"Lane Crawford's support enables young designers like me to do what they want to do unrestricted by money, exposure, or other conditions," said Wei.

According to Wei, lack of sales channels and support is one of the biggest challenges for emerging designers. Meanwhile, the e-commerce platform Tmall released a designer survival report in 2018 sharing a similar viewpoint and pointed out that channels and supply chains are the two major concerns of original designers.

One original fashion designer, Chen Peng, who recently won the 2021 YU PRIZE, said that most designers do not know where to sell their products and have no supply chain to support their manufacturing.

Another fashion designer Angel Chen pointed out that the number of independent designers is much less than the number of commercial brands. Consequently, they lose out on large orders.