"Her Power" | Yi Ci Co-founder: Redefining the New Track of Ceramic Accessories with Jewelry-Grade Craftsmanship

When the precise logic of high-end jewelry encounters the warm texture of ceramics, Yici, founded in 2024, is a contemporary ceramic brand created by Zhao Yici after a decade of experience in high-end jewelry design. She merges jewelry thinking with Eastern philosophy and modern aesthetics. Under the leadership of the two female founders, Zhao Yici and Coco Wang, Yici breaks free from the homogenization of traditional ceramics and trend brands. With a unique positioning of “jewelry thinking + ceramic language,” it builds a differentiated competitive barrier in the high-end fashion and lifestyle sectors. This innovative approach vividly demonstrates female strength—perceiving consumer needs with sensitivity, balancing commercial value and industry responsibility with long-term vision, and opening new possibilities in the high-end accessories niche.

“Yici” brand co-founder Coco Wang (left) and founder Zhao Yici (right)

This positioning is realized through the precise collaboration of the two founders in craft innovation and business strategy. From the gemstone’s radiant return to earthy warmth, Zhao Yici integrates her decade of jewelry design expertise—proportional aesthetics, tactile demands, and craftsmanship standards—deep into the entire ceramic creation process: millimeter-level polishing on both sides, ergonomic “invisible wear” development, enabling ceramics to shed their traditional role as mere accessories or vessels and become “main character” products that combine aesthetic expression and practicality. This cross-category material and craft reconstruction fundamentally avoids homogenization by category innovation, establishing brand uniqueness through material and technological breakthroughs. Coco Wang, with over twenty years of luxury retail and international marketing experience, creates a closed-loop of “creativity - production - channels,” precisely reaching core consumer groups and enhancing both average transaction value and brand tone.

The founders’ division of labor not only ensures smooth transformation from creativity to market but also turns the delicate qualities of a female perspective into concrete product strategies. Their complementary model—deepening product strength on the creative side and reinforcing market influence on the commercial side—demonstrates a unique advantage among women-led enterprises. The keen insight into user needs and attention to detail, driven by female perspectives, is especially prominent in Yici’s practice. The brand breaks the boundaries between accessories and vessels, covering women’s social scenes and living spaces with “the same aesthetic soul in dual forms.” Through emotional value expression in the EMBRACE series and self-reconciliation narratives in the TIMELESS series, it precisely matches contemporary women’s core desire for “self-pleasure consumption.” This dual-category synergy not only broadens target audiences but also enhances user lifetime value (LTV) through scenario-based consumption.

The brand further consolidates its high-end positioning through exclusive channels at Beijing SKP, as the only ceramic accessory brand in this premium department store, effectively reaching core circles.

Beyond product innovation and user connection, Yici’s commitment to sustainable fashion continues the expression of “gentle yet firm” female strength. The brand rejects superficial environmental narratives, instead transforming supply chain fundamentals to unify business and responsibility: using recycled ceramic raw materials to reduce resource consumption, employing high-temperature firing to improve durability, and advocating “long-term companionship” to counter disposable consumption. Embedding sustainability into the product essence makes responsibility a core competitive advantage. The innovative mechanism of involving collectors in naming works transforms women’s emotional connections into brand assets—co-creation reduces marketing costs and boosts loyalty, enabling the brand to penetrate high-end circles naturally without large-scale advertising.

Connecting these practices, Yici’s business logic is clearly presented—female perspective is not merely emotional empowerment but a systemic reconstruction of products, channels, and value propositions. Commercially, Yici’s “She Power” fundamentally stems from female-driven value redefinition: elevating ceramic product quality with jewelry-grade craftsmanship, optimizing revenue through dual-category synergy, building brand barriers via sustainability, and reducing customer acquisition costs through emotional co-creation. This development model of “craftsmanship refinement + business rationality + responsibility closed-loop” not only secures a first-mover advantage in the high-end ceramic accessories market but also affirms the unique value of female leadership in balancing innovation and stability, emotion and reason.

Below is an excerpt of the interview:

Q: Transitioning from high-end jewelry design to ceramic creation, how do you integrate jewelry’s rigorous logic with the warm qualities of ceramics to establish a “jewelry thinking + ceramic language” brand positioning, and stand out from traditional ceramics and trend-driven lifestyle brands?

Zhao Yici / Coco Wang: Yici doesn’t see ceramics as just “lifestyle material,” but as a gemstone material that can be treated with precision. Jewelry training makes Yici highly sensitive to proportions, weight, and skin contact sensations—standards deeply embedded into the entire ceramic creation process, forming the foundation of “jewelry thinking, ceramic language.”

Q: Yici breaks the boundaries between accessories and vessels, creating “dual forms of the same aesthetic soul.” Is this driven by women’s nuanced perception of complete life scenes? How does this innovation precisely meet contemporary women’s “self-pleasure” consumption needs?

Zhao Yici / Coco Wang: It’s not crossing boundaries but a natural extension of the same worldview. For us, wearing and using are not two value systems but different expressions of the same aesthetic in body and life.

Contemporary women’s aesthetics are interconnected—they care about external self-expression (accessories) and internal quality of living spaces (vessels). Yici’s product system stems from two extensions of the same aesthetic core. Our accessories (like “Embrace,” “Cloud Sky”) fulfill women’s narrative needs in social settings; meanwhile, the Lifestyle Enso series responds to their pursuit of a “restrained yet abundant” lifestyle during solitude. This full-scenario coverage offers a complete aesthetic life proposal.

Q: How does the brand’s use of recycled ceramic raw materials and recyclable packaging, advocating “long-term companionship” to oppose disposable consumption, balance environmental responsibility and commercial value, and avoid superficial “responsibility marketing”?

Zhao Yici / Coco Wang: We believe responsibility itself is a long-term business value. In material choices, we prioritize eco-friendly ceramics and glazes, and recycled raw materials. We promote “fighting single-use with time.” For example, our Enso series features durable, dishwasher-safe health ceramics, encouraging long-term reuse. Although this increases costs short-term, it attracts consumers who truly resonate with our values, fostering deeper loyalty—key to avoiding price wars.

We avoid slogans; responsibility is embedded in material selection and usage logic—recycled raw materials, recyclable packaging, and encouraging long-term use are based on genuine creation and operation decisions, not superficial “responsibility” labels.

Q: The innovative mechanism of involving collectors in naming works transforms women’s emotional bonds into brand assets. How does this reflect the shift from “material consumption” to “emotional resonance” in “her economy”?

Zhao Yici / Coco Wang: Naming in Yici isn’t marketing but part of the creation process. We see works as open structures still capable of emotional input. When collectors participate in naming, it shifts from unilateral creation to mutual affirmation—they’ve truly experienced and remembered it. This memory isn’t artificially reinforced but naturally settles through use and recall.

Each name carries a real story, forming Yici’s unique brand asset—we deliver not just objects but emotional connections.

Q: How do details like “the back is also the front” and “invisible wear” craftmanship translate women’s delicate experience demands into Yici’s market label, ensuring user retention and word-of-mouth?

Zhao Yici / Coco Wang: “Back is also front” and “invisible wear” aren’t just technical show-offs but respect for bodily sensations. They become reasons users want to wear long-term.

Q: As the only ceramic accessory brand at Beijing SKP, what role does the female perspective in aesthetic expression and market insight play in expanding high-end channels?

Zhao Yici / Coco Wang: Female perspective sharpens our understanding of women’s needs—no longer satisfied with logo stacking but seeking “modern minimalism” and “Eastern philosophy.” We use jewelry-grade display and storytelling, like the “Cloud Sky” series in blue and white, reinterpreted as a modern, minimal color rather than traditional patterns, perfect for pairing with casual styles.

It also influences how we approach partners—focusing on whether the work withstands time and use, rather than just “breaking through” or “rarity.”

Q: Despite high-temperature firing improving ceramic quality, it involves high waste rates. Why does Yici insist on this process? How do material choices (like eco-glazes) and process optimization embody the “gentle discipline” of responsible fashion?

Zhao Yici / Coco Wang: High-temperature firing ensures more stable ceramic quality, though it’s costlier and riskier. But it’s a “gentle discipline” that allows products to accompany users long-term.

Q: The target customer is an “internally fulfilled independent woman.” How do your products (like the “Embrace” series’ sense of security and “Not Late” series’ self-reconciliation) convey female resilience and strength, aligning with the theme “Small Light Becomes a Torch”?

Zhao Yici / Coco Wang: “Embrace” conveys a sense of security through being held; “Not Late” relates to self-acceptance. Every Yici piece is a transformation from clay to porcelain—an art rooted in nature’s growth. This inner strength isn’t manufactured but inherent—growth and extension from essence. We don’t try to shape strength but acknowledge it exists.

Q: With Zhao Yici returning to Parsons to teach and expanding into lifestyle categories, how do you plan to empower more women creators or practitioners through brand practice, ensuring the continuous gathering of “her power” in ceramics?

Zhao Yici / Coco Wang: We are cautious about “empowerment.” Yici prefers to demonstrate through practice that serious creation deserves respect and long-term attention. When a brand invests in materials, craftsmanship, and rhythm, it offers creators a possibility—no need for rapid consumption or oversimplification. Whether others adopt this path depends on time and industry judgment.

Text by Meng Lingjin

Edited by Xu Nan