Beyond watching robots dance, foreign influencers want to strike gold in Shenzhen factories

[[**Overseas influencers are no longer satisfied with filming China's tech scene; they are going deep into Shenzhen factories to find supply chains and trying to turn personal influence into brands. Chinese factories need to shift from low-cost manufacturing to flexible production, sampling, and iteration to meet the needs of small-batch, fast-feedback brand co-creation.**

**Key Points**

**1. Creator brands are essentially monetizing user relationships**

Top influencers such as MrBeast and Logan Paul have successfully tied their fan communities to products. The starting point of a creator brand is not the product, but an already existing user relationship and real-time, low-cost market feedback.

**2. Small batches and fast iteration conflict with the traditional factory model**

Influencers need to first make 10-100 units to test the market, then quickly modify products based on comment-section feedback, while traditional factories require high minimum order quantities (MOQ) and large-scale production. The two sides need to establish new rules of collaboration.

**3. Chinese factories need to cross the capability threshold from "manufacturing to drawings" to "co-defining products"**

Factories must not only understand the price bands, aesthetics, and regulations of different markets, but also be able to protect creative IP, share inventory risk, and support rapid sampling and iteration. Otherwise, it will be difficult for them to take on overseas creator brands.

**4. Platforms are trying to move cross-border transactions forward to the stage before a brand takes shape**

Platforms such as DHgate are building containers for the community economy, allowing influencers and suppliers to co-create categories, select products, and make samples before a brand is born. The platform is responsible for coordinating fulfillment, channels, and other capabilities, but this model places very high demands on manufacturing-side responsiveness and trust mechanisms.Original 2026-09-29 16:36Besides watching robots dance, foreign influencers also want to strike gold in Shenzhen factoriesHongfu SanlangQuick Overview

For foreigners coming to Shenzhen, there is already a trio of travel must-dos: watch robots dance, browse Huaqiangbei, and try drone delivery.

But a recent wave of overseas influencers coming to Shenzhen is no longer satisfied with editing a video of "China's tech scene." They have begun to focus on Chinese factories.

Among them, some create content about AI glasses and smart wearables in Los Angeles and have worked with more than 500 tech brands; some are actors and investors preparing their own financial education game; and others have accumulated millions of followers through street interviews, pranks, and lifestyle videos and plan to sell a perfume of their own.

While filming videos, they are looking for factories, checking samples, and asking about minimum order quantities, hoping to find a path in China's industrial belts to turn personal influence into a brand and strike gold.

There are already many successful examples of overseas bloggers building their own brands.

The functional beverage brand Prime, co-founded by American influencer and boxer Logan Paul and British YouTuber KSI, was reported to have had sales of more than $1.2 billion in 2023; Feastables, the snack brand founded by top global YouTuber MrBeast, had sales of about $250 million in 2024 and profits of more than $20 million.

Chinese factories have also been pulled into this change.

Creators bring users, scenarios, and the language of content; factories need to translate these still-vague demands into product selection, sampling, costs, delivery, and after-sales service. Factories that used to wait for orders will find it hard to take on this type of client.

"The next generation of manufacturing is not about who is cheaper; it is about who can produce, sample, and iterate more flexibly," Yi Xixu (Allen), vice president of DHgate and head of its strategic innovation department, told Huxiu.

And as overseas influencers are no longer satisfied with selling goods for others, and Chinese factories no longer simply wait for orders, a new division of labor over brand leadership has only just begun.

Influencers building brands are selling user relationships

For overseas creators, building brands has long ceased to be a game for only a few top players.

For creators, the most valuable resource is not just the visible follower count, but the fact that they have long figured out why a group of people stop, discuss, and pay for certain content. They are familiar with users' language, emotions, and purchase triggers, and they also know that a question that repeatedly appears in the comments is often closer to real demand than a formal survey.

The earliest creator brands to reach scale almost all turned this "understanding of users" into product capability.

Kylie Jenner is an American reality TV star and social media celebrity. In 2015, she started Kylie Cosmetics with a set of liquid lipsticks and lip liners, directly embedding the beauty image she had built over time and fans' pursuit of "the same makeup look" into product development and promotion. What she sells is not just lipstick, but also an imagination of "becoming Kylie" shaped jointly by social media filters, selfie culture, and celebrity aesthetics.

Prime is another approach. It was jointly launched in 2022 by American influencer and professional boxer Logan Paul and British YouTuber, musician, and boxer KSI. The two had originally formed a long-term rivalry through boxing matches and online feuds, and later wrote this "rivals become partners" storyline into the brand story: fans are not only consuming a functional beverage, but also participating in the continuously updated relationship narrative between the two creators. Prime was reportedly once generating more than $1.2 billion in sales in 2023.

MrBeast's path goes a step further. As one of the most-subscribed YouTube creators in the world, Jimmy Donaldson has built a massive community around high-prize challenges, charitable projects, and large-scale gamified content; his snack brand Feastables, meanwhile, carries the sense of challenge, giveaway mechanics, and community interaction from his videos into product sales. In 2024, Feastables had sales of about $250 million and profits of more than $20 million.

Behind these cases is a common thread: the starting point of a creator brand is not the product itself, but an already-existing user relationship. The product simply puts that relationship into a container that can be purchased, repurchased, and scaled.

This is also the most easily underestimated part of creator brands. What creators bring is not just traffic, but also a real-time, low-cost user research system.

"Users won't go directly to the factory and ask: what happens if these AI glasses get dropped? How does the battery perform after three days of continuous use?" Tarik, a creator who has long made content about AI hardware and smart wearables, told Huxiu. "But they will ask in the creator's comment section."

In Tarik's view, creators naturally sit between manufacturers, sellers, and consumers.

When brands want to know how users use a product, what they complain about, and what features they hope to see added, the comment sections, direct messages, and livestream interactions often already provide the answers. For fast-iterating categories such as AI glasses and smart wearables, this feedback from real usage scenarios can also in turn influence the design and optimization of the next batch of products.

Factories move to the front of the overseas expansion chain

However, there are still many operational challenges between creators and building a brand.

User feedback is fragmented, creators' interests change, and platform traffic fluctuates at any time. Translating the emotions and opinions in comment sections into a product requirement that can be developed, produced, and delivered is not easy.

The biggest threshold usually appears in the supply chain.

Two years ago, Tarik contacted 52 manufacturers in one evening. He wanted to make his own product, but the factories gave highly similar answers: first meet a very high minimum order quantity, or MOQ.

"For someone just starting a brand, betting on too much inventory at once is very risky," Tarik told Huxiu. "You don't even know yet whether the product can sell or how traffic will change, but you already have to pay for a large batch of inventory."

This is also the most direct conflict between the traditional OEM model and creator brands.

Traditional factories are used to a chain that goes like this: the brand gives clear requirements, the factory quotes a price, both sides confirm the order, and then production proceeds at scale. The larger the order and the clearer the standards, the higher the factory's efficiency.

Creators' needs are exactly the opposite.

They often have only a rough idea: a perfume, a piece of clothing, a smart hardware device, or a product for which fans keep raising demands. The first version requires repeated sampling, the initial order is small, sales expectations are unstable, and the product may be quickly modified after short-video releases, user comments, and test sales.

"Creators need to test first," Tarik told Huxiu. "Make 10, 20, 100 units first, and see whether users buy and what feedback they give; expand after validation, rather than pressing a whole large batch of inventory on day one."

For China's supply chain, creator brands are a new opportunity.

In the past, many Chinese factories occupied a relatively late position in the overseas expansion chain: they took orders from overseas brands or traders, produced according to specifications, and the other party was responsible for marketing, channels, and user relationships.

Factories are good at solving "how to make something," but rarely participate in "why this thing should be made."

Creator brands are bringing demand into the supply chain earlier.

What creators hand to factories is often not a mature purchase order, but user personas, community comments, content data, personal aesthetics, and some consumer trend that has not yet been fully named.

They know what fans repeatedly ask in comment sections, what content is easily shared, and they are closer to how overseas consumers express themselves.

"Creators stand inside the market, we do sales at the front end; factories do manufacturing at the back end," Tarik told Huxiu. "We understand the audience, and factories know how to make products. What both sides need to do is truly connect this chain."

"This will give China's supply chain something that was previously very hard to obtain directly: earlier and more specific overseas demand," Allen told Huxiu. DHgate is trying to turn this model into a community economy, which is more like a commercial container that puts overseas influencers and suppliers into the same system for co-creation: creators propose category directions and user insights, suppliers judge product feasibility, costs, and delivery times, and the platform handles matching, coordination, and supplements cross-border fulfillment, channels, and other capabilities.

If the platform can standardize these links, it may open up a kind of incremental growth different from traditional platform merchant recruitment: this model is somewhat like moving traditional cross-border transactions one step earlier. In the past, platforms waited for brands to enter with mature products and orders; now, they are trying to intervene in the organization of products, supply chains, and channels before a brand has even taken shape.

But the further this chain moves forward, the less it is a light business.

Hard problems after co-creation enters deep waters

Chinese factories' deeper participation in brand co-creation also means taking on complexities rarely seen in the past OEM system.

First is the contradiction between small orders and efficiency.

Creators need small-batch testing, while factories rely on scale production to spread costs. Small orders and rapid response reduce trial-and-error costs for creators, but for factories they may mean higher communication, sampling, production scheduling, and management costs.

Second is the contradiction between fast pace and delivery stability.

The traffic window on short-video platforms may last only a few days. A viral piece of content may bring orders instantly, or it may lose momentum a week later. Factories must support rapid replenishment while also avoiding sacrificing quality, compliance, and delivery deadlines just to chase traffic.

The manufacturing side cannot complete its task only when the product leaves the factory. Factories, brands, and creators need to maintain more intensive communication and, based on user feedback, decide whether the next batch should be changed, what should be changed, and when. Especially for products such as smart hardware and consumer electronics, user feedback may also affect multiple links including features, software, after-sales service, and compliance.

Third is the trust problem around creativity and IP.

“When we hand our creativity, ideas, and understanding of users to manufacturers, we need to be confident that this content will not be spread at will,” Tyler told Huxiu. “This must be a relationship of building a brand together.”

Creators may not understand manufacturing, but they control the front-end market; factories may not understand every content community, but they control product realization capabilities. Once trust is lacking between the two ends, it is hard to make creators feel safe handing over early ideas that have not yet been patented but may constitute core brand assets.

Therefore, brand co-creation cannot rely only on a single factory visit or a letter of intent for cooperation. It requires more specific mechanisms: trademark and IP ownership, confidentiality of product formulas and designs, inventory risk sharing, boundaries for data use, after-sales responsibility, replenishment mechanisms, and long-term profit-sharing methods. Who owns the right to define the product, who bears unsold inventory risk, and who gets user data should ultimately all be written into clear collaboration rules.

Finally, there is the capability shift from “low-cost manufacturing” to “understanding products and markets.”

“The first impression American consumers often have of Chinese factories is still cheap goods, and this needs to change,” Tyler told Huxiu. “Many high-end brands are already made in China; consumers just don’t see it.”

This is also a lesson China’s supply chain truly needs to learn.

Factories need to understand the price bands, aesthetics, retail rhythms, regulations, and after-sales habits of different markets; they need to know whether a product can smoothly launch in the United States or Europe; and they also need to move further from “producing according to drawings” to “defining products together.”

For creator brands, manufacturing capability is the foundation, but understanding the market, supporting trial and error, protecting creativity, and enabling rapid iteration are the scarcer parts.

When creators bring user demand into industrial belts, global competition also begins to test product co-creation and cross-border delivery capabilities.

The Huxiu 2026 Globalization Benchmark List is now open for applications from going-global brands, AI going-global companies, and industrial service providers. You are welcome to click the image to submit your globalization practices:

Article title: Beyond watching robots dance, foreign influencers also want to strike gold in Shenzhen factories

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