May 12, 2026
The Borrow
Miniso has built the most operationally sophisticated borrowed-IP retail operation in American history. It has not yet deployed that capability toward owned assets. The second engine, the Yonghui call, and what the next 24 months will tell us.
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April 15, 2026
The Feeling Machine
How Pop Mart built a multi-billion-dollar company by distributing a feeling it never needed to understand, and what happens now that understanding has become mandatory. A $5.1 billion revenue year, a 31% stock collapse, and a bet on Paul King.
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April 1, 2026
The Translation Franchise
The highest-grossing animated film in history earned $23 million in North America. The same cultural material, made by Hollywood, earned $224 million the same year.
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March 27, 2026
The Brand TCL Couldn't Build
How TCL ran the only strategy its arithmetic allowed, built one of the world's most effective trade machines, and spent $1.8 billion on the brand tier it could not reach.
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March 2026
He Moved the Border
A Puerto Rican who refuses to speak English sang for 128 million Super Bowl viewers. What a foreign-language brand that crossed over without translating can teach Asian brands entering America.
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March 2026
Flower Knows — Skin Deep
On December 7, 2025, a Chinese beauty brand launched on Ulta.com with 62 products and no paid advertising. 171,000 TikTok posts had been made about it by American consumers.
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February 24, 2026
The Board — What South Korea Built
In 2019, a Korean conglomerate paid $1.84 billion for the company that makes Red Baron frozen pizza. Five years later, Korean dumplings outsell every other brand in American freezers.
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February 20, 2026
Elix Healing — When Your Customer Doesn't Trust the Tradition
A Chinese-American founder sells personalized herbal medicine to women who have never used Chinese medicine. The order in which she introduces the tradition is the entire strategy.
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February 10, 2026
Bachan's — The Misplaced Job
A landscaper spent six years bottling his grandmother's sauce. Then he renamed it, moved it to a different aisle, and sold it for $400 million. A story about shelf arbitrage.
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February 7, 2026
The Taxonomy of Grocery Aisles
Your address in the traffic system is your ceiling. A subway-map guide to how store layout determines which products get seen.
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February 3, 2026
CHAGEE — Which Door?
How a premium Chinese tea brand frames trust, modernity, and scale as it picks its entry point into America.
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January 27, 2026
Din Tai Fung — Trust Architecture
Operational transparency as a premium engine: glass walls, measurable craft, auditable honesty.
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