The coronavirus quarantine economy has supercharged the growth of live-streaming and KOLs (key opinion leaders) in China. Taobao Live, a live-streaming platform owned by Alibaba, has seen its user base and sales grow significantly in recent months. This trend is likely to continue as the Chinese economy reopens and consumers increasingly turn to digital channels for shopping and entertainment.
I consider digital platforms the super predators of the business world. They are like that Indominus Rex dinosaur in the movie Jurassic World that is part T-Rex and part velociraptor (photo here). And when it breaks free (which always happens in those movies), it runs around eating everything on the island. Because it is the […]
In Part 1 and Part 2, I gave some background on sports apparel in China and detailed my visit to the new Tmall – Intersport store in Beijing. It was pretty great. With lots of new digital initiatives like the magic mirrors. Note: the above picture is what happens when you change the gender setting […]
There are a couple perks to having a decent-sized following as a writer (currently closing in on 3M followers). You get to fly around the world a bit to give talks, which I love. People tend to send swag and books. Always fun. And every now and then, a company reaches out with an invitation […]
Will China’s “new retail” change sports apparel? It turns out it’s a really interesting question. Sports apparel retail is people buying running shoes, Nike gear, yoga pants, sweatshirts and so on. At first glance it looks like pretty standard retail. Lots of stores, inventory management and marketing. So lots of opportunities for digitizing operations. But […]