From Seeding to Scaling: What New Growth Paths Did Xiaohongshu and WWD Map Out in Paris?

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PARIS, Oct. 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- As China's leading life and interests community, Xiaohongshu has one of the world's most luxury-obsessed users, anchored by Gen-Z and first-tier cool-hunters. Here, "seeding" isn't just hype. It's the funnel that transforms five minutes of fever into five years of brand equity.

On 2nd October, amid Paris Fashion Week, Xiaohongshu and WWD brought together global luxury CEOs and power players for the inaugural Luxury Innovation Summit. They exchanged insights on digital opportunities and challenges and sketched the next curve of growth. The key takeaway resonated across the city that invented luxury itself. If you don't understand Xiaohongshu, you don't understand the future luxury in China.

"Consumers now wear brands as part of themselves," said Lena Yang, Vice Chairman of WWD China. "They expect brands to truly understand them—their culture and the personal stories they carry. Cultural resonance isn't a slogan. It's creative work that begins with acknowledging a human being and the culture that shaped them."

Johannes Neubacher, Chief Content Officer of WWD China, noted that few markets have pivoted as quickly—or as profoundly—as China. Chinese shoppers aren't just early adopters. They're redefining the rules of how brands engage with culture, community, and creativity.

Mi Yang, Head of Luxury, Commercialization Department, Xiaohongshu, put it this way: "'Seeding' is far more than a simple content drop. It's a product-marketing engine fueled by genuine user inspiration. It drives conversions today while compounding brand equity for tomorrow. Xiaohongshu begins with authentic sharing and continues through active search. It culminates in word-of-mouth seeding—generating fresh luxury sales and establishing long-term growth partnerships with brands. These three steps form a closed consumer-decision loop and showcase the platform's unique value as a strategic partner."

Martin Barthel, Managing Director & Partner at Boston Consulting Group, said, "UGC is a living mirror of what society is thinking. It has to be the prime source of insight and inspiration for every brand." 

Allan Bahroun, Founder of Delect, added, "To 'crack' China, you must decode why people act. Xiaohongshu's user-centric interaction smashes the one-way broadcast wall and reinvents the conversation between brands and Chinese consumers."

International model-turned-creator Suzi de Givenchy got straight to the point: "Keep it real, keep it upbeat, and never betray your own code—followers spot the truth in a heartbeat."

As Martin Barthel, BCG Managing Director & Partner, puts it, "Gen-Z is redrafting the luxury brief—away from price and rarity to meaning and identity."

Built for a digital-first, culture-obsessed, and community-driven market, Xiaohongshu has become both the radar and rendezvous point for luxury. Six native trends now bloom inside its ecosystem—Experiential Value, Cultural Identity, The Art of Thoughtful Expression, Long-Termism, Spatial Artistry and The Style Stage. Together, they are charting a new course for the development of luxury in China.

In that overhaul, Xiaohongshu is no longer just a media buy. Instead, it is a decoder ring that translates Chinese desire, an incubator that turns sentiment into equity, and an engine that keeps compounding it.

Its moat rests on three pillars: a trust-first ecosystem grounded in lived experience, data-rich insights that strengthen strategy, and a frictionless "life-to-purchase" loop that keeps the cash register humming. Born from daily life and reinvested into daily life, Xiaohongshu is the growth partner luxury brands have in China.

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