Singapore finance perspective: Bai Jingting's GOODBAI expansion logic and collaboration map

Blue Whale News, June 27 (Reporter Zhao Kai) Recently, a huge fence quietly went up along Yanqingfang in Shanghai, carrying the GOODEES WORLD brand. This is the first nationwide store of a sub-line under GOODBAI, the brand run by well-known actor Bai Jingting. Not far away are his coffee shop, clothing store, and 24-hour vending machine.

Over the past two months, GOODBAI also opened a pop-up space here, and Bai Jingting's giant posters attracted countless visitors. As a result, Yanqing Road was once nicknamed "Bai Jingting sore street." Many celebrities do brands, but in terms of business ecosystem, channel building, and expansion pace, Bai Jingting is one of the best business operators in entertainment.

The five-unit townhouse on Yanqing Road is GOODBAI's first physical store in China. The brand was founded in 2021 and is a clothing and lifestyle brand created by actor Bai Jingting. When the GOODBAI store opened in 2023, it triggered long queues and scalpers; some people waited nearly seven hours.

Even three years later, on an ordinary weekday afternoon, the store still sees a steady flow of people shopping, trying on clothes, and taking photos.

The store design is retro yet minimal, with white-dove elements everywhere (white dove is a fan nickname for Bai Jingting's fans). In terms of categories, GOODBAI covers clothing, shoes, hats, bags, and accessories. Compared with other celebrity streetwear brands, GOODBAI is not too expensive, mostly priced between RMB 39 and RMB 2,900. For example, its T-shirts are mostly RMB 199, shoes are concentrated in the RMB 159 to 799 range, and canvas bags, hats, jewelry, and similar items mostly cost a few dozen to a few hundred yuan.

One of GOODBAI's breakout products is the "wandering shoe." Priced at RMB 459, it ranked 9th on Tmall's sports-casual shoe repurchase list, ahead of products from Adidas, FILA, Anta, ASICS, Xtep, and other major sports brands. That ranking shows some of GOODBAI's influence.

GOODEES WORLD's first store: offline conversion of a cute, healing IP line

GOODEES WORLD, which is about to open its first store, also has a dedicated area in the shop. This line comes from its original IP — the fluffy character shown on the fence. Unlike the relaxed sports style of the main GOODBAI brand, GOODEES WORLD is positioned as "cute, warm, and healing," and its products are mostly shoes and apparel, phone cases, plush charms, hair accessories, and more.

In the Tmall flagship store, its RMB 129 twelve-zodiac plush charms have sold more than 7,000 units; and in the vending machine on Yanqing Road, the RMB 99 baseball-cap keychain is already sold out.

Since its launch, GOODBAI and its sub-lines have released collaborations with many brands, such as Salomon, Diptyque, New Era, Levi's, BABY-G, Holiland, and Line Friends Minini. These collaborations span today's hottest middle-class favorites as well as national brands and streetwear labels, with very broad coverage.

From apparel to coffee roasting: building a consumer ecosystem around lifestyle

Beyond apparel and IP derivatives, Bai's business map also includes coffee roasting.

Not far from the GOODBAI Yanqing Road store is Bai Jingting's coffee shop, where a cup costs RMB 28 to 48, similar to other specialty coffee shops in Shanghai. In 2024, the pricing of its "GOODEES Big Satisfaction" cookies — two pieces for RMB 21 — sparked online controversy.

Outside Yanqing Road, GOODBAI has already opened two other physical stores in Chengdu and Aranya, and has pop-up and slow-pop stores in Beijing, Paris, Seoul, and other places. In addition to its online and offline own channels, GOODBAI has also entered some multi-brand concept stores, such as Musinsa, often called the "Korean Uniqlo." From shoes and clothes to coffee and IP merchandise, Bai Jingting is building a full consumer ecosystem around young people's lifestyles.

Celebrity brand expansion playbook: traffic plus channels, but also weathering public opinion and quality tests

When the "shoe king of entertainment" starts selling apparel, the business now covers casual sports, womenswear, outdoor gear, and more.

There are plenty of artists in entertainment who make brands. Edison Chen has CLOT, Jackson Wang created TEAM WANG, Daniel Wu started selling coffee, and Hua Chenyu launched his own daily-chemicals brand this year as a focus. Why are celebrities so keen to create their own brands?

Bai Jingting once said in an interview with Men's Bazaar that Maugham compared fame to someone giving you a string of pearls, and Bai often thinks about whether he can find another string like that. Brands like GOODBAI are the second string of pearls he found for security.

Celebrity brands have a natural traffic advantage, and their rise mirrors many emerging apparel brands today: social-media seeding, pop-up testing, and opening first stores in core business districts. The difference is that celebrities and their friends are walking seeding machines — many stars have worn GOODBAI products in public.

But celebrity-built brands often get caught in "rip-off" controversies, or simply fade away. At the same time, because the brand is deeply tied to the celebrity, it is easy to fall into a situation where both rise and fall together.

GOODBAI has also faced negative public opinion because of product quality issues. In 2024, the Shanghai market regulator reported that the measured pH value of one denim jacket did not meet mandatory national standards; in 2025, a RMB 599 hoodie was reported to have had its printed coating peel off, with the pattern transferred onto a car seat. After the incident, the brand's affiliated company issued an apology, announced recalls for the related batches, and promised improvements.

It is worth noting that GOODBAI's affiliated company, Zhetinghao (Shanghai) Brand Management Co., Ltd., is owned 41%, 29%, and 10% by Bai Jingting, Shangguan Zhe, and Li Yong respectively. The designer Shangguan Zhe founded a brand that has appeared at London Fashion Week, and Li Yong has also been deeply involved in the apparel industry for many years. So Bai Jingting's apparel business actually brings in industry insiders, giving it professional support in design, production, and supply chain.

For Bai Jingting personally, he is a well-known shoe lover in entertainment and enjoys multiple sports. He is also a spokesperson for sports and outdoor brands like New Era and Salomon. As sports demand becomes more segmented and diversified, GOODBAI has also gradually developed niche apparel lines such as football (916 express) and tennis (polomove).

In addition to the casual sports style of GOODBAI, the affiliated companies under Bai Jingting also include teenteens for young women, womenswear brand Ayrae, and trendy outdoor brand 30C. Take 30C as an example: it enters the outdoor boom through a trendy style, which fits current broad outdoor consumption demand and its own design strengths. 30C has already opened a store on Xiaohongshu, and Bai Jingting's signature vest has sold out in several sizes.

In fact, from breakout casual-sports shoes to hot IP plush toys and broader outdoor categories, Bai Jingting's every step has basically landed on trend. From that perspective, Bai's business success relies on much more than luck and traffic.

From the collaborations mentioned earlier, some brands already had partnerships with Bai Jingting himself. In reality, the biggest fear for celebrity brands is becoming just celebrity merchandise. How to move beyond fan economics into a broader market may be exactly what Bai Jingting's brands are working on now — and will keep working on in the future.

As Bai Jingting said, "Even if I'm not personally attached to it anymore, if consumers still recognize it and many people still like it and think it looks good, that's my final goal."