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<\/p>\nMark Gong can remember the exact time and date when he found out that Jennie from Blackpink had been photographed in his now-famous dog print T-shirt: \u201cIt was February 24, 2025 \u2014 3pm. That was crazy, I was freaking out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anticipating a spike in demand for the cotton tee, which features six dachshunds wearing pearl necklaces, the team called up their supplier and ordered an extra 500 units. By the time the designer had returned from a barbershop appointment that same day, all pre-orders had been filled. \u201cI was like, OK, let\u2019s go big, let\u2019s try 2,000,\u201d he recalls. So, 30,000 dog T-shirt sales later, the 28-year-old designer\u2019s business is buoyant and looking to build on the momentum.<\/p>\n
The eponymous label \u2014 stylized as Markgong \u2014 currently employs around 17 full-time staff and six freelancers, who work across everything from pattern-cutting and embroidery to supply chain management and finance. \u201cIf you\u2019re a designer here in China, you\u2019re not just a designer, you\u2019re a business person,\u201d he says. \u201cYou have to be a boss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking on the eve of his Spring\/Summer 2027 show at Shanghai Fashion Week, which will mark the brand\u2019s 10th physical runway moment, the womenswear designer has a busy night ahead \u2014 \u201cWe\u2019re probably going to be up until 6am.\u201d Still, he manages to squeeze in some time to walk me through his plans for the future.<\/p>\n
The Gong Girl effect<\/p>\n
Gong, who is 28 and studied at New York\u2019s Parsons School of Design, is part of the emerging cohort of Shanghai-based designers who studied abroad before building serious businesses back home. After graduating, Gong established the brand in New York in 2018, before relocating the business to his native China during the Covid pandemic in 2020.<\/p>\n
In August, the designer opened his first flagship store in Shanghai\u2019s IAMP Mall, as well as an online storefront via Alibaba-owned retail platform Tmall. Annual revenue for the business as a whole currently sits around the $1 million mark, according to Gong, with direct-to-consumer making up around 60-70% of sales. (Gong notes that online sales figures are hard to pin down thanks to China\u2019s notoriously high return rates, which can reach up to 70%.) T-shirts alone account for around 35% of the business.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mark Gong opened his first flagship store in Shanghai\u2019s IAMP Mall.<\/p>\n
Photo: Courtesy of Mark Gong<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Gong can remember the exact time and date when he found out that Jennie from Blackpink had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[700,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-631119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-latest","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}