Each canine has its day：China’s largest second-hand buying and selling platform – Xianyu | The Global Today

For a very long time, there have been distinctive types of second-hand transactions in varied international locations on the planet, equivalent to flea markets in Europe and the USA, historic retailers in Japan, or ghost markets in historic China, which represent an necessary a part of the round economic system.

With the event of the instances, second-hand transactions are not restricted to offline varieties, equivalent to eBay, Mercari and different e-commerce platforms have emerged one after one other, and started to offer on-line second-hand buying and selling capabilities. China has additionally seen the emergence of on-line second-hand buying and selling platforms equivalent to Zhuanzhuan, Hongbulin and Duozhuayu. A few of them concentrate on recycling providers for books and client durables, whereas others cowl virtually all classes of second-hand items.

Xianyu is a consultant of the latter, and it’s the main second-hand platform in China. In keeping with the FY 2021 (April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020) report, its Gross Merchandise Quantity exceeds RMB 200 billion (About $31.4 billion), which makes it the High 1 used transaction model in China in 2021. In early April 2021, Xianyu even set a GMV goal of RMB 50 billion, which exhibits its ambition.

On this article, we are going to introduce the event of this Chinese language head second-hand buying and selling platform.

Born from Taobao

Most international netizens might not have heard of Xianyu, however must be no stranger to considered one of China’s largest e-commerce platforms, Taobao. Within the first years of Taobao, each retailers have been promoting new items (like Amazon) and people promoting used items (like eBay). However then, to satisfy China’s regulatory necessities, Taobao raised the bar for particular person sellers to make use of Taobao. It turns into not worthwhile to register a separate Taobao vendor account to often promote one or two used objects.

So in June 2014, the unique Taobao second-hand venture, formally with the title Xianyu from Taobao within the impartial, individually opened a web site. Taobao has fully develop into Amazon, and Xianyu is eBay.

When Xianyu was based, as a result of the product supervisor didn’t need to have too many Taobao marks on Xianyu, it didn’t use too many Taobao assets, which additionally made it later have a singular type totally different from Taobao.

Xianyu, taking the which means of the Chinese language homophone “闲余”, “闲” is idle time, whereas “余” is the idle objects and house. The phrase “闲鱼” straight interprets to “idle fish”, and its slogan is “Let your idle objects swim”, which is a reputation very a lot in step with the tone of the second-hand buying and selling platform.

Earlier than Xianyu, Alibaba Group already had two billion-level e-commerce platforms: Taobao and Tmall. Taobao is the inspiration from which Ali Group began, with a big variety of medium-sized retailers, whereas Tmall homes main model flagship shops and huge retailers. As talked about above, each of them have a sure threshold, but the emergence of Xianyu offers a platform for small and micro companies and people to commerce freely.

In China, Xianyu isn’t the primary platform to do second-hand transactions, 58.com, baixing.com and different web sites are older than it. However as a result of materials situations previously have been far much less favorable than they’re now, the Chinese language second-hand market remained comparatively inactive for a very long time.

Lately, as China’s per capita GDP has been rising 12 months by 12 months, individuals’s consumption ideas have regularly began to alter. Persons are turning into increasingly keen on purchasing and the variety of unused objects at house is rising. There are additionally some shoppers who need to purchase items however can not discover appropriate ones on e-commerce platforms equivalent to Taobao, which has likewise given rise to the demand for second-hand transactions.

In keeping with a Taobao consumer survey, virtually all Chinese language individuals have unused objects at dwelling, however most customers don’t have the free time and power to resell unused objects, or don’t know the channels to resell used items. The Chinese language second-hand market has a big growth house and good prospects, which is the premise for the start of Xianyu.

Though Xianyu is impartial from Taobao, it nonetheless makes use of Taobao’s account system and Alibaba’s Alipay payment system. Customers can straight use their Taobao accounts to log into Xianyu and even resell the products they purchased in Taobao with a single click on in it, which vastly reduces the use and studying prices for customers and brings a big consumer base to Xianyu. Alipay, one of many largest cellular fee apps in China, is confirmed when it comes to safety and comfort.

As well as, in comparison with different second-hand buying and selling platforms, Xianyu makes use of virtually the identical transaction assure system as Taobao. The customer pays the cash to Xianyu first, the vendor ships the products, the client receives the products and checks if they’re happy, confirms receipt, and it provides the cash to the vendor. Having Xianyu within the center as a assure vastly improves the safety of conducting second-hand transactions.

The mix of those benefits makes Xianyu stand out amongst Chinese language buying and selling platforms.

In 2016, based on the 2016 Sharing Financial system Improvement Report revealed by the First Monetary Enterprise Information Heart, the dimensions of China’s idle merchandise market is conservatively estimated to have reached a scale of RMB 400 billion (About $62.8 billion). Xianyu and the whole Chinese language second-hand transaction market have ushered in a booming part of growth. on Could 18, Alibaba Group merged its public sale enterprise with Xianyu, with Group CTO Zhang Jianfeng saying, “After becoming a member of forces, Xianyu and Public sale will collectively discover a wide range of sharing economic system enterprise varieties together with Xianyu public sale, Xianyu second-hand transactions, and Xianyu used vehicles “.

In the identical 12 months, the venture staff discovered that cellular was extra in step with consumer wants and extra handy to make use of, so that they closed the publishing operate on PC and targeted on the App. Right now solely the promotional web page in addition to the obtain portal stay on Xianyu’s official web site.

China’s second-hand market measurement reached RMB 883.4 billion in 2019, up 19% year-on-year, and is predicted to exceed a trillion RMB in 2020, reaching RMB 1,040.9 billion, with 182 million customers. The second-hand e-commerce platforms equivalent to Zhuanzhuan started to extend funding, and site visitors platforms equivalent to Kwai and Tiktok started to enter the second-hand e-commerce platform. Xianyu naturally didn’t lag behind, launched the “carefree buy”, “Huiwan group”, “new offline” three enterprise, and digital luxurious items and different high-priced objects buying and selling portal moved to the banner place.

In keeping with BigData-Analysis, Xianyu had 82.34 million month-to-month lively customers in March 2020, far exceeding different related second-hand buying and selling apps in China and even increased than the sum of their month-to-month lively customers.

In September 2020, Alibaba’s Vice President Ping Cao had mentioned in an interview that Xianyu‘s GMV exceeded RMB 200 billion previously 12 months, and on-line sellers reached 30 million. And Its month-to-month lively customers reached 90 million, and the objects listed on the market in Xianyu have exceeded 1 billion items per 12 months.

In 2021, the variety of registered customers of Xianyu has exceed 300 million. In April, Xianyu even revealed the information that GMV is predicted to exceed RMB 500 billion by the tip of 2021. Though the newest monetary report has not but been introduced, it’s already the rightful No.1 in China’s second-hand buying and selling platform sector.

Not simply second-hand

Xianyu focuses on second-hand transactions, but in addition hopes to construct an e-commerce content material group with youth attributes. It first created a group known as “Fish Pond”, after which upgraded “Fish Pond” to “Huiwan”, and positioned the doorway in the obvious tab on the house web page. It hosts capabilities equivalent to “circle” and “sq.”, the place customers can be a part of teams in several fields and publish information to share. You possibly can consider it as a mini Instagram embedded within the app.

The group content material, which appears unrelated to second-hand transactions, additional deepens the belief between customers. Whereas enhancing Xianyu’s consumer stickiness, it additionally promotes transaction conversion.

There are even many “Star customers” on Xianyu – well-known Chinese language actors, singers, hosts and extra. Once they publish second-hand items, they often work together with netizens or share their tales. Many netizens say that via Xianyu, they don’t really feel so far-off from the celebrities.

As well as, Xianyu has additionally elevated the rental, recycling previous issues, used vehicles, used homes and even home cleansing and different practical entrances, could be described as a small however full.

With the increase of reside commercing in China, Xianyu additionally launched a reside streaming operate in early 2020, which is claimed to be “0 threshold”. Abnormal customers solely must have “posted greater than 5 merchandise” and have their actual names verified to develop into hosts and broadcast reside on Xianyu. It may be thought-about one of many platforms with the bottom threshold for reside commercing in China’s e-commerce trade.

A survey by Alibaba Group exhibits that the highest three causes customers now switch unused objects are “to money” in (49%), “go low-carbon” (46%), and “promote to somebody with the identical pursuits” (41%). It may be seen that as we speak’s second-hand buying and selling market is not simply across the “transaction”, the idea of environmental safety and related pursuits even have a pivotal place, these coincide with the idea of Xianyu.

Xianyu has grown from a small venture inside Taobao to the highest of China’s second-hand market in lower than a decade, and this is because of its long-standing emphasis on group content material.

Right now China’s second-hand transaction market nonetheless has big potential, and I consider that Xianyu’s purpose of GMV 500 billion RMB can be reached within the close to future, and it’ll additionally be capable of make its mark in a broader market.