E-commerce Startup Kumami Sells Imported Kids’ Products to Worried Chinese Mothers

The Kumami team

Being a mother (or father) in China is not an easy thing these days. Numerous scandals involving everything from milk powder to clothing and toys have led many parents to believe Chinese products just aren’t safe. But importing products is expensive and moreover impractical for the average parent, and that’s where brand-new Chinese startup Kumami steps in. It’s a flash sales platform that offers children’s products imported from the US and Europe at discounted prices (the name, fittingly, means “Cool Mommy”). It’s a pretty cool idea and the site looks quite slick, so we got in touch with Kumami Founder and CEO Shaun McWhortor to see what more we could learn about the service.

How did you get the idea for Kumami?

Prior to Kumami.cn, we had a small social network startup for Chinese moms called maozhao.com. We spoke to lots of moms to understand what kind of products they wanted and problems they faced. In doing so, we realized how concerned mothers in China are about the quality of local products for their kids. There are so many product scares and recalls that it really makes you skeptical about buying anything your child can eat, play with or even wear. This is why you find lots of moms in China buying items like milk powder, baby food and gear overseas in Hong Kong, the USA, Holland and other countries.

What we learned is that most mothers in China associate overseas brands with trust and higher quality. Even if overseas brands are manufactured in China, they are typically held to higher production standards. This insight, coupled with a steady increase in the amount of money families are willing to spend on their children and the strength of the Yuan, lead us to pivot our business to focus on offering unique high quality baby and kids products from the USA and Europe.

How has the reception been? Are there any numbers you can share with us?

The reception so far has been extremely positive. Many moms have told us they really enjoy the serendipity of finding cool and unique products through Kumami.cn as opposed to the standard traditional e-commerce experience. Normally, shopping online is a task, but kumami.cn introduces fun and surprise into the shopping experience.

As far as numbers, it’s really been beyond our expectations. We just launched the site two weeks ago and with almost no marketing, over 5,000 moms have visited the site with more than 500 registering to receive our daily sales events emails.

Why flash sales rather than a more traditional e-commerce setup?

From the beginning, we didn’t want to compete with traditional e-commerce companies like Redbaby or Taobao. Those companies are extremely well established and do a good job of supplying daily necessities. But we wanted to differentiate ourselves and offer cool products with a unique shopping experience. The flash sales model allows us to create a fun and serendipitous shopping experience by handpicking high quality unique products that are unavailable or hard to find in China. The other benefit of using a flash sales model is that it allows us to buy in bulk in order to reduce costs and pass those savings along to the customer.

What is the plan going forward?

We believe our success lies in our ability to continue to source really unique products and great deals for mothers. So our plan is to continue to grow our team, improve our inventory and logistics capabilities and build relationships with brands we love. From a technology perspective, our next project will be to develop a mobile app to complement our website for those mothers on the go.