What's good! Oren checking in today, and as you may have seen from the flurry of viral posts, I am writing from inside the firewall over in China. Clayton is on his way to Amsterdam, so I'm taking the reigns for a Guangzhou vibe check. I spent my last 6 days in the fabric capital of China before departing for Xiamen/Jinjiang to work on footwear today... and it was a learning experience culturally and creatively I think you'll find fascinating.

Some helpful context... Guangzhou might be a city you haven't heard of, but its population is 5x the size of LA, and since its at the root of an important subsection of the fashion industry, what is popular there or being featured is of particular interest. It's the perfect dichotomy of China itself, from chaotic markets to the most upscale malls to hidden neighborhoods of independent designers. It's also the closest major metro to Canton fair, the mother of all sourcing tradeshows that the world comes to to make their products.

Here's a few of things I noticed on the trip so far, and I'll complement with a full guide of what we saw and where to go if you visit

Vibe Check

Minimal Vintage Sport - The Sporty and Rich, Museum of Peace and Quiet aesthetic is alive and well - and while normally not exciting enough to call out, youth with great fits on we’re sporting it, so its’ included.

Local brand: Monday Sleeping Club

Ivy-clash - An array of niche aesthetics layering on top of each other. Coquette meets ivy league, the faded version with Moromoro

And the unisex, more masculine-focused Mason Prince.

Regional muse - There is no place in the world where Balenciaga is more popular than China. The name on clothing, whether real or bootleg, the sneakers, the mules... it is inescapable, as common as an Adidas, a potentially unhinged twist where something about that brand spoke to people across generations and they stuck with it.

Western trend spotting is fast and detailed

"Office siren" on display in a massive female focused activewear/athleisure fabric provider

The colors of dune front and center in the leading streetwear fabric provider

What's not here - Activewear is missing completely- not a yoga pant, legging or Alo Yoga cap in sight... but the fabrics that drive that industry are readily available from stall after stall.

Store buildouts for local brands are incredible, even at the extremely modest level. I imagine this has to do somehow with the availability of fabrication and the ability to call favors on it and not deal with shipping? But its a canvas for creative that most western brands can't afford

Exterior

Interior

Content Creating

A few notes on how content comes together on a trip like this.

Packing list:

I am filming all Youtube and majority of short form on the Osmo Pocket 3 - the quality is significantly better than iPhone, especially in any level of darkness. It’s stabilized, locks on and tracks faces, it shoots vertical, it’s incredible.

I’ve also got a magnetic/clip mount for it to be able to drop it and record on car seats, clip to a bag etc., and a neck mount to film hands, both just from Amazon.

I 50/50 the content for vertical video between that and the iPhone, and cut the voiceovers on a Rode VideoMic Me, all edited in Capcut. 

Prep work:

I started the trip by putting together a “swipe file” of travel reference videos. These are concepts I wanted to try and put my own spin on to use as the basis for content. I keep a Notion doc of the links, with a rough hook for each so as I’mm going to locations or looking through footage I have a structure I can apply it too. A few of the more universal ideas are below to begin to form your own ideas.

What i packed to _______
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6vW2mYSbg4/

This ___ will blow your mind
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7VWL5gJSe9/

____ I saw in ____
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7aIp5axry5/

Cool ____ design I saw in _____
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5EHNv7LUMX/

A day of ____
https://www.instagram.com/p/C0cILXLNyIb/

“location” title
https://www.instagram.com/p/C00VMFLr2BR/

Productive _____
https://www.instagram.com/p/C0zbPQGMXlX/

Workflow:

The biggest fail most people make taking content when traveling is that it sits on the phone or hard drive forever. You have to act and to act you have to organize. My key steps are

• Making a folder for different content trips

• Making albums in each folder for the different ideas

• Taking time every day in the car etc to take all footage and drop in albums

• Building a working list of videos to make sure to capture content for those that are only partially done, and have a list to go back to to wrap it

• Thinking of “visual hook” catchy opening shots, and “faving” them in my camera roll once we have them for easy access.

Cut30 Starts Aug 13th

If you want to work closer on content as a creator, expert or brand this month, we launch the next Cut30 bootcamp Tuesday the 13th for four weeks of workshopping and content growth.

https://cut30.co/

Unsolicited reviews of sorts from the last run here (from the creator that made this amazing video) and here (from the creator doing this great series).

More of our normal HYPER content and a deeper dive on the logistics of working on your brand in Guangzhou coming soon! Appreciate you reading.

Oren

Inquiries? Shoot us a note here: [email protected]

We’d love to chat!