Chinese Instagram analog Xiaohongshu turns into a sales platform

The Chinese social network Xiaohongshu, similar to Instagram, is promoting sales through e-commerce, UNN  reports citing Reuters.

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Tera Feng is a Chinese blogger who started showing her life in Shanghai on Xiaohongshu eight years ago. In her blog, she also shows visits to art galleries and fashion events on Chinese social media. Her audience currently consists of over 500,000 subscribers.

Feng and the brands she works with have found that the blogger audience  is predominantly financially independent urban Chinese women who are  willing to spend money.

For example, on a recent live sales broadcast on the social media platform Xiaohongshu three months ago, Feng sold everything from a Carven suit for 15,000 yuan (2,060 USD) to her favorite brand of rice, which costs 60 yuan for a 1 kg bag.

Sometimes compared to Instagram, Xiaohongshu has long been one of China's most important marketing tools.

Over the past decade, the platform has made several moves into e-commerce without much success. But now, according to consultants, brands, especially those selling niche and high-end products, have finally seen sales growth this year in a challenging retail environment.

While retailers have been forced to make big discounts on other e-commerce platforms, such as Alibaba's Taobao and PDD Holdings ' Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu's focus on an ambitious lifestyle attracts less price-sensitive users.

Brands really value users on Xiaohongshu because the consumption power is completely different from other platforms

While some brands, such as L'Oreal, Tapestry's, and Coach, have opened their own stores on the platform, many brands are also investing in partnerships with opinion leaders who live stream product selections from different brands and categories.

There is a better chance that we will be discovered by the right consumers, because this is where people go to research products aimed at women's lifestyles

She added that Xiaohongshu's e-commerce will be a priority for the brand's launch early next year.

Xiaohongshu was late to the live-streaming sales boom in China, led by Alibaba's Tmall and ByteDance's Douyin, but in 2022 it merged its e-commerce and live-streaming divisions to include live-streaming procurement functions.

Opinion leaders who live-stream on Xiaohongshu tend to use a quieter conversational tone when interacting with viewers, which sets them apart from the fast-paced, energetic bloggers on other platforms.

Ian Hilton, president of Ms. Min, an independent Chinese designer brand that sells knitted sweaters costing more than 5,000 yuan, said they caught a sudden sales surge on  Xiaohongshu after they were featured on a live stream hosted by Chinese actress Dong Jie.

We never viewed Xiaohongshu as a sales platform, it was a place to tell our stories and build brand awareness,” he said. “But when Dong Jie talks about Ms. Ming, we can sell hundreds of units after one live broadcast

Xiaohongshu has been largely silent on its e-commerce strategy, but Jacob Cook, CEO of e-commerce consultancy WPIC Marketing + Technologies, which works with brands looking to join the platform, said the company is hiring staff from rivals Alibaba and Douyin from ByteDance.  

We expect triple-digit growth in Xiaohongshu's GMV (gross merchandise volume, a measure of sales) next year

Others, however, say that Xiaohongshu is likely to remain a niche e-commerce player and will not pose a real threat to the big platforms.According to consulting firm Syntun, Tmall, JD.com and Pinduoduo, China's top three platforms, account for more than 90% of the country's total sales ($2.78 trillion).

Recall 

Danish researchers have conducted a study that found that Instagram does not remove dangerous self-harm content. The social network's algorithms actively promote the spread of such materials among teenagers.