Laopu Gold is shaking up what it means to be a Chinese luxury brand. From heritage-inspired designs to fixed pricing that defies the traditional “by-weight” gold shop model, the brand has carved out a premium niche that’s turning heads.
In 2024, Laopu’s revenue jumped 167% year-on-year, six times higher than in 2021. But what’s behind this meteoric rise?
Tune in as Sabrina and Elody unpack:
- How Laopu reinvented itself from a traditional gold retailer into a modern luxury house;Why Xiaohongshu has been central to its popularity;The “national wave” of Chinese heritage brands, and how Laopu fits right in;What its overseas push, starting with Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, says about its global ambitions.
Will Laopu really become “the Cartier of China”? Let’s find out.
Timestamps:
00:00:54 – From gold trader to luxury brand: the founder’s story
00:01:36 – Why Laopu went viral on Xiaohongshu
00:02:14 – Breaking tradition: fixed pricing vs. by-weight gold
00:03:49 – Going global: Laopu’s Marina Bay Sands store
00:07:57 – The ‘national wave’ and rise of Chinese heritage brands
Featured materials:
E103: Behind the Labubu craze: PopMart business explained
E124: Labubu makes no sense – and that’s why it sells
E127: Is POPMart engineering a soft landing for Labubu?
Ecommerce in Southeast Asia 2025, Momentum Works
Also available on Spotify
[AI-generated transcript]
[00:00:00] Elody: I don’t think I’ll ever buy a Laopu necklace though.
[00:00:03] Sabrina: Hello everyone and welcome to the Impulso Podcast by Momentum Works. So recently we’ve seen that there have been a lot of Chinese brands in the market, right?
So like there’s POPMART, POPMART is Everywhere,
and we talk about,
and we, yeah, and we’ve talked about it for a few episodes. And then of course there’s also Mixue, which I think we have also talked about in a few episodes, but recently there’s a new brand that’s kind of been popping up and it’s called Laopu.
[00:00:27] Elody: The full name is 老铺黄金, which technically means an old Chinese shop selling gold.
[00:00:33] Sabrina: It’s an old Chinese shop selling gold. It’s not that old.
I think it officially. Rebranded into 老铺金
[00:00:40] Elody: 黄金
[00:00:42] Sabrina: 老铺黄金 in 2016. So it’s not that old, but they’ve been popping up quite a bit lately. Right? I mean, financial Times also wrote an article about them titled Can Laopu Become the Cartier of China.
[00:00:54] Elody: Mm.
[00:00:54] Sabrina: So it’s a very premium brand.
Yeah, so it’s quite interesting because the founder.
Xu Gaoming I hope I’m saying his name correctly.
[00:01:02] Elody: I think so
[00:01:03] Sabrina: I could be off. But the founder actually launched a company in 2009 called Golden Treasury, where he focused more on like gold jewelry and trading. And it wasn’t until 2016 where he kind of reorganized the business and then rebranded it as Laopu
[00:01:19] Elody: Laopu.
[00:01:20] Sabrina: So technically he kind of already was in the gold business. He just didn’t have a. Very clear brand for the product that he was selling.
[00:01:27] Elody: Mm,
I think even before Financial Times talking about it, it has already went viral in China, especially in on Xiaohongshu and social medias.
[00:01:36] Sabrina: Mm.
[00:01:37] Elody: It’s kind of premium. If you see their price is around 10,000 to 20 or 30,000.
RMB usually for one necklace or one bracelet
[00:01:48] Sabrina: It’s a premium brand. But what’s interesting about Laopu, why did it become so popular on Xiaohongshu? Because I’m sure there are a lot of gold shops in China.
[00:01:57] Elody: True. But if you ask me, I would say it’s the first and only gold shop that is selling at this price.
And you also see like
[00:02:06] Sabrina: Chow Tai Fook
[00:02:07] Elody: in a lot of the gold shop. If you see how they price their product usually they will mark the price by the basic gold price.
[00:02:14] Sabrina: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:14] Elody: And then add a service fee. Yes. So if you think of that, it’s more similar to when you go to a wet market, you buy a fish and they weigh the fish and then add on service fee for killing the fish.
[00:02:25] Sabrina: Mm-hmm. That’s true.
[00:02:26] Elody: Clean it up.
[00:02:26] Sabrina: That’s true. Traditionally, a lot of gold shops is usually, even if they’re selling you like a necklace or a earring, it’s tied very closely to the price of gold in the market.
[00:02:33] Elody: Correct.
[00:02:34] Sabrina: That’s why Laopu is not,
[00:02:36] Elody: yeah, they have a fixed price for every product and they also raise price similar to the the Cartier and all the luxury brands
[00:02:43] Sabrina: mm. So they fixed their prices so it’s not based
on the gold.
[00:02:47] Elody: And their margin was quite high actually. I remember their margin was at least 50 to 60% additional to the pure gold price. So that means even if the gold price fluctuate a little bit, they will not be so much affected.
So it’s very interesting. Usually when customer will rush to buy, Laopu more.
[00:03:08] Sabrina: When the gold prices is up.
[00:03:10] Elody: Yeah. Yeah. And they haven’t adjusted their price yet.
[00:03:13] Sabrina: Ah, okay. Okay. But because they don’t adjust based on the gold fluctuation, they adjust their prices maybe two to three times a year.
[00:03:21] Elody: Yeah.
Based on inflation.
[00:03:23] Sabrina: That’s
also what I was thinking when I was reading this article is that, oh, when
gold prices are high, I
should go and
buy.
[00:03:28] Elody: Yeah. That’s when usually customer will,
[00:03:31] Sabrina: rush to buy.
But the reason why they’re able to charge this premium, is it because of their branding or because of like the design of the products?
[00:03:39] Elody: I think both. So of course they have their branding and they position themselves to be a premium. Luxury Chinese brand. If you see where they open their store in Singapore, it’s in the MBS
[00:03:49] Sabrina: MBS is Marina Bay Sands. It is a very touristy area of Singapore where there are a lot of expensive shops like Prada, Chanel. Dior.
[00:03:58] Elody: Louis vuitton.
[00:03:59] Sabrina: Louis Vuitton.
[00:04:00] Elody: So they opened their first shop in overseas, in Singapore, in MBS. And it’s right next to the casino door. So it’s got quite good exposure and the storefront is also luxury style with mainly black color to.
[00:04:14] Sabrina: It makes the gold stand out more.
[00:04:15] Elody: So they decorate their store to be mainly black color and it makes the gold to stand out more.
Is it similar in China? So in Singapore they are, yeah. Very premium. Right. Their only location is Marina Bay Sands, which is a very premium mall in China.
Do they also only open in premium malls, or are they more,
As far as you know, their signature store in Shanghai is also in the premium malls.
[00:04:38] Sabrina: And they’ve been doing very well.
Right. So in 2024, they’re publicly listed company.
[00:04:44] Elody: That’s a very interesting part as well. So before they got listed. Actually not much investors they know about or they are keen to invest in this brand.
So that makes their share quite concentrated on the funder’s hand.
[00:04:57] Sabrina: Ah,
[00:04:58] Elody: a reason of why investors, they didn’t notice this brand is that, ’cause it’s not a really a luxury brand that you think of. Ums They have 10 years,
[00:05:09] Sabrina: they have a lot of heritage.
[00:05:11] Elody: Heritage, but. On the other hand, they are also not a real gold store that sells gold.
So they’re somewhere in between and it’s very hard to find some previous successful benchmark that, that you can refer to.
Is that why they call themselves o Shop? Their heritage is in the name, but they’ve been doing very well. Right? So in 2024, their revenue increased about 167% year on year to be about one point.
1 million, and this is six times its revenue in 2021. So it’s really in this recent, recent few years, it’s really in this recent few years that they’ve become so popular. And a lot of it could be because of Xiaohongshu. Right. Like you said, you’ve seen this brand quite a bit on Xiaohongshu, even before you saw the Financial Times article.
Yeah, true. Was it very popular on Xiaohongshu like what? What were people talking about?
If you ask me, I would say of course every brand is investing in marketing on Xiaohongshu, you have enough exposure on Xiaohongshu for any Chinese brand, but particularly for Laopu.
As a consumer, when you buy it, you’ll think, oh I didn’t spend my money on like, by purchasing a piece of leather bag, which of course it, if you resell it, it won’t sell as much as gold. So but Laopu still give you a chance to showcase that, oh, I bought a piece of, luxury goods, and it gives you the emotional value.
So that’s, it’s, it is still something that you can post for fun and for engagement.
[00:06:41] Sabrina: So, because you’re not just posting like a gold necklace, right? You’re posting a gold necklace from the brand.
[00:06:46] Elody: Yeah.
And sometimes if you post about I bought a Chanel bag, Louis Vuitton, bag these days, you may not receive reactions like.
Oh, you are a wealthy class person and you may not like get envy eyes so much these days, but if you buy gold people will think, oh, this is a reasonable investment.
[00:07:06] Sabrina: It’s a reasonable way to,
[00:07:08] Elody: yeah. To spend your money.
[00:07:09] Sabrina: So one thing about Laopu is that they specialize a lot in creating Heritage Gold using ancient Chinese Goldsmithing techniques.
[00:07:17] Elody: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:18] Sabrina: And this is something that have
[00:07:19] Elody: At least they market it that way.
[00:07:20] Sabrina: Yeah. That’s their marketing. Right. But this is something that I think the article of Financial Times also mentioned is that, has there been a growing presence for products and brands that reference Chinese heritage more closely. So for example, like Cha tea in China, the names of their drinks are all those like Chinese folktale and all right. And now Laopu, the design of their jewelry is very like Chinese heritage. Has there been a growing preference for these kind
of
brands in
China?
[00:07:47] Elody: I think it’s not only for these kind of brands, but for a general Chinese brands, especially when they are coming overseas because you know, the words national wave. Direct translation is,
[00:07:57] Sabrina: yeah,
[00:07:57] Elody: It means not only a wave of Chinese brands is coming out, but also a fashion wave of Chinese heritages.
So inside of this national wave, you see people like to wear X new Chinese style dresses.
[00:08:12] Sabrina: New Oriental Chinese,
[00:08:13] Elody: new oriental, new style dresses,
[00:08:15] Sabrina: dresses.
[00:08:17] Elody: It’s from very traditional Chinese dresses, which is hard for you to wear but it still has the beauty styles and other fabrics, trends and Laopu.
Actually as a jewelry it will pair with those. clothes is very well. So it just fit into this trend of national wave as well as you say Cha tea,
[00:08:38] Sabrina: so I think in the recent few years we’ve kind of seen the rise of Chinese brands and now more recently sort of. Chinese premium brands. Right.
And this is something that we talked about in our e-commerce report as well, where we’ve seen three waves of Chinese brands entering Southeast Asia.
[00:08:52] Elody: Mm.
[00:08:52] Sabrina: So it first started with like your very cheap goods undifferentiated unbranded, just fighting on price, on the e-commerce platforms and all.
Then of course we also saw a second wave, which is brands that were growing very fast because they were investing a lot into marketing, but then there wasn’t really any very strong branding or a very good like product positioning. But now we’ve kind of moved into wave three, where we see a lot more brands.
And these are notable brands. These are brands that people remember, like Cha Tea, Laopu
[00:09:23] Elody: and makeup brands.
[00:09:24] Sabrina: Makeup brands like Judy doll,
[00:09:26] Elody: perfect Diary,
[00:09:27] Sabrina: Perfect Diary is a good example. These are. Products that are coming into the market, and they’re not positioning themselves just on a low price, right?
[00:09:34] Elody: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:35] Sabrina: They’re positioning themselves based on their
branding and marketing,
[00:09:38] Elody: or at least they are affordable price, but good quality.
[00:09:42] Sabrina: Mm.
[00:09:42] Elody: Because this is always the way to go when you are trying to make your business sustainable. You cannot always compete on the price because there will always be business that coming in and trying to steal your business with a lower price, and that’s not sustainable for the market.
[00:09:59] Sabrina: Mm. So I think that’s why we’ve been seeing a lot more notable brands and not just unbranded goods. So? I think it’ll be interesting to see how Laopu kind of grows, right? Whether or not it’s sustainable. They’ve been growing steadily, and fast.
I think it’ll be interesting to see how sustainable they are, especially now that they’re looking to expand into overseas markets. Of course, Singapore was the first trial, so we’ll see where else they go. So thank you guys for tuning into another episode of the Impulso podcast. I hope that you guys enjoyed today’s episode, and if you did, do like and subscribe to our channel to stay up to date on the latest happenings and trends in tech, new retail, and the broader digital economy.
Thank you, and bye-bye.
The post Laopu Gold: the Cartier of China? | Impulso E131 first appeared on The Low Down - Momentum Works.
