M&G Chenguang (晨光文具)

Chenguang — "morning light" — was born in Shanghai in 1997 and built its empire on a distribution insight rather than a product one: plant franchised shops less than a hundred metres from school gates, in a country with two hundred million pupils. The network now exceeds 80,000 outlets.

Long confined to the cheap school pen, the brand has moved upmarket since the 2010s through cartoon licences and concept stores. It illustrates the guochao movement — the Chinese generation that now prefers domestic brands to imported ones.