The 2023 Tmall Brand Entrepreneurship Report is released! The health and wellness track is the hottest, and Guangzhou takes the first place in the annual brand creation city.

In 2023, many companies are having a tough time, with negative news such as "cost reduction and efficiency improvement," layoffs, and passive management becoming more frequent. At the same time, another force of brand entrepreneurship is quietly emerging.

Alibaba's financial report for the first quarter of the 2024 fiscal year revealed a set of data: in the past year, Taotian has added over 5 million new merchants, and in the second quarter, the number of new merchants on Tmall increased by 75% compared to the same period last year. This number continued to rise in the third quarter, reaching 105%.

The emergence of these data undoubtedly brings a different voice to the current main theme of the e-commerce industry, which is the rising demand for "increasing traffic incrementally and shifting from stock to flow."

This not only represents the growth of the Taotian platform but also means that many brand entrepreneurs are standing out in the current weak consumer environment and increasingly rational mainstream consumer views. They have become an important new force supporting the growth rate of GMV on e-commerce platforms.

Why are so many brand entrepreneurs emerging now? What opportunities do brand entrepreneurs have in the current environment?

The number of new Tmall stores in 2023 increased by 70% compared to the previous year

On December 22nd, the annual Tmall Brand Entrepreneurship Report was released. This is not only a summary of Tmall's year but also regarded as a barometer of the consumer industry. By analyzing the stories behind high-growth brands, we can glimpse consumers' preferences and shopping trends for specific brands and categories.

Looking at different industries, health and wellness were the hottest sectors for brand entrepreneurship in 2023, with over 10,000 new Tmall stores. The top six industries for brand entrepreneurship in 2023 were health and wellness, home decoration and furnishings, consumer electronics, fashion and sports, beauty and personal care, and trendy cultural and creative products. At the same time, cycling and skiing, new taste beverages, light wellness, relaxed clothing, technology beauty care, and atmospheric home furnishings became popular trends in brand entrepreneurship in 2023.

In terms of regions, the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, the two major "free shipping zones," are the preferred locations for brand entrepreneurship. Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Jinhua, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xuzhou, Wenzhou, Beijing, Xiamen, and Changsha are the top ten cities with the most brand entrepreneurship on Tmall in 2023.

In terms of merchant types, the majority are self-owned brands from special industrial belts, accounting for 41%. The next largest group is new consumer brands created to meet new demands, accounting for 19%. In addition, there are content-based IPs, live streamers, and other brand creators.

Among the top 20 special industrial belts with the fastest brand creation growth in 2023, Cangzhou fishing tackle, Caoxian women's clothing, Luoyang flowers, and Taian pastries and biscuits had the fastest growth in the number of new stores, with growth rates exceeding 1000%.

Snowline's Winning Strategy from the Perspective of a Cutting-Edge Brand

For many consumers, Tmall is still the preferred platform to learn about and purchase authentic branded products. It is also the preferred place for businesses and entrepreneurs to operate.

A typical example is Snowline, a lifestyle brand that started with skiwear. Like all OEM factories, its strengths and weaknesses are evident: outstanding production capabilities, but a lack of experience in translating production capabilities into product and brand strength. When Jiang Qijun brought his "top-notch skiwear" worth four to five hundred yuan to a ski resort in Northeast China, he found that people didn't care about the style at all.

The experience of initial entrepreneurial failure gave Jiang Qijun a new understanding of the word "brand." He realized that "product strength does not equal brand strength. To start a business, one must step out of the producer's perspective and stand with the users. Produce what the users want."

Clearly, having robust production capabilities and supply chain capabilities are essential for success, but they are not enough to support the rise of a new brand. Only products that meet consumer needs are considered to have product strength.

Years later, when the slogan "300 million people on ice and snow" became more and more popular, a report from the Asian Data Group predicted that the scale of China's ice and snow industry would reach 890 billion yuan in 2023 and 1 trillion yuan in 2025. This gave Jiang Qijun another opportunity and prompted the relaunch of the Snowline brand. Today, Snowline's sales on Tmall, its main battlefield, have steadily increased, achieving multiple-fold growth year after year.

Whether it's Snowline or many other emerging brands that have already shown promise in terms of sales, Tmall categorizes them into two typical paths: one is the path of replacing big brands, relying on supply chain advantages to reduce costs and prices, capturing consumers with price competitiveness, and the platform also provides more policy support to such businesses. The other path is like Snowline, truly integrating into consumers' lifestyles, making up for the gap in consumer insights and innovative marketing capabilities with the advantage of production capabilities, and becoming a true cutting-edge brand.

With the joint efforts of the platform and the brands, more and more emerging brands are injecting new vitality into the e-commerce market.