16-Year-Old Hangzhou Company Now Operating In Asia, Europe And North America
After the success of the JNBY pop-up store in Soho last month, the company has moved ahead with plans to open a permanent retail outlet one block away (Image: Refinery29)
This fall, Chinese fashion house JNBY (“Just Naturally Be Yourself”) opened a temporary pop-up store in New York’s Soho district, showcasing the brand’s unique mixture of Chinese and western design. Although JNBY first ventured outside of mainland China back in 2000, with the opening of its Tokyo location, and has opened retail outlets in Hong Kong, Singapore, Russia, and Canada (with plans to expand to France and Taiwan soon), JNBY’s Soho pop-up store was the first time the brand had been available in New York.
Any new fans that JNBY made during the pop-up store’s one-month existence don’t have to worry, though, as the company this week announced that it plans to open a permanent location one block away next month. From the New York Observer:
Jing Daily recently wrote about JNBY, identifying it as one of the Chinese brands we feel has the potential to become popular worldwide. Their designs — less influenced by Chinese traditional fashion and more by the vibrancy and dynamism of modern, cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai — are less flashy than those by other international Chinese brands like Shanghai Tang, and often incorporate the deconstructed aesthetic and organic materials favored by many shoppers around the world.
While we’ll have to see if the still-virtually-unknown brand can “make it” at a permanent location in Soho, if JNBY can build its reputation for quality, design and style in one of the world’s most cut-throat fashion retail markets, as the song says, they [should be able to] make it anywhere.