---
title: "Who Can Seize the Entry Opportunity in the New Era of 'Pingti'?"
description: "1688, aiming to become synonymous with 'pingti' (affordable alternatives), is Alibaba's most prominent price-competitiveness IP. As the platform with the largest number of factories in China, it offers white-label goods nearly identical to branded products. Consumers, like treasure hunters, seek out brand OEM factories, pushing 1688 from B2B to C2C. Recently, 1688 opened three stores on Taobao, shortening this chain."
author: "窄播"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2024-04-24"
language: "en"
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# Who Can Seize the Entry Opportunity in the New Era of 'Pingti'?

> 1688, aiming to become synonymous with 'pingti' (affordable alternatives), is Alibaba's most prominent price-competitiveness IP. As the platform with the largest number of factories in China, it offers white-label goods nearly identical to branded products. Consumers, like treasure hunters, seek out brand OEM factories, pushing 1688 from B2B to C2C. Recently, 1688 opened three stores on Taobao, shortening this chain.

1688, which aspires to be the go-to for 'pingti' (affordable alternatives), is currently Alibaba's most compelling price-competitiveness IP. It is the largest direct-sales platform for factory goods in China, hosting the most numerous factories. Many products, though white-label, are nearly indistinguishable from branded ones, making them perfect 'pingti'. Consumers, like reading a treasure map, search for brand OEM factories from product packaging, and through their spontaneous treasure hunting, they have pushed 1688 from the backend to the frontend, from B2B to C2C. This chain of actions can now become shorter and faster. Recently, 1688 opened three stores on Taobao: '1688 Yanxuan Taobao Store', '1688 Enterprise Self-purchase Tmall Store', and '1688 Industrial Expert Selection Tmall Store'. These stores offer products sourced from upstream factories in industrial belts within the 1688 ecosystem, connecting directly to Taobao through semi-managed and some fully-managed bestsellers. As one of Alibaba's first batch of strategically innovative businesses, the 'Four Little Dragons', 1688 has over 600,000 upstream factories. Data shows that among more than 6 million factories nationwide, 2 million are scaled. That means 1688 covers about one-tenth of all factories and one-third of scaled factories. With such a vast array of factories and SKUs, the 'Yanxuan' and 'Expert Selection' processes filter out white-label quality goods with high cost-performance, moving from the small-B-focused 1688 to Taobao, which serves general consumers, significantly enhancing Taobao's supply diversity and price competitiveness. Amid Alibaba's major transformation, integrating 1688's supply advantages into Taobao is also a reflection of Alibaba consolidating its core e-commerce business. Taobao is the largest connector for the Taotian Group; 1688 needs Taobao's traffic to drive transaction scale, help upstream factories improve supply chain flexibility and digitalization, thereby capturing and nurturing advanced supply, and gaining greater influence and control over industrial belts. However, 1688 is not the first business to embrace Taobao. While being trusted and resourced by the group, challenges exist. It remains to be seen how 1688 will utilize this valuable traffic entry.
**What 1688 Brings to Taobao** The first three stores from 1688 on Taobao all focus on the pingti economy, directly connecting factories, and cater to different consumer groups. Among them, **'1688 Yanxuan Taobao Store' primarily deals in home goods and general merchandise**, including household items, storage, home textiles, and kitchenware, covering various aspects of family life. Its target audience includes Gen Z (post-95s and post-00s), new middle class, and refined mothers. '1688 Yanxuan' is a business launched two years ago for small B and C-end buyers, aiming to build a set of selection standards through big data, local verification, and manual review. It emphasizes high cost-performance over absolute low prices, aggregating products from factories that OEM for major brands and well-known manufacturers. The 1688 Yanxuan store on Taobao includes OEM resources for brands like Disney, Mercedes-Benz, and Muji. **'1688 Enterprise Self-purchase Tmall Store' focuses on daily office supplies and operational consumables**, including office supplies, stationery, commercial furniture, and gift packaging, targeting C-end users with B-end attributes. It is reported that 88VIP members account for 20% of buyers in this store. **'1688 Industrial Expert Selection Tmall Store' targets SMEs and small production factories with industrial consumables needs**, offering non-production raw materials like hardware tools, safety and labor protection supplies, industrial intermediate goods like micro motors and components, and various packaging consumables. These factories are top-tier manufacturers verified and certified by the 1688 'Expert Selection' team. Previously, industrial product demand on Taobao was mainly met by brands; now 1688 Industrial Expert Selection provides consumers with brand alternatives and OEM sources. Overall, the selected categories in these three stores are key focus areas for 1688's Yanxuan business, aligning with its direction of standard products (focusing on office supplies, general merchandise, home improvement lighting, home textiles, sports and outdoor) and quasi-standard products (mainly bags and accessories). These products generally have high value, but buyers have low trust in quality and safety, making platform endorsement crucial. For example, the OEM factory for Miniso, as the industry's first smart 5G digital factory, is strong, but the general merchandise industry is dominated by low-price, high-frequency necessities; merely being a factory makes it hard to highlight quality on e-commerce platforms. After being included in 1688's Yanxuan business, this factory quickly gained transaction increments and matched high-value customers, creating multiple top-1 bestsellers in subcategories within three months. In addition to offering white-label supply with high cost-performance, the three stores also invest in service. **All stores support 0-yuan orders, free shipping for single items, 24-hour dispatch, and 7-day no-reason returns; most products include shipping insurance and free return shipping. This is undoubtedly a major buyer experience evolution in 1688's history.** Moreover, backed by production factories, 1688 stores can offer personalized customization services. For instance, 1688 Industrial Expert Selection currently supports free customization of personalized gift boxes for 88VIP users, with a minimum order of one piece and online preview of effect images, providing new solutions to problems like product homogeneity, high customization thresholds, and long customization cycles in the traditional gift industry.
**Matching Upstream Supply with Pingti Demand** In past consumption habits, C-end consumers preferred brands, as brands were standard endorsements of quality and easy access; B-end procurement inevitably involved more white-label products, requiring matching and selection based on different specifications and quality. For individual users, the roles of C-end consumer and B-end buyer are not strictly separated; they may switch in certain areas. With the abundance of supply and improved industry standardization and quality, more C-end consumers are willing to set aside brand filters and trust white-label products, giving rise to the pingti economy. However, among countless white-label products and factories, different platforms have made different choices for supply-demand matching. Some e-commerce platforms rely on the power of the crowd, where traffic and sales reinforce each other, using bestsellers to simplify consumer decisions; others trust professional selection, curating quality manufacturers and using platform investment to help consumers filter, reducing decision difficulty. 1688 is a typical representative of the latter. As a B2B e-commerce platform serving mainstream manufacturers and aiming to build digital supply chains across industrial belts, 1688 inevitably resonates with quality factories, jointly creating advanced supply adapted to e-commerce sales rhythms, audience characteristics, production scales, and costs. **1688's screening and support of quality manufacturers coincides with the C-end consumer pingti trend.** Consequently, on interest-sharing platforms like Xiaohongshu, spontaneous recommendations for 1688 treasure-hunting guides and OEM factory recommendations have become popular, with over 1.8 million recommendation posts across the internet. This quickly attracted consumers typical of Gen Z (post-00s) and young new middle class in first- and second-tier cities. In terms of consumer attributes, serving this segment is Taobao's strength. Taobao concentrates the largest and richest online supply in China and is the most commonly used transaction scenario for domestic consumers, increasingly indispensable in Chinese people's lives, especially the youth. Therefore, consumption trends on Taobao often reflect the spirit of the new era. From supporting the rise of domestic brands and sparking widespread discussion with brand collaborations, to releasing annual top ten products and using 'Einstein's brain' for cyber blessings, Taobao resonates with young people's needs. **In the pingti consumption trend, Taobao introduces more white-label products, further diversifies its assortment, and provides supply combinations across price bands to meet the diverse and segmented needs of its massive user base, reflecting its user-centric approach.** In this process, the selected upstream factories from 1688 can undoubtedly play an important role.
**Entering Taobao: Opportunity and Test** As one of the 'Four Little Dragons' with high expectations, 1688 is undoubtedly Alibaba's vanguard and bridgehead for capturing white-label supply and mindshare. In the low-price era, industrial belts have become the core battlefield among e-commerce platforms. **Among them, the influence and control over leading advanced supply in industrial belts almost determine whether an e-commerce platform can secure the best and most cost-effective products.** In the past decade, opening online interfaces to industrial belts created countless Taobao village success stories; but with today's refined e-commerce operations and the buyer's market due to oversupply, competition in industrial belts has escalated, testing platforms' ability to serve advanced supply. From launching the Yanxuan channel to entering Taobao, we see that scaled order aggregation, white-labeling, and managed operations are a growth path 1688 offers to advanced supply in industrial belts. By introducing external prosperous ecosystems, factories within the system enter larger market spaces, stimulating them to study new channels and models with sufficient openness and initiative, test products and production lines, and further enhance flexible supply chains and customization capabilities. In the long run, this is also a fundamental capability for future cross-border expansion. This aligns with current industrial belt trends: post-pandemic, large single orders have generally decreased, and end buyers prefer multi-frequency, small-batch, high-turnover, and personalized procurement to reduce inventory costs and avoid homogeneous competition; but traditional factory transformation inevitably involves pain, requiring platforms to act as intermediaries to support factories, reducing risks through market feedback and scale effects. However, **whether there is traffic is the foundation for a platform to establish a foothold in industrial belts and build influence over advanced supply.** **Ultimately, industrial belts have their own growth logic; what they need most is orders—sufficient, continuous orders.** **The ability to mobilize C-end traffic is precisely a weakness that 1688 has objectively developed as a B2B platform.** Of course, through the Yanxuan business and spontaneous recommendations on Xiaohongshu, 1688 has acquired some young users. But to expand its influence in industrial belts, 1688 inevitably needs the living water of Taobao traffic. Entering Taobao in the form of aggregated stores, using a unified portal and brand to attract consumers, is because white-label products rely on the channel's screening endorsement and unified operational capabilities, thereby cultivating a mindshare similar to a channel brand or pingti IP. In summary, 1688's entry into Taobao is a means of mutual integration and complementation between B-end advantageous supply and C-end advantageous consumer groups, with the ultimate goal of perfecting the supply-demand matching business loop in each platform's operations. This is Alibaba's trust in 1688, and also a test. Historically, Taobao has opened its arms to multiple innovative businesses, but few have survived. Whether 1688 can utilize this valuable traffic entry will determine whether this previously low-profile platform can truly shoulder the responsibility and step into the center of the battlefield.
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