Online outlets prove boon for smaller retailers

Micro-sized retailers in third-tier or smaller cities are increasingly opening online outlets to grow their businesses, with a greater number of women entrepreneurs operating such stores, according to a recent finding.

Since February, Guangdong, Hunan, Henan, Shandong and Jiangsu provinces have seen the fastest growth in the number of newly registered online retailers, Alibaba Group's e-commerce platform Taobao has found.

For fiscal year 2023, the number of retailers who opened online stores on Taobao exceeded 5.12 million, a new high, with some 1.3 million who registered online stores born after the year 2000, Taobao said.

In particular, the number of female retailers from smaller cities and the western part of China has grown, with young women born after the year 2000 accounting for more than 30 percent of the total female online retailers as of the end of last year.

Women also formed 80 percent of the total number of anchors who broadcast during livestreaming sessions online.

Among online customer service employees, some 85 percent are women, and this has created job opportunities for many college graduates and young mothers, Taobao found.

"The rapid growth of e-commerce platforms, short-video platforms such as Douyin, and the popularity of livestreaming sessions in China have provided good exposure and promotional channels for online sales of various products," said Lou Lei, executive director of consultancy Frost & Sullivan China.

"E-commerce platforms help solve some pain points of traditional offline sales, such as long sales chains and the distance from consumers," Lou said.

Last year, China had 50 industrial belts whose annual transaction values on Taobao and Tmall — both Alibaba's e-commerce platforms — exceeded 10 billion yuan ($1.39 billion), including 16 in third-tier cities and inland cities.

Some traditionally weak industries have seized the new business opportunity to develop and expand with the help of e-commerce platforms, according to Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall Group.

Xu Tianyu has been operating a furniture factory for seven years in Nantong, Jiangsu province. Xu recently opened an online outlet to sell furniture after providing products for a friend's online store earlier.

"Some niche segments have sales growth prospects online. I plan to make some furniture related to online games and e-sports, and my first product will be a height-adjustable desk," Xu said.

The user scale of products related to e-sports has exceeded 100 million on Taobao, and a number of e-sports derivatives have become hot sellers online, the platform found.

"The latest consumption trends of young people have indicated some new features and new preferences. Such a diversified demand will provide more business growth potential for the supply side," said Xu Fei, director of the research center at Taobao and Tmall Group.

"For instance, the markets for Chinese-style products, healthcare, pets and sporting goods show significant consumption demand and opportunities for entrepreneurship," Xu said.

Other than newly emerging segments, online platforms also provide faster sales channels for traditional sectors.

Tianyue, a company in Yiyang, Hunan province, is mainly involved in the planting, processing and sale of traditional Chinese medicine herb sealwort, whose planting cycle is typically four years.

The company started planting the herb in 2019, and got its first harvest in 2023, with an estimated output value of over 20 million yuan.

"We operate brick-and-mortar stores and recently launched an online store. Our daily online sales volumes have exceeded 130 orders from just a few in the beginning. We are also preparing to hold livestreaming sessions to further expand sales online," said Tang Juanli, director of e-commerce at Tianyue.