According to a survey conducted by a Chinese recruitment site, 22% of Chinese women feel severely discriminated against in search of a job.
Although both partners work in about half of married couples, women are almost six times more likely to be unemployed than their husbands, often by raising children.
Wechat & E-Commerce
With the boom in e-commerce, women are freed from the usual gender discrimination at workplaces in China, they can launch their online shops from home and be their own boss. The female dominance of the e-commerce space in China is revealed by the figures : 55% are women who open new businesses online. (source)
Women-owned businesses already account for more than half of the stores on the Taobao and Tmall e-commerce platforms of Alibaba.
More recent and smaller than Tmall, Taobao and JD.com, and housed in Tencent’s e-mail platform, WeChat stores were opened to public enterprises in 2014.
Wechat
Unlike platforms built for e-commerce, (Example : Alibaba) the Wechat application operates as a social commerce system, where store and product information is shared among groups of followers or contacts, Instead of publishing or searching for products. This makes it unique for future entrepreneurs with limited capital.
It is not knowledge, money, power that will make you know but rather your creativity towards your customers.
Last year, nearly one-third of WeChat’s 800 million daily users made online purchases on WeChat.
Example of successful women in e-commerce
-Wu Xiaoyu opened its first online store in 2009 before WeChat exists.
She worked full time as a digital strategy analyst for a marketing firm in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province.
She had plans to sell local products such as honey and nuts from her hometown in a mountainous area of Henan because the people who lived there were not equipped to sell. So, after work, she began publishing articles and photos online and creating a customer base.
After two years, Wu left his job to be able to officially register his business and give birth to his daughter. Today, Wu Xiaoyu owns two WeChat stores, employs just under 40 people.
It has an existing customer portfolio of 600,000. It generates about 2.8 million yuan (314,000 €) in sales per month.
She is one of a growing number of women who reorganize the gender balance of Chinese entrepreneurship through e-commerce.
-Lily Shi, 30, started her WeChat store, “Love Rabbit”, using the personal networking strategy
Shi began selling imported accessories from Korea on WeChat in 2014, the same year that Tencent opened the WeChat stores for the public.
Shi decided not to open an “official account,” where companies can send messages and promotions to subscribers.
Instead, she engaged in more direct social commerce, simply posting photos on her personal WeChat account on jewelry and accessories received from her Korean supplier.
Only his WeChat contacts were able to see these publications in his “Moments” news feed, but by sharing his account, his WeChat contact circle increased to 2,700.
This group can click on their messages to access their store without leaving WeChat. Shi, who has since left his job in an international training firm to focus on his full-time business.
Today, she receives the majority of her orders in her store Taobao; Instead, she learned that striving to build a successful business is more than a full-time job.
She sells handmade care products on Wechat and Taobao
She never wanted to return to work full time after the birth of her daughter, so she opened an online site in order to earn money, while taking care of her family.
She now earns about 200,000 yuan (26,500 €) per month, and recently expanded to open a WeChat store due to increased customer demand.
“Zhang said the organic flow of information on WeChat is working well for his company.” Almost everyone I know uses my products now. ”
Conclusion:
On WeChat, official companies and independent vendors rely on the promotions of their friends and followers.
The WeChat application created an entirely different ecosystem, which shares few similarities with typical ecommerce platforms.
The e-commerce giants like Amazon and eBay or Taobao and Tmall are all based on a searchable directory that will display products from different brands and merchants.
But on WeChat, consumers have to log in or search for a vendor, instead of looking for a product. It is inspired by this time of the Tupperware celebrations, this social sellingstyle to invite people to home to present the products.
That’s about the same concept of working with your social network and friends, but on WeChat.
For entrepreneurs, persistence is crucial to success.
The growing number of women entrepreneurs in the booming e-commerce sector in China makes the question of whether the e-economy succeed in upsetting power relations in patriarchal China more relevant than ever.
From_Cosmetics China Agency
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