Lu Chenhui, the ＂first beast in China＂, how to create a clothing brand with an annual income of over 100 million yuan at home？

When Lu Chenhui was 16, he was only a security guard.

He stands in his post every day, watching people come and go, but what he thinks in his heart is: "I am standing here as a security guard now, but I can’t be a security guard all my life. I will go to the gym after work, because that is my future."

From the age of 14, Lu Chenhui fell in love with fitness. He firmly believes that he will become a bodybuilder. Therefore, when he was a security guard, no matter how tired he was when he stood guard at work, he would go to the gym for strength training as soon as he got off work.

While working and exercising, Lu Chenhui persisted for six years. In a bodybuilding competition in Jiangsu Province in 2008, Lu Chenhui won the first championship in his life. Since then, he has become a minor celebrity in the bodybuilding circle, and often shares training methods in post bars and forums, accumulating the first batch of fans.

Under the long-term bodybuilding training, Lu Chenhui’s body has become shoulder-wide, waist-thin and muscular, and it is difficult to find clothes that fit in the market-which is also a common pain point for fitness people.

Lu Chenhui, founder of BODYDREAM

Therefore, Lu Chenhui founded the sportswear brand BODYDREAM in 2015 to meet the needs of the fitness crowd, and integrated his aesthetic concept of the trend into the brand. "The meaning of BODYDREAM is to pursue the dream of the body. On the one hand, it represents the sport of fitness. On the other hand, it also means that everyone can persist in action on the road of pursuing their dreams by controlling their own bodies." Lu Chenhui said.

Starting: from "wage earners" to entrepreneurs

When Lu Chenhui was still working, he invested most of his income in bodybuilding.

Because bodybuilding is a competitive sport that needs a lot of money, besides a lot of training, athletes have to supplement high-quality protein every day to increase their muscles, as well as buying equipment, hiring coaches, playing games and other large expenses. Lu Chenhui bluntly said: "Others think that bodybuilding is a profitable thing, but it is actually a hobby that needs money to support."

In order to earn more money to improve bodybuilding performance, Lu Chenhui began to try to start a business in 2013. He opened a Taobao shop, specializing in fitness supplements and fitness equipment, and double 11 sold 1000 yuan that day, which was a lot for him at that time. Later, according to the different needs of fitness crowd, he founded three sportswear brands: BODYDREAM, BDPOWERUP and Lujiamen.

At the same time, Lu Chenhui’s bodybuilding road has gradually reached its peak. In order to win the championship in more heavyweight competitions, Lu Chenhui once spent 600,000 yuan to invite foreign star coach Milos.During these two months of "devil training", Lu Chenhui will do seven groups of movements at a time, without any rest, and train for more than 8 hours every day. Although he will burst into tears because of extreme fatigue, he will persist with willpower.In 2018, Lu Chenhui won the overall championship of golden league Men’s Bodybuilding Professional Indifference Group, and he was also the only China player in this group.

Lu Chenhui’s training photo

That year, Lu Chenhui was only 30 years old and finally realized his dream. On this road of persisting in love, he changed from a "small security guard" to "China’s first muscular beast" and from a "wage earner" to a successful entrepreneur.

At present, there are three brands under Lu Chenhui’s name, namely BODYDREAM, BDPOWERUP and Lujiamen. Among them, BODYDREAM is the most well-known brand, with annual revenue exceeding 100 million yuan.

In the early days of BODYDREAM’s business, Lu Chenhui only had a starting capital of 5,000 yuan, and the team only had himself and his wife. In the living room at home, they established the brand of BODYDREAM.

Because of limited funds, they can only find small-scale factories to customize clothes. Lu Chenhui recalled: "We took a bus and went to a garment factory in the suburbs of Xuzhou. The garment factory was also an entrepreneur, so it also supported customers like us. They helped us make nearly 200 T-shirts, and they were also very careful in material selection and production. "

After Lu Chenhui got the first batch of clothes, he and his wife worked as Taobao customer service at home and packed and delivered them themselves. At first, Taobao shop didn’t have much sales, and it sold one or two pieces a day. However, with the continuous promotion of Lu Chenhui on his social media, he gradually accumulated the earliest users, that is, paying attention to his fans and fitness enthusiasts.

BODYDREAM, which started with Lu Chenhui’s personal IP, has encountered great limitations in brand development-mainly spread in the fitness circle.

At this time, a young man in the team put forward the idea of brand transformation: "Maybe it can make BODYDREAM develop in the direction of leisure sports."

He is Li Ang, the current operation director of BODYDREAM. In 2017, Li Ang joined the BODYDREAM team. As a young man who just graduated, Lu Chenhui saw many possibilities from him. "Now young people are very advanced in thinking. Although they don’t have much work experience, they can inject fresh blood into the brand and break the inherent thoughts and limitations." Lu Chenhui said.

Growth: annual revenue exceeds 100 million yuan.

Because of the fresh blood in the team, BODYDREAM began to break through its original position and gradually transformed from fitness clothing to sports and leisure clothing.

Since 2016, Lu Chenhui has started to operate his personal IP and brand image separately. Since then, BODYDREAM has no longer interacted frequently with Lu Chenhui’s personal IP, but chose to cooperate with KOL to create some co-branded models and expand the brand’s popularity to the general public. Not only that, BODYDREAM is also worn by many stars.

The brand positioning of BODYDREAM now is a simple and pragmatic sports and leisure brand, and simplicity and practicality is the main direction of BODYDREAM product development.; The target users of BODYDREAM have gradually expanded from the early fitness crowd to young people who love fashion culture, and the proportion of female users has also increased from 4% to about 30%.

"Nowadays, many people are tired of printing on clothes, and prefer simple and practical basic models. However, the basic models often lack a sense of design, so we want to add design elements such as patterns, fabrics and crafts to the simple style to make the clothes’ simple but not simple’, "Lu Chenhui said. This style is more attractive to young people who pursue low-key and exquisite details.

At present, BODYDREAM’s clothing is divided into four series: one is the classic series focusing on leisure; The second is the sports series; The third is the B+ series, focusing on mid-to high-end products; The fourth is the special planning series, focusing on IP joint-name products.BODYDREAM’s clothing spans 7 yards, covering the body shapes from 90 kg to 300 kg, and the design of shoulder drop in some products has a decorative effect on many body shapes.Lu Chenhui said: "This design can well modify the lines of shoulders, so that people with strong bodies are not fat, and thin people are more tall and straight."

When the sales of clothes continued to rise, Lu Chenhui expanded the supply chain of BODYDREAM to Guangzhou, Wuxi and other places, and built a factory in Xuzhou in 2018, with an annual production capacity of 300,000 pieces. "At present, our factory is fully automatic equipment, and we also control it very strictly in product quality control. For example, if the national standard requires testing whether a garment is pilling, it is necessary to test 600 revolutions with a professional machine, and we ourselves require testing 2000 revolutions internally." Lu Chenhui said.

The sales channel of BODYDREAM has also expanded from the initial Tmall store to JD.COM, Dewu, Tik Tok, Vipshop and other e-commerce platforms. At present, the best-selling platform is Tmall, which can sell about 500,000 pieces every year. Last year, the total revenue of BODYDREAM exceeded 100 million yuan.

At the end of the interview, Lu Chenhui shared that fans once asked him how he could stick to his goals.

He said: "Everyone has a vision of what he wants to be, but it can’t be achieved by fantasy. You need to take action.Although we work hard every day, don’t let that thing in your heart disappear. Even if you spend an hour every day, take action and plan for your future.Maybe after five years, you won’t have to go to work or get off work, but you can pursue what you really want to do. At that time, you already have this ability. "

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