Eco-friendly and Obama-approved: a boutique store turned into China’s hippest new online marketplace

Two years ago, Bunny Yan opened up a boutique store in Shanghai selling accessories and home items. It focused on sustainably-produced goods – “impact products,” as Bunny calls them. The shop curated the work of a handful of local designers who produced upcycled and recycled bags, jewelry, and various home goods. It was nice and homey. It didn’t seem like the kind of company that, in 2015, would have its founders raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding and meeting Barack Obama.

“We opened the store to see if there was a market in China for impact products,” Bunny tells Tech in Asia. “The results were very positive.”

Tapping into a trend

While running her brick and mortar shop, called The Squirrelz, Bunny made connections in the Shanghai design scene and sized up the potential market for socially-responsible goods in China.

“The vintage trend in Shanghai is very hot. The idea of having somebody else’s things is no longer taboo,” she says, noting that, until recently, there was not much of an appetite in China for previously owned or used goods. “We are really pushing the idea that we upcycle – it’s not that the things are collected from garbage cans.”

Chinese attitudes towards recycled and sustainably-sourced goods have become more accepting in the last few years, and Bunny believes she spotted a gap in the market. The folks at Chinaccelerator seemed to agree: her business was accepted into the startup acceleration program at the beginning of 2015, and it took off from there.

While in Chinaccelerator, The Squirrelz expanded its team, raised funds, and designed a website to bring Bunny’s upcycled, eco-friendly products out of her shop and online.

The Squirrelz drew the attention of the White House, which hosts the Challenge Cup by 1776, an international tournament that brings together startups from around the world. Bunny and The Squirrelz represented China at the event in May, where they made connections with other entrepreneurs, gained quite a bit of publicity, and met President Obama.

Curators gonna curate

The Squirrelz emerged from Chinaccelerator with a healthy amount of funding, an expanding team – now a dozen full-time employees – and a website in beta. The site, which officially went online earlier this month, resembles certain corners of online marketplaces like Etsy, with one notable difference: The Squirrelz curates its collection and does a lot of the leg work.

“We offer a service platform,” Bunny says. “We do all of the photos, the content, and the marketing. So the designer can just focus on making great products.”

The website initially launched with ties to about 40 designers, with dozens more in the pipeline. In addition to presentation and curation, The Squirrelz also gives its designers data on their sales – how many are buying, where they’re shipping to, and more.

For these services, The Squirrelz takes a hefty 50 percent commission. But, Bunny says, the designers have welcomed the service with open arms. There is no fee to feature your goods on the site in the first place – you only pay a commission per sale – and many designers also feature their goods in other stores in addition to The Squirrelz.

Selling the brand