Nearly 2 months after “TikTok refugees” sought asylum on Rednote and pushed the Chinese lifestyle platform to the global stage, the platform is now ready to extend its e-commerce branch abroad. On 10 March, Rednote (formerly RED) announced its “Rednote e-commerce overseas navigation programme”.
The programme aims to provide “going overseas” (出海) solutions for merchants and to begin with will cover the United States, Hong Kong and Macau markets. It plans to integrate online transactions, trade and export, cross-border payment and localised operations in a complete chain of services. Currently, merchants who sign up to the programme can gain exposure towards a global audience with Rednote’s content ecosystem including notes, livestreams and online stores.
According to Rednote, merchants in the programme will reach global users with seeding via notes and algorithm recommendations. The recently launched AI smart translation tool will also come in handy for merchants as all listings, notes, customer services, and home pages will be translated automatically. Rednote will also be providing international logistics partnerships for merchants. Rednote’s proprietary Ark system can also provide a one-stop solution for backend needs including order processing, inventory management, marketing and sales events.
Rednote has been developing its e-commerce strategy in China, mostly with decentralised “buyer” and “merchant” modes of livestream and a combination of seeding via notes and community building. However, it is lagging behind its competitors in social commerce such as TikTok. With its newfound popularity in the US and TikTok’s looming ban and shift of focus to other markets, Rednote’s navigation programme might just help the platform crack the market. There is likely to be future expansion into other markets planned at some point as well.
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