A Frenchman took the 10-yuan Feiyue shoe global and made it a fashion sneaker

Feiyue — 'Flying Leap' — was born in Shanghai's Dafu Rubber Factory, which registered the trademark in 1958 after decades making canvas footwear. It sold over a million pairs in its first production run and, together with rival Warrior, held a near-duopoly on Chinese sneakers; peak output in the 1980s topped 10 million pairs a year. Then Nike and Adidas arrived, and the 10-yuan 'little white shoe' became a nostalgia item: by 2008, sales had fallen to about 200,000 pairs, with a single retail store left in Shanghai.

In 2005 Patrice Bastian, a French marketing and events manager living in Shanghai, bought Feiyues for kung fu practice and saw a retro sneaker in the making. He became the brand's overseas distributor through Dabowen, a company Dafu had authorized to use the trademark; when the factory stopped supplying him in 2007, he bought the brand registration and trademarked Feiyue in France and then the US. His version improved the glue and thickened the soles, priced the shoe up accordingly, and marketed it through Shaolin imagery and collaborations.

It worked embarrassingly well. Feiyue opened a Paris flagship in 2012, collected celebrity fans from Orlando Bloom to K-pop's Lee Dong-hae, and collaborated with Celine and Casio. Back in China the success stung — and then paid off. The trademark war that followed, plus the 2018 guochao wave for domestic design, pushed Chinese-side Feiyue sales back up to 10 million pairs a year by 2019.

Paris flagship by 2012; fans from Orlando Bloom to K-pop's Lee Dong-hae; collabs with Celine and Casio; Chinese-side sales back to 10 million pairs a year by 2019.

The repositioning was total: same canvas shoe, but better materials, Western distribution and fashion pricing instead of state-factory pricing.

Martial arts and Shaolin imagery gave the shoe a story Western buyers could pay for, and celebrity sightings did the rest.

The move exposed how little the brand's owners had invested in the trademark — a 10-yuan product had nothing to lose and everything to gain from an upmarket twin.

A brand too weak to defend its trademarks can still travel: repositioning a commodity product as heritage fashion creates value overnight — but register the name first, everywhere.

BBC International, an American company, acquired Bastian's Feiyue France in 2014 and kept the celebrity collaborations going, including Poppy Delevingne's range in 2020. In China, four companies ended up claiming the Feiyue legacy, with rival Feiyue shops on the same Beijing street; competition spurred 150-plus new designs and collaborations a year, including Disney and Peanuts ranges. Sixth Tone called the little white shoe ready to 'fly forward again.'