While Alibaba and JD.com continue to dominate the e-commerce scene in China with 58.2% and 16.3% market share according to eMarketer, a number of relatively smaller specialist players have caught increasingly attention in China’s e-commerce market recently. In today’s rapidly evolving and highly competitive online marketplace, these fast-growing companies provide another option for businesses to market and sell their products. Fung Business Intelligence has identified some of these emerging players, each focusing on a specific area such as group-buying, O2O lifestyle services, social commerce, vertical online platforms and short videos. In this series of articles, we provide an overview of the key business and developments of these emerging player; we also identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

In this issue, we discuss the business model and latest developments of Secoo – a leading O2O luxury fashion retailer in China and Asia selling luxury clothing, footwear, jewelry, watches, bags and accessories. Over the years, Secoo has successfully built an integrated O2O platform which consists of the online platform (website and mobile app) and offline experience centers, providing an ideal channel for luxury brands to reach out to Chinese consumers. The company was listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange in September 2017.