5 social e-commerce solutions in China besides Tmall
Besides opening a Tmall store, what are the other options when entering China’s e-commerce market?
China’s e-commerce platforms have millions of internet users and target a wide variety of online consumer groups. E-commerce platforms provide multiple interaction opportunities for consumers and make it more convenient for companies to improve their products based on the needs of their customers – therefore, helping to enrich their brand. Today, more and more international brands are turning to cross-border e-commerce when entering the Chinese market.
In 2018, Tmall global had introduced around 3700 imported products from over 18,000 brands across 74 different countries and regions. Whilst more than half of those brands entered the Chinese market for the first time. However, many brands are put off Tmall due to its high platform entry fees and commissions.
Which new Chinese e-commerce platforms can replace Tmall as the first choice to enter the Chinese market?
Option 1: Youzan Store
What are the advantages of delivery in Youzan stores?
Youzan is a set of mobile e-commerce solutions designed to help businesses. It provides the tools needed for mobile terminal marketing. Youzan has both offline stores as well as online traditional e-commerce sites. Youzan is a self-built mall and provides multiple services such as online interactive marketing, commodity sales, online and offline connections, and open data.
Youzan is a powerful and productive tool distributed by enterprises and marketed by e-commerce. Traditional e-commerce sites such as Taobao and Jingdong are flow-thinking platforms whereas social e-commerce sites, are user-thinking. Other sites such as Youzan, instead helps businesses to manage their own private flow.
Youzan is not a flow platform, but instead helps businesses to accumulate consumer flow. Businesses are able to get fans and followers through platforms such as their WeChat accounts, micro-blogs, QQ shopping numbers, and Kuaishou Fu, etc, which enables them to control their own flow – making it a main advantage of Youzan.
Many powerful businesses in the e-commerce industry use Youzan.
✓ Youzan currently has more than 2 million merchants
✓ Youzan currently has 5 million talents to share good products
✓ Youzan has more than 300 million consumers
✓ There a more than 50,000 transactions per second
Deposit required for store opening: No deposit required
Annual fee: The basic version is 6800 RMB, the professional version is 12,800 RMB, and the flagship version is 26,800 RMB.
Store opening requirements: Youzan only accepts a mainland business license to open a shop, so that businesses from overseas can cooperate with domestic partners in order to open stores or register a company in China, which requires a brand trademark registration certificate
How long does it usually take to open a store? It takes 1-2 weeks to obtain the required certification
Is live streaming supported? Youzan supports live streaming. It is free to use and can be viewed on WeChat. “Loving live streaming” is a sub brand of Youzan.
Option 2: WeChat store
Deposit required for store opening: There is no deposit, fee or service charge required
Small store function: The WeChat small store is a new capability which can help businesses generate sales apps with no development, zero cost and little effort. It now provides commodity information release and trading, small program live broadcast, order management, transaction settlement, logistics after-sales, live delivery and other functions.
Store opening requirements: WeChat’s small stores support enterprises, self-employed, and individuals. It has opened the internal test application for enterprises and individual businesses, and will gradually open individual store applications in the future.
At present, it is only available for WeChat certified service numbers and users who have successfully applied for WeChat payment merchants. Enterprises and individual businesses that have received the invitation for internal testing can complete registration by clicking the invitation link, and provide relevant identification and qualification certificates.
Note: During the internal testing period, enterprises can open up to 50 small stores, and individual businesses can open up to 5. Besides, one Wechat number can only support registration once.
What are the advantages of delivery in WeChat small stores?
- Incomparable flow advantage
According to the latest authoritative data, WeChat’s monthly live flow is as high as 980 million! With regards to online stores, online business is not limited by geographical restrictions, but instead by popularity restrictions. Therefore, online stores should be opened on large-flow platform such as WeChat, to ensure that the shop is exposed to as many users as possible.
- WeChat is low risk
WeChat is easy to operate, has a low threshold and is a low risk platform. To set up your very own WeChat store, you need to set up your own WeChat service number and operate the binding in the background. After uploading details about your goods, your store will become available for customers.
Option 3: Weibo mini shop
What are the advantages of Weibo shops?
- There are a large amount of Weibo users and therefore, many opportunities for recommendations. At present, there are over 550 million monthly active Weibo users.Weibo has a mature content recommendation system (both text and live) which creates multiple platform recommendation opportunities.
- Weibo supports various media forms such as picture, text and live broadcast. It is helpful for accumulating consumers and attracting KOLs in industries such as finance and education. Bloggers in the fields of finance and cosmetic medicine are able to attract more users due to a high purchasing power.
- There is no posting limit on Weibo which is good for frequently interacting with fans. For example, “Wuhan Liu Zhengtao” often shares information about stock investment, mainly in the form of pictures and live broadcast. In addition to sharing professional content, Liu Zhengtao also shares information about his daily life on Weibo. He posts 30-40 online articles a day to entertain his fans and improve their sense of trust.
Deposit for store opening: No deposit required
Store opening information required: Overseas passport information, Chinese identification information and face recognition
What platforms do small stores currently support?
At present, it supports Taobao, Jingdong, Youzan (binding store), Jumei Youpin, Ymatou, and Ctrip
Is live streaming is supported? Yes, it supports live streaming and the live platform is free of charge
Commissions and other fees Information for cooperation between e-commerce platforms and Weibo shops:
Third product platform | Taobao | Youzan | Jingdong(newly added on 1st July 2020) |
Requirements for adding products | Products must be in the Taobao League products catalogue | Businesses need to bind their Youzan store with their Weibo store. At present, the products can be updated on both stores after binding. | Jingdong cps business is supported. |
Weibo commission information | 0% | 5% of the profits made on Weibo platform | Jingdong will deduct 10% commission as a platform fee. Weibo and talents will divide other commissions in the ratio of 3:7.(Weibo can take 5% of GMV at most) |
Fees for the third product platform | Taobao will take 6% of the trading volume as a platform fee. It will also take 10% commission as a technique service fee. | Youzan charges a store service fee.
For a basic version it is 6800 RMB, for a professional version it’s 12,800 RMB, and for a flagship version it’s 26,800 RMB |
Jingdong collogue will deduct 10% commission as a platform fee. Jingdong’s store opening deposit: a deposit is required for every catalogue. There is also a platform usage fee. Points can be deducted after deals.
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Option 4: Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok) shop
Douyin shop is an e-commerce platform that help brands and businesses broaden their channels and enhance their flow. Single users have the opportunity to become followers of business accounts, which forms a complete closed traffic loop. On Douyin shop you can have a separate shop. You can also link Taobao, Jingdong, Koala, Haigou, Vipshop, Suning e-buy, and foreign wharf goods.
Douyin shop requirements
- You should be registered in the Chinese mainland. Overseas businesses can cooperate with domestic partners to open a shop or register a company in the country.
- The business scope and operation time should be specified in the business license
- Any goods to be sold should be included in the category of investment promotion and have the relevant qualifications
- All goods must meet the quality requirements of law and industry standards
- All qualifications should be provided with the original scanned copy and the red seal of the resident
Is live broadcasting is supported? Yes, live broadcast is supported.
Security Deposit of Douyin e-commerce:
In order to sell products on Douyin companies shall pay a security deposit, according to the type of products they want to sell. In case a company wants to use ppc or other ad solutions, other deposit shall apply in addition to the organic business deposits. If more than one category is selected, the deposit should be paid according to the highest margin corresponding to the selected category.
First category | Organic Order deposits/RMB | Advertisement deposits/RMB | |
Individual business | Enterprises | ||
Clothes and underwear | 2000 | 4000 | 20000 |
Sports and outdoors | 2000 | 4000 | 20000 |
Shoes and boots | 2000 | 4000 | 20000 |
Gifts | 5000 | 10000 | 20000 |
Food and drink | 2000 | 4000 | / |
Wine | 10000 | 20000 | 100000 |
Seafood | 2000 | 4000 | |
Watches | 5000 | 10000 | 50000 |
Jewellery | 10000 | 20000 | / |
Mother and baby | 5000 | 10000 | / |
Toys and instruments | 2000 | 4000 | 50000 |
Pets | 2000 | 4000 | 20000 |
Kitchenware | 2000 | 4000 | 20000 |
Household supplies | 5000 | 10000 | 20000 |
Furniture | 5000 | 10000 | 20000 |
Home furnishings | 2000 | 4000 | 20000 |
Plants | 2000 | 4000 | / |
Household appliances | 10000 | 20000 | / |
Computers | 10000 | 20000 | 50000 |
Mobile phones | 10000 | 20000 | 50000 |
Digital products | 2000 | 4000 | / |
Cleaning products | 5000 | 10000 | / |
Make up | 5000 | 10000 | / |
Educational products | 5000 | 10000 | / |
Digital content | 5000 | 10000 | / |
Educational videos | 5000 | 10000 | 50000 |
Travelling | 5000 | 10000 | / |
Cars | 2000 | 4000 | 50000 |
Option 5: Kuaishou mini shop
Kuaishou shop is an online app merchant, providing quick service to Kuaishou users to efficiently convert their flow into revenue. There are 2 ways to sell products in Kuaishou: native store and 3rd party apps providing services in the platform.
Kuaishou tin store receives the following benefits:
- Various ways of income, efficient conversion of fan flow into revenue
- Official exposure to Kuaishou shop projects
- Convenient commodity management and sale function provided by Kuaishou Tai platform
The conditions for entry of a Kuaishou store
- You should be registered in the Chinese mainland. Overseas businesses can cooperate with domestic partners to open a shop or register a company in the country.
- The business scope and operation time should be specified in the business license
- Any goods to be sold should be included in the category of investment promotion and have the relevant qualifications
- All goods must meet the quality requirements of law and industry standards
- All qualifications should be provided with the original scanned copy and the red seal of the resident
Shop deposit:
The shop deposit is subject to the prompt on the back page of the merchant. According to factors such as business mode, opening category and service opening, the merchants pay the deposit. There is no maximum limit on the amount of deposit. The minimum deposit standard is 1000 RMB.
Merchants who open other commodity functions of small stores need to pay 500 yuan promotion deposit. The platform adjusts the store deposit every month according to sales from the previous month.
It can vary is as follows:
Last month sales(x) | Deposit standards |
x>500,000 | 30,000 |
100,000<x£500,000 | 5,000 |
50,000<x£100,000 | 3,000 |
Is live broadcasting is supported? Yes, live broadcasting is supported
The Kuaishou store can link to other business platforms such as, Youzan, Mokuai, Jingdong, and Taobao.
Youzan | Mokuai | Jingdong | Taobao | |
Requirements for adding products | 1. CPS products commission rates > 10%
2.self sale products need certification |
Business certification is needed on the Mokuai platform | Product commission > 105 | 1.Taobao takes 6% of the trading volume as a platform fee. It also takes 10% commission as a technique service fee. 2.Products must be in the Taobao League products catalogue |
Third product platform service charge information | 1. It takes 10% commission as a technique service fee.
2. Self-selling products take an opening store fee. |
Only an opening store fee is needed | There is no spreader technique fee | Taobao takes 6% of the trading volume as a platform fee. It also takes 10% commission made by spreaders as a technique service fee. |
Kuaishou technique service charge information | 1. CPS products 45% commission (5% of the volume of transaction)
2. Self-selling products take 5% of the real volume of transaction |
5% of the volume of the transaction | 45% commission
(5% of the volume of transaction) |
0% |
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