Editor’s Note
This article reports on the recent funding secured by Stepin, a cross-border jewelry brand leveraging AI technology. The investment will support product development, tech R&D, and talent acquisition.
36Kr has learned that Stepin, a cross-border jewelry brand, recently completed an angel funding round worth tens of millions of RMB. The round was led by New Hill Capital and 99 Capital, with participation from other industrial institutions and angel investors. Wave Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. The funds will be used for product refinement and technology R&D, expanding channel capabilities and recruiting professional talent, as well as conducting intelligent product testing tailored to different national markets.
Stepin focuses on AI-powered cross-border e-commerce for jewelry accessories. Leveraging AI technology and the advantages of China’s supply chain, it implements a “small-batch, quick-return” model for rapid new product launches and high turnover, aiming to build the “SHEIN” of the accessory industry.
Unlike most consumer goods, consumer aesthetics for accessories are highly personalized, making it difficult for the industry to produce “blockbuster hits.” This means that more new product launches can drive more GMV.
The “small-batch, quick-return” model is the key to balancing inventory pressure with launch speed. This requires significantly shortening the entire delivery cycle, starting from the design phase.
In the design phase, the traditional process from creative brainstorming to 2D sketches and then to 3D structural models “completely relies on manual labor, is slow, and has low throughput.” The rapid development of AI technology has brought new possibilities. Since AI text-to-image generation entered the public eye in 2022, its application in the design field has gradually matured. Meanwhile, AI-generated 3D models have developed rapidly since last year, widely used in film, television, and gaming, and are becoming preliminarily viable for industrial production.
In Ronnie’s assessment, the accessory industry may follow a “scale law,” which relies on the efficiency of each link in the entire “design-production-sales” chain.
Currently, AI is primarily used within Stepin for creative generalization and generating relatively basic 3D models for designers to fine-tune. In June of this year, they achieved a scale of 100+ new products per person. The next step will focus on improving model accuracy and usability.
Apart from potential supply chain disruption from the technology side, the second opportunity point for the accessory industry lies in the channel side.
Ronnie told 36Kr that TikTok’s e-commerce business has been successfully established in Southeast Asia over the past three years, with a transaction scale of nearly $18 billion in 2023. TikTok opened the US market last year, with daily transaction volume exceeding $30 million that year. It has preliminarily validated its e-commerce model in multiple countries and will gradually open in regions such as Europe and South America. It is estimated that TikTok e-commerce will experience growth dividends from comprehensive global expansion in the next 3-5 years.
Drawing on trends in the domestic market, jewelry and accessories have a high compatibility with short video/live streaming formats and have remained a strong category on the Douyin platform since 2020. Taking Double 11 in 2023 as an example, jewelry and accessories were a key growth area on Douyin. Pearl sales surged 366.17% year-on-year, with the average transaction price also increasing by 30.64%; gold and diamond sales surged 201.40% year-on-year, with the transaction price rising 32.63%.
In addition to TikTok, Stepin has also entered Temu, whose semi-hosted model launched earlier this year has brought considerable traffic dividends. By reshaping the supply chain model and understanding new channels, Stepin has currently achieved nearly one million USD in monthly sales.
Regarding the next phase of planning, Ronnie stated that the company will still focus on the North American market this year and may expand to the Middle East and South American markets in the next stage.
The business focus for the second half of the year is on two aspects: first, improving AI model capabilities to expand the scale of new product launches, aiming for 400-500 new products per month; second, expanding traffic scale and efficiency. Stepin currently relies mainly on organic short video traffic on the TikTok platform, with greater potential in paid traffic, live streaming, and other areas.
It is reported that Stepin has already initiated a new round of financing.