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36Kr learned that the cross-border jewelry brand "Stepin" recently completed a 10 million yuan angel round of financing, led by Xinyue Capital and Jiujiu Capital, followed by other industry institutions and angel investors, and Inspur Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. This round of funds will be used for brand product polishing and technology research and development, expanding channel capabilities and professional talent recruitment, and conducting intelligent product testing around different national markets.

"Stepin" focuses on AI jewelry cross-border e-commerce. With the help of AI technology and China's supply chain advantages, it realizes the "small order and fast return" rapid new product launch and high turnover model, thereby creating the "SHEIN" of the jewelry industry.

Stepin's Accessories

According to the "2023 Global Accessories Industry Consumption Trend Report", thanks to the increased awareness of fashion consumption, the deepening penetration of accessories e-commerce, and the gradual maturity of 3D generation model and printing technology, the global fashion accessories market has recovered strongly and the market size has continued to grow. It is expected that the market size will exceed US$780 billion in 2025.

Stepin's founding team comes from TikTok, Douyin, and Tencent. Founder Ronnie Zhou has many years of entrepreneurial experience and has worked at TikTok. The team includes members of the Chinese University of Hong Kong's artificial intelligence team and jewelry industry experts, with rich experience in Internet cross-border e-commerce and jewelry industry. Ronnie told 36Kr that the rise of TikTok's content e-commerce, the explosion of innovative technologies such as AI big models, and the world's most advantageous Chinese supply chain are naturally compatible with non-standard products such as jewelry, "There is a chance to run out of the jewelry industry SHEIN in the future."

"Small order quick return"Create SHEIN in the jewelry industry

Unlike most consumer goods, consumers have a strong sense of individuality in their aesthetic taste for accessories, and it is difficult for the accessories industry to produce a "big hit." This means that more new products will bring more GMV.

"But why has the jewelry industry rarely launched new products in large quantities in the past?" Ronnie told 36Kr that traditional jewelry businesses often need to prepare inventory 1-2 months in advance, and launching new products in large quantities on this basis can easily cause heavy inventory pressure. "Small orders and fast returns" is the core of balancing inventory pressure and the speed of launching new products, which requires starting from the design end and significantly shortening the entire delivery cycle.

In the design stage, the process used to go from creative brainstorming to 2D line drawings and then to 3D structural models. "It is completely dependent on manpower, with slow speed and low throughput." The rapid development of AI technology has brought new possibilities. Since AI literary pictures entered the public eye in 2022, its application in the design field has gradually matured. At the same time, AI-generated 3D models have developed rapidly since last year and have been widely used in the fields of film, television and games, and are initially available in industrial production.

In Ronnie's opinion, there may be a "scale law" in the accessories industry, which relies on the efficiency of each link in the entire chain of "design-production-sales". "During the window period from the end of this year to next year, 'AI for industrial production' can reach a usable level of 7-8 points, and the fastest time from creativity to delivery may only take about a week, which is roughly the same as the flexible delivery cycle of the apparel industry."

At present, the application of AI within Stepin is mainly to generalize creativity and generate relatively basic 3D models for designers to fine-tune. In June of this year, the scale of 100+ new products was achieved by a single person. The next step will focus on improving model accuracy and usability.

Jewelry is a natural fit for content e-commerce platforms, with TikTok as the main platform

In addition to the supply chain disruption that may be brought about by technology, the second opportunity point for the jewelry industry lies in the channel side.

Ronnie told 36Kr that TikTok's e-commerce has been successfully implemented in Southeast Asia over the past three years, with a transaction volume of nearly US$18 billion in 2023. TikTok opened up the US market last year, with an average daily transaction volume of over US$30 million that year. It has initially completed e-commerce model verification in many countries and will gradually open up Europe, South America and other regions. It is estimated that in the next 3-5 years, TikTok's e-commerce will usher in growth dividends from the full opening of global regions.

Based on the trend of the domestic market, jewelry and accessories are highly compatible with short videos/live broadcasts, and have been a strong category on the Douyin platform since 2020. Taking Double 11 in 2023 as an example, jewelry and accessories are the growth focus of the Douyin platform, with pearl sales up 366.17% year-on-year and transaction prices up 30.64%; gold and diamond sales up 201.40% year-on-year and transaction prices up 32.63%.

"In comparison, jewelry is still in its early stages in TikTok's overseas market, accounting for only 1% of the industry. This category has huge room for improvement and market potential in new channels," Ronnie told 36Kr.

In addition to TikTok, Stepin also entered Temu, whose semi-hosting model launched earlier this year also brought considerable traffic dividends. With the reshaping of the supply chain model and the understanding of new channels, Stepin has currently achieved monthly sales of nearly one million US dollars.

When talking about the next stage of planning, Ronnie said that the company will still focus on the North American market this year and may expand into the Middle East and South American markets in the next stage.The business focus in the second half of the year is on two aspects. One is to enhance the AI ​​model capabilities to expand the scale of new product launches to reach 400-500 new products per month. The second is to expand the scale and efficiency of traffic. Stepin currently focuses on short video natural flow on the TikTok platform, and there is still greater room for paid flow, live broadcast, etc.

It is reported that Stepin has currently launched a new round of financing.