Editor’s Note
This article details a significant funding milestone for the Chinese gold jewelry brand Baolan, highlighting a notable strategic investment from the French luxury conglomerate Kering.
Recently, the high-end gold jewelry brand “Baolan” announced the completion of a Series A funding round worth hundreds of millions of yuan. This round was led by Challenger Capital, with Shunwei Capital participating as a co-investor. Notably, the co-investor lineup also included the name of the French luxury group Kering, marking its first early-stage investment in a local Chinese gold brand.
From Challenger Capital led by Tang Binsen, founder of Genki Forest, to Shunwei Capital whose legal representative is Lei Jun, and then to the luxury giant Kering Group, the convergence of these three capitals with distinctly different core businesses makes Baolan’s funding round clearly transcend the significance of ordinary consumer brand financing. It gives reason to believe that these capitals intend to join hands to “recreate a Laopu Gold.”
For these capitals, they all currently have the need to look outward for new targets with certain potential and momentum. Therefore, when they saw Baolan, a brand emerging in the domestic gold sector, they came together.
According to public information, the embryonic form of the Baolan brand can be traced back to 1988, starting early on in a workshop format. Tianyancha shows that the “Baolan” brand is operated by Hangzhou Baolan Gold Research Institute Co., Ltd., which was established in May 2021 with a registered capital of 68 million RMB. The legal representative and major shareholder is Xu Bidong, holding a stake as high as 90%. Earlier, Xu Bidong established Dingfu Jewelry in Hangzhou in 2008, and later registered Hangzhou Hongtong Trading Co., Ltd. in 2009. He has successively registered over 50 trademarks related to “Baolan” and “BORLAND,” with business covering jewelry, crafts, aesthetic displays, and cultural products. In 2018, he officially began the branded operation of “Baolan Borland” and started entering the offline high-end shopping mall system.
Currently, Baolan has three offline stores: its first store opened in Hangzhou Tower in 2017, it entered Hangzhou MixC in 2020, and landed in Shenzhen MixC in 2025. Judging from the expansion pace and store locations, Baolan is closer to the operational logic of a luxury brand, rather than the widespread store expansion model of fast fashion or mass-market gold jewelry.
This, to some extent, also reflects its different development strategy from most gold jewelry brands.