1、1Storekeeping in CyberspaceHongbo and Chenchen decided to try running a retail business online. This 20-something couple currently live in Beijing; Hongbo has a stable job at a public foundation and his wife Chenchen is doing market promotion for a private company. They enjoy a happy marriage, but t
2、here has always been a thorn in Hongbos side, “Neither of us are native to the city, so our life is unsettled here. The soaring housing prices and our wish to start a family place heavy financial pressure on us.” Hongbo was born in a rural area of Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Hubei
3、Province and his family is not financially comfortable. His wife was also born into an ordinary workers family, so economic support cannot be counted on. “We had to figure it out ourselves,” says Hongbo candidly. To add a source of income, the couple opened an e-store last year in Chinas famous e-sh
4、opping mall Taobao and named it “Forest Love Care Store.” “Our online business enables us to skip the costs of shop rental, storage space and staffing; it also saves our time as we dont need to stand beside 2counters and wait on customers. Overhead is almost nothing,” Hongbo points out. The advent o
5、f the e-store option has been a heaven-sent solution for those without enough money to fund a startup, or for those who want to make extra money to supplement their day job. And running an e-store has become a way for people to show their wit, creativity and discerning eye. Check Out Rivals and Grab
6、 the Spotlight The rapid development of the e-market in China indicates more and more urban dwellers are getting used to trusting online shops or service providers. This trend, compared with patronizing traditional large-and-mid-scale brick-and-mortar stores, is on the rise because it is providing c
7、ustomers with convenience and competitive prices. But to run an e-store well, one needs to find its selling point and run it whole-heartedly. “Before we decided to open our own e-store,” confided Chenchen, “I spent a lot of time in online research. There are countless e-stores: some of them enjoy a
8、thriving business while some could barely attract a customer.On online sellers networks they exchange and discuss 3their views on how to run e-stores and some of them have even compiled their experience into brochures. I used to read their posts; I also pretended to be a customer and chatted with ov
9、er ten experienced sellers in a bid to learn the secret to their success. Finally I realized that it might be easy to open an e-store, but it is definitely a challenge to run it well.” After their e-store was launched, Chenchen found that the thing more important than selecting good-quality goods is
10、 seizing any opportunity that may increase publicity, which equates to free advertisement for an enterprise. “I wrote articles about my e-store or my feelings about running it and posted them on popular BBS. I would often communicate with customers one-on-one via chatting tools to win their trust an
11、d I even asked my friends to link the address of my e-store to their blogs or their e-stores,” tells Chenchen. She believed her target customers should be habitual Internet users, therefore online promotion should get the greatest response. Competition Strategies Hongbo and Chenchen soon found that
12、competition among e-stores in Taobao is very keen. Whenever you search the name of 4a product online, there will be millions available with the same name, same picture and even the same introduction. “We had to make our store different,” says Hongbo. Research revealed there are two ways to make an e
13、-store stand out. First the seller should use key words that potential buyers would frequently use in searches. In fact, traffic and sales on the e-market are largely determined by appropriate key words and advertisements with search engines such as Google. As a start up their online store only earn
14、ed a few hundred yuan per month, which helped pay family expenses but left no extra funds for advertising. Just getting by in the beginning, they then discoveredcompetition became fiercer; the store slid into a very rough patch. To cope with the situation, they resorted to fiddling with appearances;
15、 to make their products look different, they changed the common name of “almond powder” into “beauty-care almond powder.” Soon after, the new name attracted the interest of many potential buyers. Cleverly, they sometimes intentionally used the wrong characters or illogical phrases in product names,
16、based on common mistakes made by netizens while typing. To round out those tactics, convincing customers that their 5products are different is also important. “Many shoppers still feel the instinct to stage a hard and bitter bargaining session before placing an order, and many have enquired about th
17、e price repeatedly before buying from my store. Our profits are already thin, so we have to make the customers see that our products are different or superior, even if they are not. For example, we can ensure customers that the quality of our goods is guaranteed because they are bought from designat
18、ed factories. To put it simply, we have to explain the selling point of our products in a simple and clear way,” explains Hongbo. A Store of Ones Own Running an e-store has become an easy retail market entry point for many college graduates to start their own businesses. Low costs recommend it, but
19、it still involves many risks. “Some of my friends opened e-stores years ago, but they all failed. I think it is not a matter of timing; it depends on how devoted you are to it, and how long you persist,” says Hongbo. He recalls that initially, he was almost chained to the computer for over ten hours
20、 a day ?C answering questions from potential customers, taking photos of the products and thinking 6carefully about the layout of the web pages to make it attractive and convenient. “It took so much of my time I concluded running an e-store amounts to having another lifestyle,” says Hongbo, “and you
21、 have to be tough enough to ride it out,” he adds. “I remember the first time I went to stock pyjamas; I walked the isles of almost every wholesale market in Beijing in order to find the lowest prices. I was so focused on cost savings I even begrudged RMB 10 for a simple lunch, and took buses to bri
22、ng tens-of-kilograms of goods back home. But it felt incomparably sweet to sell out of all those pyjamas.” In China, Taobao is one of the most successful e-shopping platforms. With more and more e-stores opening in that cyberspace, Taobao has become very crowded with the same products on the same pa
23、ge layouts. With sellers also using the same confusing marketing tricks and similar channels to replenish stock, the risk of getting lost in the shuffle is high for both online buyers and sellers. On top of that, competition among the e-commerce platforms is more serious: eBay, a pioneer of e-commer
24、ce, Tecent, one of Chinas largest Internet service portals, and the nations largest search engine Baidu have all ratcheted up efforts in this field. 7Hongbo and Chenchen still prefer the Taobao virtual mall. Taobao meets the needs and fits the habits of Chinese consumers. Besides, it has its own chat tool, through which buyers and sellers can communicate online anytime. Its services form a complete range, and the design of its web pages is clean and simple. Taobaos basic services are totally free, another big attraction to online shoppers. LI RUIJIE is a journalist at China Ethnic News.
