We talk to the man behind online lingerie brand LA MIU, sometimes referred to as “China’s Victoria’s Secret”, about his path to success.

Founded in 2008 by entrepreneur Lu Dong and two business partners, LA MIU has sold two million items of underwear to date. The brand is on the lips of many young Chinese consumers these days, partly thanks to a recent advertising campaign that plastered photos of chic and seductive girls in LA MIU lingerie all over China’s YouTube-equivalents Tudou.com and PPStream.

Running LA MIU would be the dream of millions of men.

Lu began his journey by dropping out of fashion college in China. He still dreamed of being a fashion designer but instead joined Goldman Sachs in Japan in order to: “Be rich and drive Ferraris”.

“But now I’ve done it, I now want to lead a life that I want,” says the underwear mogul.

After four years he left Goldman Sachs in 2002 to pursue an MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. The MBA, he says, taught him both the soft skills and the hard skills vital to the success of his business.

On the finance side, LA MIU has also benefited from Lu’s school’s connections. He recently closed a finance round with a venture capital fund that included five partners from Stanford.

But Lu believes that the soft skills he learned have been more important than hard skills such as marketing and finance.

One soft skill he particularly values is networking. Stanford students and alumni cross industries and countries, but who all share a common value based on “trust and generosity”, says Lu.

“If I want to learn about a particular industry, I can tap into the big knowledge pool already present”. In fact, the late founder of Victoria’s Secret, Roy Raymond, was a Stanford GSB alumni himself.

Another soft skill is spirituality. “Having the guts to do something you are passionate about is actually harder than hard skills,” he says.

He recalls a comment made by one of his professors: “You guys are all smart, you guys studied at Stanford… you guys are all within the 0.1% of the population… who can make money very easily, but to make a difference is a different matter”.

Making a difference: Lu Dong

It was the opportunity to make a difference that seduced him to return home, he says. While the US is a mature market, China is still relatively undeveloped, especially in the lingerie industry, let alone in e-commerce.

In 2010 the number of people shopping online hit 160 million, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. LA MIU’s own research suggests that 30% of female online shoppers would buy a bra online, which translates into a hefty number of consumers.

And the market should grow as social taboos break down. In the countryside, says Lu, muttering the word “bra” can be a “big taboo”.
But for the “Post-90s generation” living in coastal cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, teenagers are happy for their bras to be seen on the streets.

“They are even bolder than girls in Tokyo and New York!”