In-House to Impact
Challenge
Beneunder is a leading Chinese sun-protective apparel brand undergoing strategic transformation into a specialized outdoor lifestyle brand. The company sought to establish presence in new product categories that could reinforce its positioning and resonate with emerging consumer behaviors. I joined as design lead in its new outdoor gear division, tasked with creating a flagship product from the ground up—one that would embody the brand’s values and signal its entry into the camping category with strategic clarity. At the time, no product brief had been defined; instead, I was invited to explore what this new category could look and feel like through a design-led approach. The initial spark—a prompt to explore stretchable fabric as structural logic—was introduced by our VP, who also served as acting product manager for the project.
Approach
Building on this prompt, I partnered early with branding and marketing teams to extract visual and tactile cues from Beneunder’s apparel DNA—color palettes, paneling logics, surface textures, and accessory details. These were translated into shelter-specific forms: fabric seams inspired by garment construction, ridged textures echoing pressed fabric patterns, and intuitive hardware referencing the brand’s zipper pulls and drawcords. I aligned the brand’s core values—optimism, pragmatism, and effortlessness—with the real demands of Beneunder users in how they interact with outdoor gear: optimism through multi-form function, pragmatism through material-led form-finding, and effortlessness through intuitive interaction.
My design through material testing and small-scale models helped define the product’s direction and served as the foundation for the eventual brief. Working cross-functionally with product developers, and aligning closely with our acting product manager to translate functional priorities into design trade-offs, I led the design through iterative full-scale prototyping — incorporating insights from internal user testing and feedback loops to refine interaction, structure, and user flow. Particular attention was given to in-store display strategies. We collaborated with the visual merchandising and retail design team to propose a walk-in demo area and provided material samples to support coherence between product and store environments.
Outcome
The shelter introduced a new kind of product experience that felt natively Beneunder—bridging form, experience, and brand familiarity in an unfamiliar category. It helped establish not only a credible presence, but a sensory continuity between categories. The project also initiated a growing product line. I built and led a 7-person design team around this direction, created a design guide to articulate principles and execution logic, and co-developed a workflow with the VP and lead product developer for the outdoor gear division — laying the groundwork for a system now embedded across the category, ensuring brand coherence at every guest touchpoint.
Credits
Design Lead: Jincheng Zhangliu
Design Interns:
Yaokai Zhou (3D modeling, rendering, drawing documentation),
Yang Zheng (graphic design, presentation deck)
Acting Product Manager:
Emilie Luo, Vice President, Outdoor Gear Division
Lead Product Developers: Zhengqiu Li, Min Xie
Product Development Team:
Ru Liang, Xiujie Gao, Xiaoyun Lv
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Branding, Marketing, and Retail Design Teams, Beneunder