Twenty-four-hour Taobao – A Self Experiment

From Breakfast to Facekinis

I opened the Taobao.com homepage. First of all, I needed breakfast, German style of course. This should be a mere warm-up exercise for Taobao, right?

Since the company was founded in 2003, it has steadily expanded. The founder Jack Ma (Ma Yun) has become an Internet icon in China. When, at the beginning of the new century, eBay entered the Chinese market, Ma decided to offer a Chinese alternative. He hence founded Taobao for private vendors to sell new and second-hand products that offers the choice between an auction and a direct purchase-option.

Clever marketing and the site’s personal touch and design, paired with adaptations of site functions that fit Chinese users’ preferences, along with a daring investment strategy, have paved the way for the unexpected victory of Ma and his team over U.S. Internet-giant eBay. In 2006, eBay announced its retreat from the Chinese market. China’s David thus defeated America’s Goliath. But can Taobao really deliver a typical German breakfast to start my day?

I keyed “German breakfast” in Chinese characters in the input field. Bingo! From a seemingly endless list of German muesli variants and cereals I selected a Taobao shop that offers typical German black bread. Two 250 gram packages of “fitness bread” for RMB 43 – around € 5.80, delivery included. For an extra RMB 20 I added a pot of German brand “Schwartau Extra” cherry-jam. That’s it – mission accomplished, breakfast is on the way. Let’s go on to the next challenge.

According to available statistics, Taobao offers more than 800 million products relating to all areas of daily life. In 2014, an average 50,000 changed hands every minute (!). Different from eBay, auctions account for only a fraction of all private Taobao online-vendors’ sales. The biggest slice of the product pie is that of goods sold at a fixed price.

November 11, the day China’s online vendors hype as China’s yearly “shopping carnival,” is the peak of the sales scale. On this date in 2015, products worth RMB one billion (around € 130 million) changed hands over Taobao’s virtual store counters in just 12 seconds. A takings check at the end of the day showed the figure of RMB 15.9 billion – 122-fold that at start of play.

But back to my self-experiment: The relentless Beijing summer heat takes its toll; I can feel it scorching my skin during my morning trudge to the office. I consequently declared sun protection as task two of my Taobao challenge.

A pretty parasol is one possible solution, as carrying one in China is still en vogue. But that would be too easy, I guess. Instead, I took a fancy to one of those head-and-face style swimming caps devised by Chinese “Dama,” Chinese matrons from Qingdao keen to avoid getting a sun tan. They christened their polyester-creation the “facekini,” whose extreme look has brought it international media fame.

In 2014 this phenomenon entered even French fashion circles, when models wearing these facekinis took part in a photo shoot for the French CR Fashion Book magazine. So please, I want one of these unique Chinese fashion items. Give me some of this colorful polyester-glamour!

November 11 is hyped as China’s yearly “shopping carnival” by online vendors.

I searched via keyword “facekini” and again: a hit! After only a couple of clicks I find a vendor offering these seaside balaclavas that, with only small slits for the mouth, nose and eyes, look more like an accessory for sun-sensitive bank robbers than beach holiday wear. The shop offers facekinis in all sizes, colors, and designs. I vacillated between a Beijing opera mask and the Spiderman look. However, I eventually went for a model in classic light blue, like that in the summer edition of CR Fashion Book in 2014. Check. Another task successfully completed.