We recently connected with Yiru Luo and have shared our conversation below.

Yiru, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

Our brand is named Basia Mille, inspired by my undergraduate studies in Classical Studies, where I immersed myself in Latin literature. One of my favorite Latin love poems is “Da mi basia mille” by Catullus, which means “Give me a thousand kisses.” This poem is wildly romantic and full of youthful passion — exactly the kind of energy we want to express through our brand’s bold, feminine, “hot girl” aesthetic. The name felt like a perfect match: vibrant, a little playful, and rooted in a deep love for beauty and self expression.

Yiru, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m the founder and curator of Basia Mille, a womenswear boutique located in New York City. Before opening my store, I worked at Kwai (a major competitor of Tiktok) in China, managing influencer partnerships and driving live-stream e-commerce campaigns. I was proud to help achieve the first showcase in the industry to break a ten-million RMB GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) milestone, which deeply honed my marketing expertise and set a strong foundation for building my own brand later on.

While pursuing my graduate degree in New York, I noticed a gap in the market: many Asian women in the U.S. struggle to find clothing that suits both their aesthetic tastes and sizing needs. Meanwhile, Asian designers—especially from China and Vietnam—are starting to move from niche to mainstream. However, purchasing from them is often inconvenient due to currency exchange, shipping fees, long wait times, and the inability to try pieces on before buying.

I saw an opportunity to bridge this gap. We’ve built competitive logistics channels connecting Vietnam and China directly to New York, allowing us to bring interesting, well-priced designer pieces straight into our physical store for customers to try on and purchase immediately.

We stock a wide range of Vietnamese designer brands like OnonMade, Lane Ci, Ibiboss, Amelie, Swan, Aiai, La Vierge, Mael Femme, etc, as well as standout Chinese labels like 13 De Marzo, Ann Andelman, and YJ1NGZYZJ. In fact, we’re currently the largest physical store in the U.S. to carry ready-to-wear Vietnamese designer inventory, so customers don’t have to wait 20-30 days for pre-orders—they can try on and take pieces home right away.

At its core, Basia Mille is about making unique Asian design more accessible and building a community around playful, confident, slightly rebellious style. Whether through carefully curated racks or lively social media engagement, we aim to give our customers a space where they can explore, experiment, and have fun expressing themselves.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I actually met my co-founder through a post she made on a social media platform — truly a case of the internet bringing people together. At the time, she was actively looking for a business partner. She had already done extensive market research, tested the local market, and even lined up initial suppliers. With her background as a model, she’d long been immersed in the womenswear industry and was determined to open a boutique. What she needed was someone to take the lead on marketing.

I had solid marketing experience from my previous roles, but I’d never worked in fashion and was eager to explore it. When we met, it just clicked. Finding the right co-founder is no small feat, and although we decided to partner after only one in-person meeting, it was both a thoughtful and — as it’s turned out — a very successful decision.

What impressed me most was that even without me, she was fully committed to launching the store. Her preparation alone showed me how serious and driven she was. From a practical standpoint, our skill sets are highly complementary: she handles aesthetics, buying, and supply chain management, while I focus on marketing, sales, legal, compliance, and finance.

Equally important, we both bring the same level of dedication and resilience, and we share a similar philosophy about money. In today’s economic climate, we believe in building lean, asset-light businesses rather than sinking huge investments into ventures that might take years to pay off. This made it a venture I could confidently take on — not a reckless gamble. Looking back, it’s proven to be the right decision: we’ve built a thriving shop and are now preparing to open our second location.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We started by identifying exactly where our target audience was most active. In our case, our initial customers were primarily Chinese students studying abroad, so we focused on Xiaohongshu (Rednote) as our main platform — a place that naturally had organic reach and a strong community feel.

From there, it was about choosing the content format we were most comfortable with, whether video or photo posts. We studied top-performing competitor content relentlessly, broke down why it worked, and then experimented by replicating and adapting those ideas. At first, we did everything ourselves — shooting, editing, and posting — learning through trial and error. Over time, we began to understand the logic behind what drives reach and engagement, as well as which styles of content we were naturally better at creating.

This approach helped us secure our first wave of organic “seed” users. But it’s crucial to remember: high views or likes don’t always translate to sales. As business owners, we care far more about conversion than vanity metrics.

Eventually, organic reach alone wasn’t enough, especially since it’s hard to consistently produce viral content. That’s when we turned to paid ads. Advertising gave us a big growth boost, but it’s a very tricky game — it only works if the business owner understands how the platform’s ad logic works. Otherwise, it’s easy to waste money. At the end of the day, good ads start with good creative. Paid ads simply help great content reach its audience faster.

For anyone just starting out, I’d say: find where your audience naturally hangs out, study what they already engage with, and start creating your own spin on it. Be patient — real insights (and sales) come from testing, failing, and improving.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://basiamilles.com
• Instagram: basiamillenyc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yiru-luo/
• Other: Wechat: basiamille37J
  Email: [email protected]