Yingzhi Yang · · 6 min readHow China’s KOLs convert fans to sales, creating a nearly $9b industry
The Kardashians may have been able to create an entertainment phenomenon in the US by revealing their luxurious lifestyle through a long-running reality TV series, but Chinese key opinion leaders (KOLs) have been able to convert fans and generate sales on a level their Western peers can only dream of.
While Western influencers are mostly video bloggers on Instagram or YouTube, Chinese KOLs can be columnists, socialites, photobloggers, or short-video creators – and they have multiple channels through which they can become famous, including social media platforms WeChat and Weibo, social networking service Douban, and video platform Douyin – known as TikTok overseas.
With more than 7.5 million combined followers on WeChat and Weibo, Becky Li is one of China’s top fashion bloggers, able to convert followers to sales through posts on her WeChat public account.
In 2014, Li quit her job as a reporter for a local Chinese newspaper to become a full-time blogger on WeChat. Three years ago, she partnered with American fashion brand Rebecca Minkoff for a limited-edition purse with the label of “Miss Fantasy.”
Photo credit: South China Morning Post
A year later, she collaborated with iconic British car brand Mini to promote a limited-edition vehicle through WeChat, and her followers snapped up 100 cars in five minutes. Last year, she was invited to attend the world’s biggest fashion events in Paris, Milan and New York.
For the Lunar New Year in February, WeChat Pay hired Li to be “chief experience officer” for its overseas payment service.
“I thought WeChat would hire a celebrity,” said Li in her office, decorated in pink with atrovirens, in the heart of Guangzhou. “Maybe they chose me because I shop a lot overseas and my readers also buy a lot of things outside China.”
Li’s influence in the consumer world did not happen overnight. In the early days, she was working alone and writing from her own home. Now she has a company with around 70 staff and has incubated three other lifestyle-related WeChat public accounts.
“I often write about products based on my own preferences,” said Li, whose WeChat account, Becky’s Fantasy, was inspired by Sophie Kinsella’s The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic, a novel that tells the story of a shopping addict who is a financial journalist. “I related to the protagonist Rebecca Bloomwood,” said Li.
“When you have your own taste and it remains consistent, readers who share similar tastes will eventually find you,” she added.
But Li was not content with just boosting sales for brands, for which she receives a commission. At the end of 2017, she launched her own clothing brand, which shares the same name as her public WeChat account.
The first new products rolled out in December 2017, including a cashmere sweater and black gauzy skirt, reached sales of 1 million yuan (US$149,000) within seven minutes and were sold out in the first day. Li said she never meant for them to sell out so quickly, but it was caused by supply chain constraints.
“We’re still a relatively small brand,” she said. “When you are a big brand, you have a much bigger say when it comes to suppliers,” she added.
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