Idle Fish launches new site for brand-certified stores
Alibaba expanded its used-goods marketplace. Source: shutterstock.com
Alibaba Group’s used-goods marketplace, Idle Fish (“Xianyu” in Mandarin), opened registration for a new premium channel that allows brands to operate their own official stores.
Overseeing their own storefronts, brands can cash in on their idle assets — ranging from sample items, seconds, overstock merchandise to recycled or used products while offering consumers access to verified goods.
To improve the shopping experience, the platform said — for all products listed on the channel — consumers can receive no-questions-asked refunds within 7 days of the purchase and product exchanges within 30 days, as well as a 180-day service support guarantee.
Mobile interface of Alibaba’s Idle Fish app. Source: alizila.com
The new channel will offer electronic appliances in the pilot phase, before expanding to other categories, such as jewelry, watches, shoes, handbags, books, instruments and luxury goods. Idle Fish hasn’t shared an exact release date but said that ThinkPad and Chinese electronics firms TCL and Changhong were among the first brands to sign on.
Launched by China’s largest online marketplace, Taobao, in 2014, Idle Fish is now China’s largest secondhand trading platform in terms of monthly active users, with more than 200 million registered users — and over half of them born after 1990.
According to a recent report from big data service provider QuestMobile, China’s “recommerce” market saw nearly 40 million users near the end of 2017, and forecast to hit 67 million in 2019. That’s up from just 1.58 million in 2014.
