Sometime last month, we headed to Hangzhou, birthplace of Taobao and the Alibaba Group, to be blown away by everything on offer at the Taobao Maker Festival, and see the future of retail brought to the present in the Taobao Cafe pop-up. But there was another especially empowering element to the event: Alibaba’s 2017 Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship, She-Era.
If you’ve watched videos of Alibaba founder Jack Ma speaking at events, you might know that the Chinese e-commerce magnate is a big believer of the power of women (see: this viral video of Ma on hiring as many women as possible, calling it the “secret sauce” of his company). We had the incredible honour of listening to Ma in person at this year’s conference, as he rounded up a series of talks that featured speakers like Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, Lakshmi Puri, Assistant Secretary-General of UN Women, and renowned fashion designer Vera Wang.
Ma reiterated that women are the key to Alibaba’s success, even going as far to say that his female co-workers have been the ones helping him through the difficult times. “Eighteen years since we founded Alibaba, it has consistently been female coworkers that pushed me forward,” he says.
He even jokingly said that if he had a choice, he’d want to come back as a woman in his next life. “I feel that men are capable only of making their businesses bigger, while women will make theirs better,” states Ma.
It’s not all talk for sure – his company has the stats to back up these female-centric views. Currently, about half of Alibaba’s over-50,000 employees are women; a third of the 18 founders, as well as senior management, are female.
And obviously, there’s strong female representation among the Taobao entrepreneurs, too. In a virtual marketplace of over 400 million active users, there are plenty of inspiring stories of female entrepreneurship. Here, we highlight 3 you should definitely show your support to.
Chin Studio
One thing we learnt at the Taobao Maker Festival is that this platform can make celebrities out of some of its most popular sellers – the booths by these Taobao celebrity sellers were the ones that attracted the largest crowds at the festival. Cherie Zhu Chenhui is one of them, after setting up a womenswear Taobao store in 2011 together with a university schoolmate Qian Yufan. They invested 3,000 yuan (about S$600) into the store, with Zhu modelling the store’s offerings herself. The duo’s efforts towards good management, social media promotion and interaction with their customers caused Chin Studio to really take off, and to date, they have more than 8 millions fans on Taobao.
With her success, Zhu even went on to set up a company to groom new internet celebrities and e-commerce owners, and she has signed almost 30 of Taobao’s most popular sellers; by the end of last year, her company was valued at 1 billion yuan.
Shop Chin Studio here.
Demi’s Products
Zhang Ruili started off as a Taobao model (it’s a legit profession over in China) in 2010, and soon enough found herself starting a Taobao business of her own. She’s the owner of Demi’s Products, also a womenswear store that has earned a triple-crown rating and Taobao, and brings in more than 1.5 million yuan in monthly income for Zhang.
She’s also become quite a well-known name in the live-streaming world (also something that’s really big in China right now), and was behind the most-watched live stream video by a non-celebrity on Taobao, with 1.5 million viewers.
Shop Demi’s Products here.
How Bottle
Twelve recycled plastic bottles to make a T-shirt – that’s the premise of How Bottle, run by Huang Ning Ning. She actually started off as an Alibaba employee, before leaving her role about a year ago to travel. That’s when she came across the idea of turning recycled plastic into apparel and accessories. It immediately resonated with her, hence she brought How Bottle to the Taobao platform, offering basic tees and drawstring bags to Chinese consumers.
At the Taobao Maker Festival, Huang spoke about the challenges of running a environment-conscious clothing business, and convincing people that they should pay a premium for these tees. It’s worth it though – we experienced first-hand at the How Bottle booth how soft and high-quality the products felt, so we sure hope Huang goes far with this initiative.
Shop How Bottle here.
Main image: Chin Studio
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