A few weeks later, a designer brand that was moving its headquarters reached out to the couple to help sell excess inventory. The brand had about 700 pairs of shoes it wanted to unload. Within three hours, during a livestream on Taobao, Yuan and Zhang sold all the merchandise.

In the US, dominant platforms typically have just two out of the three: Amazon is a wealth of commerce and content related to products, Tik Tok has community and content—but it’s rare to successfully integrate all three elements (they require very distinct DNA to do well!). Successful case studies include Glossier and Food52, while new startups lik... See more

From Huya (game streaming) to Pinduoduo (cheap Taobao) to Dianping (Yelp for China) to Yinke, Yizhibo, Douyu, Bilibili, and Meipai (live streaming platforms) to Xiaohongshu (shopping reviews) to Duoyin (TikTok of China) to Weibo (Facebook of China), China is a rich, booming ecosystem for social. But beyond pure social, each of these aforementioned ... See more