Storekeeping in Cyberspace

By LI RUIJIE

    Hongbo 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 there has always been a thorn in Hongbo’s 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 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 China’s famous e-shopping 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 don’t need to stand beside counters and wait on customers. Overhead is almost nothing,” Hongbo points out.

    The advent of 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.

Avatar agency: this lady adopted the pseudonym Ningxiang to sell radioprotection robes for expectant mothers online.

    Check Out Rivals and Grab 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 customers 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 thriving business while some could barely attract a customer. On online sellers networks they exchange and discuss their 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 over 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 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 and 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 competition among e-stores in Taobao is very keen. Whenever you search the name of a 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.