China’s Double-11 shopping festival, largest in the world, is sometimes seen as a rivarly between the two dominating online retailers — Alibaba’s Tmall, and JD.COM.

There is much more to Chinese online ecosystem, however, and there are many other players that demonstrate strong performance, and keep even the giants on their toes.

This week we’ve already covered:

• Douyin 抖音 — a video-sharing social networking platform (outside of China mostly known for its international version, TikTok)
• Suning.com 苏宁易购 — a chain of brick-and-mortar stores and a dedicated e-commerce platform

This time, we are looking at Mogujie 蘑菇街 — a social media and e-commerce platform with a sharp focus on fashion — their mission is to “Make fashion accessible to everyone”.

Mogujie

MOGU 蘑菇街 is a social media and e-commerce platform with a focus on fashion and beauty content, products, as well as related services.

MOGU’s own “Double-11 Live Streaming Festival” (“11.11直播购物节”), launched on 6 November until 12 November, has seen an overall 82% year-on-year increase in GMV across all its categories. At the peak of the event, just two hours in, it exceeded the whole day worth of sales made in the previous year.

MOGU had four live broadcasting themes:

• Best-Value (打造省钱C位)
• Brand Annual League Table / Golden Brands (年度金榜)
• Brand Specials (品牌特卖)
• Family Shopping (一人买全家省)

The best performing live streaming session, with 2 million fans, generated 273.1m yuan (USD $41.3m) in sales.

The hosts’ “league table” demonstrates the power of live broadcasting in e-commerce:

• nearly 100 hosts achieved sales above 1 million yuan
• four hosts exceeded 10 million yuan
• two of the top hosts generated more than 100 million yuan

The top selling 7 categories that have seen growth were:

• Mother & Baby
• Food
• Home Decoration
• Fashion Accessories
• Underwear
• Cosmetics
• Clothing & Clothing Accessories

In terms of consumption per user, comparing to the last year’s festival, the platform has seen:

• 240% increase in average consumption per user
• on average, each user purchased 1.86 more items
• users spent on average 5.6 hours viewing live streams
• across the 7 key industrial belt areas promotion: 60m yuan+ spent on
• top shopper bought 133 items

About the platform

MOGU Inc. (蘑菇街), NYSE:MOGU, is a social media and e-commerce platform focused on fashion content, products, and services. Founded in 2011, their mission is to “Make fashion accessible to everyone”. Tencent — whose offerings portfolio include social platforms Wechat/Weixin, Tencent QQ, and one of the largest web portals, QQ.com — is MOGU’s largest shareholder.

The platform features live broadcasts and content such as short videos, photos, reviews, and articles. The content is a blend of user-generated content, with contribution from many professional fashion influencers (KOLs), as well as MOGU’s in-house editorial team.

Through its live broadcasting feature, the platform also plays an important role in advancing the Consumer-to-Factory (C2F) model.

With approximately 63 million active users, the platform’s demographic consists primarily of young women between the ages of 18 and 30.

The bottom line

China’s e-commerce ecosystem is arguably largest in the world — in 2019 it has already accounted for 40% of global online transactions. It is extremely well developed with a highly advanced supply chain and logistics, the industry is rapidly innovating and it never stands still.

Although Tmall and JD.COM are very important, there are many others that often suit certain product categories better, with more targeted approach and lower barrier to entry for many brands — particularly those that are keen to invest in brand building in the Chinese market.

For any brand that is seeking market entry, or expansion into China, such online platforms pose an invaluable and unique opportunity to reach the target Chinese consumer, quickly, and effectively. This is especially true for some vertical platforms that operate in lucrative niche categories and demographics, where it is possible to target consumers with a sharp focus and a high conversion success rate.

Talk to ACOLINK’s team to find out more, we can help you enter and grow in the Chinese market with our services that range from support on market entry strategies, through market research, lead-generation and prospecting, to fully managed solutions where we act as your highly experienced export sales team.