How Hong Kong’s Graphene-X Turned Wonder Material Into a Million-dollar Business

As China’s discerning fashion shopper grows increasingly wellness-obsessed, the apparel market has taken a noticeable turn toward activewear — fueling growth for brands like Lululemon, Salomon and On Running while giving rise to a new wave of smaller players. Among them is Graphene X, a Hong Kong-based outerwear brand built around graphene, a so-called wonder material discovered by Nobel Prize-winning scientists.

“It’s funny, we are trying to colonize Mars, we have self-sustaining gardens, we are literally living in the future — yet clothing, which is something we use every day, is kind of stuck. It’s got new design, but it hasn’t really progressed in terms of the materials we are using,” said Graphene-X founder and chief executive officer Jorge Barros, a Chilean wine importer who pivoted to fashion out of frustration with the industry’s offerings.

Barros, an outdoors enthusiast, was disenchanted by how an expensive jacket he owned didn’t actually weather the elements. So he began researching new fabrications and stumbled upon graphene, an industrial material discovered by Nobel laureates Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov in the early 2000s.

Barros first encountered the material at the Canton Fair, one of the largest trade shows based in Guangzhou, the southern Chinese hub. The lightweight, water-repelling thermal conductor was only produced by around five certified manufacturers worldwide; its apparel products, such as heavy-duty manufacturing gloves, were mainly used in the safety industry although it is also widely used in advanced electronics, batteries and composite materials.

Attracted by its sturdy properties, Barros began tinkering with the material and getting himself enmeshed in the graphene community.

Almost a year later, in 2019, the first product, a $399 shell jacket, was quietly launched on Kickstarter to great fanfare. 

“It was almost like an experiment, then we had over 2,000 backers from 80 countries, and we saw half a million dollars in pre-sales,” said Barros. “And I thought, OK, I’m not the only one frustrated with what the market is offering. That’s how the company was launched.”

The brand really took off when Barros began working with a Shanghai-based certified producer of graphene, whose main business is in solar panels and work gloves. 

Kyorene, the certified graphene producer, began working with Barros on a new yarn woven with high-density graphene, which gave birth to many of its hero products, including the polo shirt, which retails for $99.

Apart from Graphene-X, major outerwear players including Stone Island, Arc’teryx, The North Face, and Columbia Sportswear have been working to fit graphene within their apparel pipeline. But smaller brands, including the London-based Vollebak, have been building full-on collections around the highly conductive material.

A deepened relationship with Kyorene also spilled over to the more creative side.

Lynn Sha Deligny, the founder of Kyorene, inspired the creation of the brand’s latest capsule collection, a women’s line designed for “transitioning from yoga to boardroom settings,” according to the brand.

“It’s a relatively new thing to do a little bit outside of our comfort zone, because so far, our audience is, I would say, 95 percent men. Somehow it feels more natural to us because the fashion factor is less important than the function factor,” said Barros.

“However, with this line, we are expanding our reach to the women’s market, but keeping true to our core value, you know, which is function over fashion and science meets clothing,” he added.

Though the company has continued to launch new products on the crowdsourcing platform, a driver of growth has been AI chatbot recommendations.

“Our Achilles’ heel is that we focus too much on the product and too little, maybe, on the marketing, but with these AI agents, they are making non-emotional judgments on a brand, and people are willing to try it even if they’ve never heard of it before,” said Barros.

“You have the people that see a product and research the brand on ChatGPT; you also have the other end of the spectrum of guys who are writing prompts like, ‘I’m looking for a highly technical jacket that is extremely light, keeps me warm.’ That’s where we normally start to appear in the searches,” he added.

Apart from its proprietary materials such as Graphtough, Graphdry, and Graphmotion, the company is breaking new ground by combining graphene and aerogel, a warmth-preserving, lightweight material.

Graphene-X is also expanding into categories such as sleeping bags, aiming to create “a modular system” with its proprietary technologies.

“We are pretty strong in our niche loyal audience, which is kind of innovation-driven and appreciates this function factor, and now we are trying to expand that reach to a larger audience that can also benefit from the values that we put in our products,” said Barros.