Le Blog

On Tuesday 15th of January, WeChat blocked 3 competing Apps on their launch day: Liantianbao (聊天宝) – formerly called Bullet Messenger, Duoshan (多闪) – launched by Tencent’s archenemy ByteDance, and Matong MT (马桶MT) – launched by Ringo.AI. Is this approach to competition specific to WeChat? To the Chinese market? And how do Chinese and Western companies differ in their growth strategies? …

We received many questions from clients and readers asking about the effects of the new e-commerce regulation in China that became effective from January 1st, 2019. Many worry that individuals will no longer be able to run WeChat stores anymore and that daigous will no longer operate their Taobao stores. We look into the regulation and here is the summary: …

With a reported 15.3% market share, Weimob is the largest provider of WeChat solutions for small and medium companies in China. The Tencent-backed company filed for its Hong Kong IPO on the 31st of December 2018. The data disclosed provides an interesting outlook into the world of WeChat 3rd party solution providers. Weimob performance Weimob has shown very positive performance …

Douyin is taking another big step towards e-commerce. Now any user who uploads over 10 videos can create a Douyin Store to sell products. Earlier in December, the requirement was to have over 8,000 followers in order to launch a store. How does Douyin Store work? As you might know already, Douyin is now the largest short-video platform in China. …

According to a recently released Newrank.cn report, from the 1st of January to the 14th of December 2018, WeChat Mini-programs attracted 4.3 billion RMB of funding, as part of 130 different funding rounds. This is 6 times more than the amount in 2017. Let’s have a closer look at this Mini-program investment boom. Investment focused on e-commerce and services Most …

I met with Juju for coffee in HK last weekend. She is a casual fashion blogger with 140k WeChat followers. In one post, she helped one of our clients sell 75k RMB of products within 24 hours. How did she get there? From 0 to 1, grow followers via cross-promotion Q: How did you grow your follower base from scratch? …

On November 27th, Taobao started integrating with Xiaohongshu on its product description page. Earlier in May 2018, Alibaba led the 300 million USD funding round of Xiaohongshu. The marriage of the 2 platforms is inevitable. But how exactly will this impact the social commerce space? Taobao’s first attempt to connect to Xiaohongshu The “Mega-Mashroom treatment lotion” from Origin was one …

Tencent released their Q3 2018 earnings, and they show a transformation into a new company: away from gaming, and toward online payments. But why is this change happening? Tencent Quarterly results Tencent earnings reflected a healthy growth of revenue (with a 24% increase YOY). Profits grew at a slightly slower pace of 22% YOY. Although this performance appears as reasonably …

It’s the 10th anniversary of Alibaba’s biggest invention: the Single’s Day (Double 11). It marked another record-breaking sales figure, but the growth is shifting to other platforms. The Double 11 is a cross-platform e-commerce phenomenon. The total Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) of all platforms reaches 314.3 billion RMB, a 23.8% year-over-year increase.  Tmall holds 68% of the market share. Yet …

It’s the final 5-days countdown before this year’s Double 11, the biggest e-commerce festival in China. The Chinese e-commerce space is maturing faster and this brings out some new highlights for this year: Alibaba’s campaigns are more focused on gamification & social sharing More complicated campaign/coupon rules Purchasing coupons instead of adding to cart WeChat is becoming another major channel …