, turning familiar shapes into jewelry with emotion and clarity. This approach has become one of HEFANG’s most distinctive design signatures and a key reason why its pieces resonate so strongly with customers.
“My life has always been about setting goals”
Sun’s path blends creativity and discipline. From earning admission to Central Saint Martins through sheer determination, to gaining industry experience working at ELLE China, and ultimately launching her own brand, Sun Hefang describes herself as someone who has always been driven by clear goals.
At age 25, she borrowed six months of credit from her mother’s factory to start HEFANG from scratch. She wore many hats, managing everything from overseeing HR and finance to selecting store locations and even handling design and renovation herself.
As one of the earliest Chinese designer jewelry brands to explore true commercialization, HEFANG joined Tmall in 2016 as part of the platform’s first wave of designer jewelry labels. In 2018, the brand moved into brick-and-mortar, opening its first physical stores at Guangzhou K11 and Beijing Sanlitun. From the beginning, Sun placed great importance on refining the brand’s retail identity, continually elevating visual standards and customer experience.
Today, HEFANG’s stores have evolved into a 4.0 design concept, with immersive themed spaces such as the “Inspiration Library” in Beijing Sanlitun, the “Whimsical Harbor” in Shenzhen Bay MixC, and the “Home by the Sea” in Zhuhai UIN Park — each expressing the brand’s creative universe through distinct visual storytelling.
HEFANG 4.0 Brand Concept Store
As the company and brand have scaled up, so too have the challenges. Sun openly acknowledges the pressure from rising counterfeiting, competitive pushback from overseas brands. She has faced countless moments of doubt during the real-world battles of running a business. Over the past 13 years of building HEFANG, she has developed her own philosophy for resilience: stay on your own path, move at your own pace. Reflecting on the Double 11 milestone, what Sun emphasizes most is not the record itself, but the stability behind it, the kind that comes from product truth, operational discipline, and a brand story that remains clear no matter the channel.
Offline, the brand also maintains the same steady pace. Even amid consumption slowdowns and store closures among some global competitors, HEFANG has continued to open 10 to 20 new stores each year, pacing expansion in line with goals and market conditions rather than volume for its own sake. “We don’t pursue growth for numbers alone, we adjust our rhythm based on our targets and the environment,” Sun notes.
In a highly saturated accessories market, HEFANG has gradually built strong brand recognition through a powerful combination of design-driven innovation and emotional storytelling, supported by a mature, agile supply chain. Its co-creation mindset has brought the brand’s relationship with consumers much closer than those of international players, providing it with a long-term advantage over overseas competitors. Long-term investment in channels and brand identity has provided the confidence needed to compete in the same space as global premium fashion jewelry brands.
Conclusion:
Sun’s WeChat signature, “Dream bigger, stay grounded”, reflects both her romantic and rational sides, as a designer and as a business leader. It perfectly captures the balance that defines HEFANG. She is candid about her ambition and her deep attachment to the eponymous brand. It also distills her brand philosophy: bold vision, rooted execution.
Her intention from the beginning was straightforward yet bold: to bring the international aesthetics she learned overseas back to China and see whether it was possible to build a truly outstanding brand here. Today, having earned significant recognition in the home market, the company’s next ambition is clear: becoming a Chinese brand recognized on the global stage.
This year, Sun established the HEFANG Award with her alma mater, University of Art London, Central Saint Martins, supporting jewelry education and emerging talent. where she participated in scholarships and projects with Cartier and Swarovski. Returning to campus with a brand of her own is both a point of pride and a continued commitment to keep China’s design perspectives connected with the world.
HEFANG’s trajectory mirrors a broader movement. It shows how Chinese designer brands can move from niche to mainstream recognition by pairing design storytelling with manufacturing excellence and a user-centric mindset. It shows tremendous potential for China’s jewelry industry to evolve from “Made in China” to “Designed in China “ and ultimately to “Branded in China”.
Topping Double 11 is an important milestone. However, for HEFANG, the deeper story is the foundation beneath it, and the runway still ahead.
From couture-level bridal tiaras to a boundary-breaking collaboration with HUAWEI on wearable accessories to the launch of its own international e-commerce presence, HEFANG is still at the very beginning of its “Dream bigger, stay grounded” journey.
These milestones only mark the early chapters of a long-term commitment to building a brand that grows steadily with purpose and shines globally. It stands as a vivid example of how Chinese companies can embrace genuine long-term thinking in their pursuit of worldwide relevance.
