The Chinese lingerie industry is entering a new cycle of restructuring. How will Urban Beauty win the battle between new and old brands?

Ask AI · How the Comfort Revolution is reshaping the competitive landscape of the lingerie industry?

Competition in close-to-the-body apparel remains fierce.

At the end of March 2026, Urban Beauty (02298.HK) released its 2025 annual results. Revenue was RMB 8B (the same unit applies below), a year-on-year decrease of 1.86%; profit attributable to owners was RMB 123 million, a year-on-year decrease of 2.18%; gross margin increased by 1.1 percentage points year-on-year to 46.8%.

Previously, Urban Beauty suffered losses for three consecutive years from 2019 to 2021 due to reasons such as excess inventory and mispositioning. At the end of 2021, founder Zheng Yaonan returned to take charge again. Starting in 2022, the company’s performance gradually returned to profitability, and inventory turnover also improved. The financial report shows that at the end of 2025, the company’s total inventory was RMB 658 million, a year-on-year decrease of RMB 2.95B. The share of new merchandise in 2025 rose to 64%, and inventory turnover efficiency improved significantly.

Last year, the explosive growth of the company’s online channels and the recovery of profitability in its core business. Data shows that in 2025, Urban Beauty’s e-commerce GMV reached RMB 4.31 billion, up 175% year-on-year. Live-streaming GMV exceeded RMB 1.1 billion, and the share of online revenue surpassed 60%.

In addition, Urban Beauty also opened a second growth curve—pure-cotton home goods. The brand entered a niche track around new lifestyle trends such as “life stores for a family,” and rolled out bestselling products including anti-static cat-fiber-matting homewear, the First Class cabin–Cloud series, and water-glow liquid–ammonia cotton series, among others, to achieve differentiation and break through. During the reporting period, revenue from the sub-brand was RMB 150 million, up 50% year-on-year, and the number of stores expanded rapidly to about 150.

However, for Urban Beauty, transformation challenges still remain. Currently, the company still faces more than 4,000 offline stores, and the pace of store optimization and adjustment is relatively slow. In addition, the company also faces pressures such as the diversion caused by the rise of new challenger brands and rising online traffic costs.

From the perspective of the entire industry, domestic brands have entered a period of overall industry adjustment. Looking back at changes in the industry, earlier on, international brands such as Triumph and Playtex once dominated the mid-to-high-end market. At their peak, Triumph’s annual sales exceeded RMB 3.5 billion, and its market share was 5.2%. But over the past five years, changes in consumer demand and channel models have rewritten the competitive landscape of this industry.

In November 2025, Triumph, with a 139-year history, announced that it would cease all operations in Mainland China effective December 31, and that both online and offline channels would be fully closed.

This event is widely regarded as an important watershed for China’s lingerie industry, marking the end of an era dominated by foreign capital, with the rise of domestic brands becoming inevitable.

Data from iiMedia shows that in the women’s lingerie market, comfort is the most core need for consumers. Products such as wire-free, seamless, and one-size-fits-most are widely welcomed because they can provide a more comfortable and free wearing experience. A report by Northeast Securities also points out that the global women’s lingerie industry has now entered a “comfortable and diversified period.”

Meanwhile, domestic brands have precisely captured the “comfort revolution” trend. Through product innovation that overturns traditional offerings—wire-free designs, soft support, and tech fabrics—emerging brands such as Ubras, JooNa, and NnW quickly rose, gradually winning market share that previously belonged to foreign brands. Overall, the domestic market has formed a pattern of “old brands innovating” and “new brands achieving high growth.”

Alibaba Mama’s latest release, the “2025 Lingerie Marketing Playbook,” shows that lingerie has become the category with the fastest growth rate in Tmall apparel, as well as one of the core categories ranked TOP 3 by transaction scale.

After undergoing reshuffling and restructuring, China’s lingerie industry has said goodbye to unbridled expansion and moved into a new development stage centered on products, brands, and technology. For domestic brands such as Urban Beauty, industry change is both an opportunity and a challenge. Only by accelerating the transformation toward younger brands, product innovation, and omnichannel development can the company establish a firm foothold in the reconstruction. And the entire China lingerie industry will, under the dual driving forces of consumption upgrading and industrial upgrading, shed homogeneous competition and enter a new phase of development.

(This article comes from Yicai)