China e-commerce market, where to start?

The two largest e-commerce platforms Alibaba and JD.com during Double 11, the Global Shopping Festival, saw an increase in sales of 26% YoY and 32% YoY respectively. Alibaba Tmall reached 498.2 billion yuan (US$75.27 billion) and JD.com reached 271.5 billion yuan (US$41.02 bn) in GMV. These positive results show the potential and vastity of China e-commerce market despite the effect of the pandemic. Moreover, the restrictions and the habit changes shaped due to Covid-19 show the great opportunities businesses can create by going online and tackling China e-commerce market.

How is the industry outlook in China? Which e-commerce platform is best for your business? How to assess your products?

E-Commerce, where?

China E-Commerce market presents a variety of platforms, where brands and businesses promote and sell their products. The biggest well-known ones are Taobao, Tmall, JD.com and Pinduoduo. Other smaller platforms pervade the ecosystem, to cite few WeChat Mini-Shop, e-shop on Douyin (Chinese Tiktok) and Little Red Book, and XPanda. Each of these platforms presents unique features.

Where should you open your store? A market analysis is required to assess the industry outlook, the brand positioning, products feature and budget for the project. This will help you to consider and evaluate better your next step.

How to open?

Once you have decided the e-commerce platform to start with, you need to prepare in advance some documents.

• Company information: a registered entity in China (Wholly Foreign Owned enterprise or Sino-foreign Joint venture) or abroad, bank information
• Product trademark: register a trademark in China to protect your product
• Product Information: it is essential to have product description and photos for online sales.

How to operate?

Step 1: Launch of products with attractive titles, text descriptions, pricing, new product promotion, inventory maintenance and other activities

Step 2: Design & Optimize Stores

Design your online store, home page, product pages, promotion events

Step 3: Operational activities

Product selection, price setting, types of promotion, registration to shopping festival activities, data analysis

Step 4: Marketing activities to attract customers and achieve sales

Daily advertising operation, internal and external activities such as in-store or on e-commerce platform homepage’s product promotion.

BPcom and Barbatelli & Partners provide comprehensive services for brands aiming to enter China e-commerce market. What are our services?

1. E-commerce project audit to find the best solution for your specific project and budget
2. Registration and shop design/website
3. Shop management and customer acquisition, by uploading, updating and managing contents in line with your requests
4. Promotion and customer loyalty management, by creating and managing campaigns following the various events of China E-commerce calendar.
5. Multi-Channel marketing strategy to create and increase brand awareness with PR, Kol and Seo.

Contact us!