Sublime

* RaaS: Offering resale-as-a-service for brands like Everlane and Madewell. They helps merchants monetize returns. As e-commerce grows, so will this channel.

As offline modes of operations became disrupted by the Covid-19 disease, Taobao Live offered businesses a lifeline to reach vast audiences, including the more than 800 million monthly active users that visit Alibaba’s e-commerce sites. In February, Taobao Live removed barriers and waived service fees for brick-and-mortar merchants to join its platf... See more

A few weeks later, a designer brand that was moving its headquarters reached out to the couple to help sell excess inventory. The brand had about 700 pairs of shoes it wanted to unload. Within three hours, during a livestream on Taobao, Yuan and Zhang sold all the merchandise.

Founded by Zhang, an early TikTok investor in 2017, Shop LIT Live received a $6 million seed round led by CRCM Ventures in April 2021. It currently has slightly under 100,000 monthly active users, over 10,000 weekly active users and “thousands” of daily active users, said Zhang. Month-to-month user numbers are growing by 40%, he said. The platform ... See more