This Double 11, Japanese online flee market app Mercari (Latin for “to trade”) has entered Alibaba’s similar used item platform Xianyu to offer direct sales to Chinese users. The partnership comes in the form of an official shop “Mercari Marketplace”.
With help from Japanese cross-border partner Beenos Group, Mercari has started by listing more than 100,000 anime and manga figurines, as well as designer toys. More categories will be added in the future. Users in China usually need to go through “daigou” buying agents in order to buy from foreign marketplaces like Mercari.
The partnership offers a kind of “official daigou” service via Beenos Group. Customers order from the Xianyu store, then Beenos buys the items on Mercari on their behalf before checking, packing and shipping the items to China. Though touted as the first time Marcari has opened an official store on Xianyu, this is, however, not the first time Mercari attempted to crack the Chinese market. Mercari partnered with Xianyu and Taobao for the first time in 2021. Last time, it offered a similar service, but on both platforms.
Mercari, established in 2013, is one of the most popular second-hand marketplaces in Japan. Over its 10 years in existence, 3 billion items have been listed on the platform and its annual revenue surpasses 100 billion JPY (662.7 million USD). On average, there is a successful transaction every 7.9 seconds on the platform.
Meanwhile Xianyu, with its 500 million users, is aiming to further its community building. By opening official stores like Mercari, as well as attracting “达人”, or expert users, the platform hopes to become a hub for specialised interests and subcultures, including the ACG (anime, comics and games) community.
