We’ve seen it in cartoons and movies, virtual reality is just a few ideas away. It seems that in 2020, we’re closer to this futuristic reality than we thought. 

Marketers and events people would know that executing on-ground events isn’t easy. It takes a ton of creativity, complicated logistics, insane coordination, and just being ready for anything that will hit. 

For the Taobao Maker Festival (TMF) team, this “anything” would be the coronavirus pandemic. In its fifth edition this year, the annual event is hosted by social commerce giant Taobao Marketplace, the sister company of Alibaba’s Lazada Philippines, to provide recognition to the growing role of young merchants on the Taobao platform.

One of the most positive byproducts of the rise of e-commerce is also the rise of creativity. Among the greater group of merchants, Taobao has approximately 200,000 creative merchants, which is a 200% growth from 2018.

Through the annual exhibit, they encourage innovations by young creators on Taobao. According to Chief Marketing Officer Chris Tung, “The youth are shaping the future. They’re leading the way.” 

He explained that in this festival, these young entrepreneurs can introduce what they stand for, while simultaneously sharing ideas with consumers. “It’s not just a buy-sell relationship. They’re creating communities.”

For these reasons, Taobao highly values these innovators and relationships they’ve built with each other, and they weren’t about to let anything stop them from this annual festival they were so proud of. 

In fact, in the press conference for Taobao Maker Festival 2020: New Blood, held last July 30, Chris said that his team treated this challenge as a creative exercise instead.

And they definitely delivered.

In-app virtual world

Perhaps the most impressive initiative in the project, the TMF team visualized, planned, and executed a virtual world called Taobao Life to create an online experience of the otherwise large-scale annual offline exhibit where participants would interact and discover the products and designs of co-merchants. 

In Taobao Life, you can create your own avatar and visit the six-themed online pavilions. Here, you will be able to witness the unique products from more than 150 young merchants and can also interact with the virtual figures of celebrities.

Taobao Life will be available to participants for 4 days starting August 10.

New rating system

Keeping up with this year’s theme, “New Blood,” TMF also introduces a new rating system for its merchant participants. 

An independent panel of judges comprised of industry experts will review and rate all the TMF merchants that have participated over the past five years. The four-tiered rating system will reward digital badges to approximately 200 merchants. Products from the rated merchants will be included in the personalized product recommendation feature – the “Good Find” section on Taobao – which will significantly boost their profile and visibility to over 840 million China retail marketplace users.

The TMF Caravan comes to its consumers

In order to address another problem that the pandemic presented, difficulty in traveling, the TMF team organized a 20-day road trip to four major cities in China. These cities are Hangzhou, Xi’an, Chengdu, and Wuhan. 

A large truck will be converted into mobile storefronts to allow dozens of merchants to display their products in each city. At each stop, Taobao and selected makers will also hold mini offline events that draw on each city’s unique culture and heritage. 

The merchant-creators

Included in the July 30 press conference were two young merchants, GRAF and Xiao Qiao. Both of the young creators’ businesses were boosted significantly by their presence in Taobao. 

While GRAF is a streetwear designer who now also has 2 on-ground stores, Xiao Qiao specializes in a specific category of cat clothes; her preferred style is hanfu – an umbrella term for historical Chinese clothing, the use of which also been rising in popularity over the years.

For Xiao Qiao, being a seller in Taobao was less of a choice than it was a natural move. Because she was also a consumer of the platform, she also decided to be a seller there. Her business today is a mix of her hobbies, interests, and talent. This isn’t an easy feat either, as the Chinese pet industry is extremely competitive, with consumers estimated to have spent $29 billion (P1.4 trillion) in 2019. Thanks to Taobao, she was able to reach her niche market. 

For GRAF, who started to share their original works on social media before launching a store on Taobao, the move was more strategic, as unlike other e-commerce platforms in China, Taobao was very entrepreneur-friendly. They didn’t charge small businesses any fee for opening a seller account. Because of this, the merchant’s advice for young creators was to start on the platform, as it’s accessible to those who don’t have unlimited capital.

To date, GRAF has almost 2M followers on Taobao and continues to create socially conscious streetwear designs. 

In the midst of 2020, creativity doesn’t stop. Today, we have six virtual stations in a small app. Tomorrow, who knows? – Rappler.com