What Happened: Tmall’s brand incubator Tmall Super New Star has collaborated with Vogue China for the 618 Shopping Festival, the hotly anticipated mid-year retail gala. The partnership sees the fashion publication offer eight archetypes of young Chinese shoppers and product recommendation lists for each. The categories include fitness enthusiasts, beauty products appraisers, pet parents, health nourishment experts, and gastronomy reproducers. For each group, the list features discounted trending items from emerging companies such as the colored contact lenses label Moody, skincare house Kimtrue, and pet food maker Solid Gold.

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The Jing Take: As lockdown ends, brands and e-tailers are nimbly leveraging one of China’s largest shopping sprees. The 618 promotion carnival can be especially lucrative for emerging names looking to disrupt the market: according to Tmall data from 2021, up-and-coming names like the women’s personal care brand Amiro, health supplement label Mint Health, and underwear maker Ubras all set a single-day sales record in the same period last year. 

However, without pouring in large marketing bucks and heavily discounting products, these smaller-size firms will struggle — as deep-pocketed players and major households still take most of the traffic. In the long run, this business strategy is financially unsustainable.

Given this, domestic online platforms are gravitating their efforts towards lesser-known lines. The Tmall x Vogue initiative is shrewd: it aligns itself with young consumers by tapping their appetite for cutting-edge names and products, but also offers a credible lifeline to SMEs in the competitive digital marketplace. 

The Jing Take reports on a piece of the leading news and presents our editorial team’s analysis of the key implications for the luxury industry. In the recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debate sprouting on Chinese social media.

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