In age of e-commerce behemoths, microshops find their niche
Faced with a sea of retailers on big sites like Taobao, consumers are turning to small stores hosted on WeChat, often run by friends
Call it personal shopping by proxy. Every few hours Beijing housewife Verna Zhang gets an alert on her mobile phone telling her about the latest "must have" consumer item - a South Korean face mask and Japanese toothpaste one day, fresh strawberries and home-made duck dishes the next.
The sales pitches aren't coming from any e-commerce giant, but rather "microshops" her friends run over the WeChat messaging app.
Zhang says she prefers to buy through these more intimate channels than browse the online shopping malls hosted on the websites of the mainland's internet giants because it saves time.
"This is a better place to shop than Taobao," the 32-year-old says, referring to the country's largest e-commerce platform, which is controlled by Alibaba. "If my friends recommend something to me, I feel that they have tried it and felt really good about it. I do not need to spend a lot of time searching and comparing online."
Individuals and small merchants are turning to WeChat and Weibo to set up small retail businesses, tapping into the social media platform's 500 million-plus accounts for potential customers. Larger companies have taken notice and are beginning to follow suit. "Microshops are the next big opportunity in the e-commerce sector in China," said Jayson Chi, a partner with the McKinsey consulting firm's Hong Kong office.
