Online shopping and China’s underground

A merchant showcases the elaborate Lolita dresses she sells online. / Photo credit: Classical Puppets

Mu He is clad in a baby doll-like dress as she poses for photos, her attire a mix of gothic, French rococo, Victorian children’s wear, and Japanese anime – a fashion style called Lolita.

Mu helps run an online store called Classical Puppets that sells Lolita-style clothes to China’s youngsters.

Ten years ago, this kind of subculture was rarely seen in the country. “Parents wouldn’t want their kids to wear these dresses. They would dismiss them as too foreign,” says Mu, who oversees business development for the store on Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace.

“Now, I wear Lolita whenever I’m in the mood.”

Lolita emerged as a street fashion in Japan in the 1990s and soon spread to neighboring China. But shops in China didn’t sell those frilly dresses. The target group was too small, and most of the outfits are tailor-made, making them difficult to mass produce and sell off the rack.

Delicate finishing on a Lolita dress / Photo credit: Classical Puppets

Then Taobao came along and created a space where niche products can be sold. To a certain extent, the move also put the spotlight on different subcultures.

Dress to impress

Before online shopping, Mu’s business depended on online forums to sell. It would wait for enough people to sign up for a group purchase and then commission a factory to make the dresses – a time-consuming and unpredictable practice.

As ecommerce took off in China, Mu’s niche venture opened its Taobao store in 2008.

Unlike Amazon, Taobao focuses on small merchants. To Mu, the biggest draw of Alibaba’s marketplace is its reach.

“It leverages big data and personal recommendation to help us identify the right audience. People who have searched for relevant items like comics may get our product recommendations,” she explains. No more hoping customers will stumble upon them.

Mu was one of 200 merchants Alibaba invited last week to its annual festival that showcases “original makers” on Taobao.

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