With over 30 years of manufacturing expertise, a Zhejiang brand expands overseas, selling over $50 million across multiple countries on TikTok!

When the home fitness trend took off in 2020, dozens of "smart fitness" brands sprang up on the market, with financing, burning cash, and hiring endorsers - quite a lively scene.

A few years later, the trend has died down, and most of those names have been forgotten by consumers.

But one brand, instead of being eliminated by the market, has expanded from domestic competition to overseas markets, making a name for itself on TikTok - it's called Umay (Youmei).

Image source: Umay

In 2024, Umay achieved annual sales of $4 million on TikTok, with 70,000 units sold for its Pilates board alone.

After entering the European market, Umay took first place on both the site-wide bestseller list and category ranking in France, with combined GMV of approximately $22.08 million in France and Germany. In the UK market, Umay's incline under-desk treadmill ranked among the top with an estimated transaction value of $380,000 to $465,000. Data shows that Umay's sales on TikTok in the US were approximately $18.13 million, and cumulative sales in the European market exceeded $50 million.

Image source: Umay

Thirty years of foundation was not built in a day

Umay's manufacturing heritage can be traced back to 1991. According to the brand's official website, the company was founded that year and produced its first self-manufactured treadmill.

Since then, the brand has gradually moved from traditional fitness equipment manufacturing to product development and smart technology. In 2017, Umay won the German Red Dot Design Award; in 2018, its treadmill won the German iF Design Award. In 2019, the brand began cooperating with institutions related to China Aerospace Science and Technology, applying aerospace materials and design concepts to products such as home treadmills.

Image source: Umay

After building up its foundation in the domestic market, Umay began seeking greater room for growth.

In 2022, Umay became an official supplier for the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, providing related equipment including treadmills and participating in the operation of the fitness center in the athletes' village; in 2023, the brand further became an official supplier for the BWF World Tour.

This development path is actually quite representative: first manufacturing, then products, then branding, and finally bringing those capabilities to overseas markets.

Image source: Umay

Home fitness: demand remains after the trend has passed

Although home fitness is no longer as concentrated as it was around 2020, the market has not disappeared.

According to data, the global fitness equipment market was approximately $14.42 billion in 2024, and is expected to reach $24.19 billion by 2034. Among this, home consumers are already the largest end market, accounting for approximately 64.78% of the overall fitness equipment market in 2024, with a scale of $9.34 billion.

Image source: Research and Markets

This also shows that consumer demand for home fitness products has gradually shifted from concentrated purchasing during the pandemic to more stable everyday demand.

At the same time, the products themselves are also changing. In the past, when buying a treadmill, consumers mainly focused on the motor, speed, and running belt; now, features such as lightweight design, folding, quiet operation, smart connectivity, and suitability for small apartments are becoming increasingly important.

Especially in the European and American markets, the demands of home space, working from home, and fragmented exercise have given products such as walking pads and folding treadmills more clearly defined use cases.

This happens to give traditional manufacturing companies like Umay a new opportunity.

Image source: Umay

Treat TikTok as a sales channel, not just a promotional platform.

What really makes Umay worth paying attention to is that it doesn't treat TikTok merely as a brand exposure channel, but directly connects content, influencers, live streaming, and TikTok Shop.

Judging from the current TikTok Shop store situation, Umay US already has over 156,000 followers, over 200,000 items sold, and has published 1,311 videos.

Image source: TikTok Shop

First, turn product selling points into content that users can understand.

Traditional e-commerce product pages can slowly explain product specifications, but TikTok users won't spend a few minutes researching a treadmill. Therefore, Umay is better suited to showing selling points that can be directly seen, such as “how thin it is when folded,” “how loud it is when running,” and “how high the incline really is.”

For example, many products on Umay's US TikTok Shop currently directly emphasize keywords like Home Office, Quiet, Foldable, and Incline. One of them, a folding walking pad with a 16% incline, shows on the store page that over 30,000 units have been sold.

Image source: TikTok Shop

Second, influencer marketing.

For fitness equipment, what consumers care most about is often not what the advertisement says, but how it actually feels to use. Therefore, influencer content is naturally suitable for showing the product.

From the data, Umay has formed a sizable influencer cooperation network. The data shows that in the past 30 days, 1,627 influencers on Umay US published related videos or live streams, the number of new affiliate influencers reached 3,629, and the affiliate channel contributed approximately $1.3701 million in transaction value, accounting for a significant proportion of overall sales.

Image source: kalodata

In selecting influencers, Umay has not limited itself to the traditional fitness field, but instead covers multiple content directions such as home life, office scenarios, fat-loss tracking, and family life.

The reason is that products like walking pads and folding treadmills are not essentially items consumers actively search for every day; rather, demand needs to be stimulated through content.

Image source: kalodata

Taking influencer @silv_rlv as an example, this account is mainly positioned around lifestyle content such as cozy living, wellness, and mom life. It is not a traditional fitness vertical influencer, but its follower base highly matches consumers of home fitness.

When promoting the Umay walking pad, she did not simply introduce product parameters. Instead, she placed the product in daily life scenarios, such as showing how the walking pad can be placed at home and how it can be used with working from home, allowing consumers to intuitively see the effect of the product being integrated into life.

Image source: TikTok Shop

One of the videos about the Umay walking pad gained 796,000 views and generated approximately $28,100 in transaction value.

From the content format perspective, this video did not adopt a traditional advertising-style explanation, but instead used real usage scenarios to reduce consumers' concerns about fitness equipment “taking up space and being hard to stick with,” further proving the value of lifestyle influencer content for converting high-priced home fitness products.

Image source: TikTok

After entering the European market, Umay did not simply copy its approach from the US market, but adjusted its operating strategies according to the characteristics of consumers in different countries. In the French market, the brand places more emphasis on the conversion capability of live streaming and influencer content.

During the major promotion in July 2025, Umay coordinated nearly 60 influencers to start live streaming simultaneously, achieving daily sales of over 30,000 euros, and reaching No. 1 in the fitness category on TikTok Shop France about one month after entering the market.

Image source: TikTok

It is worth noting that Umay did not directly copy the American market experience in Europe, but adjusted content direction based on consumer habits in different regions.

For content e-commerce going overseas, although the platform is the same, the purchasing logic of consumers in different markets is not the same. Truly effective localization is not simply translating product information, but finding an expression that local consumers are willing to accept.

Image source: TikTok

Overseas markets are entering a new stage.

In the past, when many domestic companies entered overseas markets, their first reaction was to find an e-commerce platform and copy products that sold well domestically. But now, this approach is becoming increasingly difficult.

Products are only the starting point. What truly determines whether a brand can stay long-term is the understanding of local consumers, content expression capability, and supply chain response speed.

For domestic enterprises, doing overseas markets in the future may not require pursuing a huge presence from the start. Finding suitable products, markets, and content expression methods, mastering one country thoroughly, and then gradually replicating to more markets may actually be more stable.