He launched a fashion brand the week the world shut its doors, ran the storefront on TikTok, and put his own software inside the factories. The result, Cider, went from idea to unicorn before most labels finish a season.
Michael Wang - math major turned fashion operator
Walk into a Cider order and you are buying something that, weeks earlier, may not have existed as a single physical garment. That is the trick Michael Wang built his company around. Cider releases new styles every day, makes most of them in small runs, and leans on pre-orders so the warehouse never fills with clothes nobody wanted. Inventory, the thing that quietly bankrupts fashion brands, is the exact thing Wang turned into an advantage.
He is precise about why it works. "We install our software into the factories, and we source fabric directly so there's basically no other parties involved in this process," he told WWD. No layers, no markup stacked on markup, no guessing. The data from those factories feeds what gets bought and made next. It is fashion run like an operations problem, which makes sense once you know where Wang came from.
Before any of this, he studied applied mathematics and operations research at UC Berkeley. Then he spent years on the money side of the table - private equity at KKR from 2012, sizing up deals across Greater China, then early-stage tech and e-commerce at IDG Capital. Most people who sit in those seats stay there. Wang used them as a vantage point, watching which consumer companies actually worked and why, before deciding to go build one himself.
In 2016 he cofounded YCloset, a fashion rental platform that grew into the largest of its kind in Asia and got described, inevitably, as the Rent the Runway of China. That company taught him the unglamorous half of fashion: supply chains, factory relationships, how a garment actually gets from a fabric roll to a customer's door. He led market strategy there until 2020. It was, in hindsight, the dress rehearsal.
Then the world stopped. Where most founders saw a shuttered economy, Wang saw a vacuum. "It was when the world stopped down, and we saw this opportunity of building a brand on social media," he said. Stores were closed; attention had migrated entirely to phones. If you were going to build a brand for Gen Z, this was the moment the playing field flattened. In September 2020, Cider launched.
It was when the world stopped down, and we saw this opportunity of building a brand on social media.Michael Wang, on launching Cider in 2020
The conventional fashion calendar moves in quarters: design, manufacture, ship a mountain of stock, mark down whatever does not sell. Wang's Cider runs on a different clock. New SKUs land daily. Production starts small and scales only on signals the data sends back. The aim, as a16z framed it when the firm invested, is "a zero-inventory future" - one where almost nothing gets made that someone has not already signaled they want.
That is why the company's biggest believers talk less about clothes and more about plumbing. Connie Chan of Andreessen Horowitz, which co-led the Series A alongside DST Global, put it plainly: "Michael and his team have shown us what it looks like to build a fashion company that truly uses technology in every part of its business." The clothes are the output. The system underneath is the company.
The audience is specific and Wang knows it cold. Roughly 60-70% of Cider's customers are Gen Z, aged 18 to 24. They shop on their phones - about 80% of the business runs through the app - and they find the brand through Instagram and TikTok rather than billboards or department stores. Wang once claimed Cider was "probably the fastest growing brand on Instagram," on track for five million followers in a single month. Prices sit between $15 and $60, the range where impulse meets affordability.
For a brand built entirely on screens, the next move was deliberately physical. In November 2023, Cider opened a 2,400-square-foot pop-up at 33 Howard Street in New York - the former home of Opening Ceremony, a name that carried real downtown weight. The ambition is bigger than one storefront. "We want to build an omnichannel brand," Wang said. "Online and offline with presence everywhere Gen Z is."
He is careful about where not to rush, too. Asked about menswear, the obvious expansion every womenswear brand eventually eyes, he did not oversell it: "It's a very different category, so we have to be careful." For a founder whose company moves at the speed of a daily drop, knowing which doors to leave shut is its own kind of discipline.
We install our software into the factories, and we source fabric directly so there's basically no other parties involved.On Cider's pricing edge
We want to build an omnichannel brand. Online and offline with presence everywhere Gen Z is.On the next chapter
We're probably the fastest growing brand on Instagram.On Cider's early traction
It's a very different category, so we have to be careful.On expanding to menswear
Private equity investor at KKR, evaluating deals across Greater China.
TMT investor at IDG Capital, focused on early-stage e-commerce and IoT.
Cofounds YCloset and leads market strategy - it becomes Asia's largest fashion rental platform.
Named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Cofounds Cider and becomes CEO, building a social-first Gen Z brand mid-pandemic.
Closes a $130M Series B (a16z and DST Global), crossing a $1B valuation.
Opens Cider's NYC pop-up at 33 Howard Street, stepping into omnichannel.
He studied applied math and operations research at Berkeley before ever touching fashion.
Before selling $15 dresses, he weighed buyouts at KKR and early-stage bets at IDG.
Roughly 80% of Cider's business flows through its mobile app.
His first company, YCloset, is often called the Rent the Runway of China.
Cider's first big physical store took over the old Opening Ceremony space in SoHo.