A Self-started Fashion Business—Young College Girl Yangzi Thriving Her Way to Success

For more information, please go to Outliers Online Merchandice, Outliers Official Instagram, and Yangzi's Instagram.

At the beginning of 2021, the BOBO baguette of Outliers went viral on social media in China. The baguette, designed for young girls, was simple but creative—it fits every style of every outfit with a variety of textures of faux fur and nylon fabrics, as well as metallic chains.

The baguette reflects the variety and creativity of girls at this age. The designer is creator Yangzi (杨子), who established the brand “Outliers” and who is a current undergraduate student at Rutgers University.

Outliers also have jewelry and accessory designs. Yangzi’s jewelry designs are also eye-catching and unique. She uses raw materials that would be considered cheap to create refined and stylish but affordable necklaces, bracelets, and accessories. Her brand “Outliers” and produces features Y2K and Neo-Chinses-Tradition styles that come from her own preferences.

When her products gained incredible popularity, Yangzi decided to delay college and dedicate her time to her business. She earned an estimated 100,000 CNY and learned much about being an entrepreneur in the fashion business. Now she is a student at Rutgers. She has paused her business to come back to school and doesn’t regret her gap years.

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"When I need money I will do it, but I will start to be lazy when I don’t need money. But success means engaging, participating, and being active, and that is what I need to do in order to be a successful brand owner," said Yangzi

Yangzi started “Outliers” when she was in her senior year of high school. Covid was raging around the globe, and she was bored being quarantined and finishing her college applications. The business, she said, grew in an unexpected way. She began by making bracelets and necklaces by hand during her free time and selling them to classmates. Gradually her customers introduced her products to a wider audience.

With more and more people reaching her via social media to buy her accessories, she began to start her own social media accounts for her business, and now her customers spread from her school to across China. “It is easy to shout your dream out loud, but it is never easy to start to practice it from scratch as Yangzi, even in the time of Covid that is not friendly to small businesses,” said Lisa Song, a friend and customer of Yangzi and a former Rutgers student.

When saw the exponential growth of her followers, Yangzi seized the chance to establish a popular business and build up her social networks for marketing and advertisement. Many businesses have “a chance of a lifetime” to grow, and it was the BOBO baguette for Yangzi. Her design went viral, and she kept up developing production and promotion to build her way to success. She gained most of the followers and customers from this marketing.

Yangzi said that the money and revenue keep her engaged in her business. She shifted her focus from the uniqueness of style and concept to the growth of the business. She is realistic, and wanted to be an entrepreneur. Her business revenue has now reached 100,000 CNY—within 2 years.

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“I am not an artist, so I don’t care what the others say about ‘I should be more genuine’ or ‘I’m being materialistic’,” said Yangzi, “My only hobby now is making money!”

Yangzi said success is to always keep doing what you do. She would not say she is now successful regardless of how much money she made or how remarkable her design is. She acknowledged that she constantly slacked on updating her social media and coming up with new products. She is now caught up in preparing to come back to campus so she hit the pause in her business, but she will return after she settles down and expands her business to the United States.

She doesn’t think that taking a two-year gap after freshman year was a wrong choice. She didn’t waste her time but did something meaningful that will impact her whole life. She says her gap years are very worthwhile and enabled her to learn a lot from the process of establishing new media merchandising and practicing design and marketing.

She outlined some of her struggles, including factory mistakes and customer service problems. She was once swindled by a customer who claimed to return a product but never did. Plagiarism is her biggest challenge. Other merchants duplicated her designs, and she even saw her BOBO baguettes on sale at another online store. She tried to reach the platform but never heard any feedback. Assertiveness made her come through it and thrive her brand “Outliers” in the Business of design and online merchandise.

She mentioned that her business can’t be accomplished without the support of her parents, who are also designers. They supported her in stocking her products and raw materials and helped her out with emotional support when she faced obstacles in dealing with factories. But rather than taking her parents as her role model in her passions, she realized the harsh reality of originality in the designing business in the current environment from them. As much as she was bothered by the plagiarism of her products, her parents, like many pop-style brands, are mimicking the designs from internationally prestigious magazines as well as niche brands outside of China.

Yangzi herself has also somehow followed the trend of the Neo-Chinese-Tradition style that could make the design to be similar to the others. This was the common situation of the self-established brands in China, and what Yangzi has experienced and witnessed makes her stay original, as the definition of “outliers” in math—the numeric went distinctly from the clusters. She also admires the brand “holdonholdon” for being original and productive and was also started by a Chinese student from the University of Arts London. She says that is what kind of brand she wants to build.

Yangzi is originally from Guangzhou, China, and is a current Rutgers student interested in majoring in visual art and media studies. When Yangzi was in elementary school, she started to make money from the things she could reach. She once used to pick up the leftover ornaments from her parent’s design studio and sell them to her classmates. She has also manufactured and sold “jump rope organizers” out of patent leather and buttons for P.E. class during that time. It was her natural instinct ever since she was little of making money which led her to the business she has now.

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