Upmarket legacy retailer David Jones is arguably better known for its old-fashioned shops and traditional customer service than its online innovation.
But the department store appears to be one of the only Australian retailers tapping into the gigantic Chinese market on a social media platform that boasts 582 million active users a month.
The retailer’s chief marketing officer James Holloman has described the platform Weibo or WeChat as “world leading” combining the elements from other social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as the ability to pay bills and buy everything from fashion to beauty products .
With more than 40,000 followers and three years on WeChat, Mr Holloman said David Jones’ Chinese clients were “incredibly important” to the retailer, which has signaled unrivaled “commercial success” on the social media platform.
“WeChat is a full ecosystem for mainland China … and it’s almost a one-stop shop for mainland Chinese where they are doing kinda like Facebook, Instagram and a payment wallet all in one,” he told news.com.au.
“You technically follow different accounts and different individuals, and you use it essentially as a WhatsApp version between your friends in terms of messaging, but then you also follow different brands and it’s similar to a really immersive email.
“It’s basically a full immersive ability to shop directly from incredibly immersive posts … and you can follow everyone from Louis Vuitton, Coca Cola, Estee Lauder to Dior.”
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For David Jones, many of his followers are part of the Chinese community living in Australia and the bulk are aged between 25 and 36, Mr Holloman revealed, which has given the retailer “massive growth” from younger shoppers.
One of the department store’s big moves has been around Singles Day, an unofficial holiday and shopping event held on 11 November every year in China, that celebrates people who are not in relationships.
“Last year during the Singles Day shopping event, which is almost the biggest shopping day worldwide and it’s bigger than Black Friday, we did our first live stream,” Mr Holloman said.
“It’s the equivalent of shopping television where we had an hour and a half of fully engaged viewers watching our life stream of all of amazing products and key specials happening over that day and we had 13,000 viewers watching that on WeChat.”
For the Lunar Year in February, they introduced the little red packets which are a traditional gift of money, and allowed people to send them virtually to friends from their account.
Influencers have also been key to the brand’s success, I added.
Mr Holloman said mainland Chinese are important clients for buying premium goods, with a report from consulting firm McKinsey revealing that 50 per cent of the global luxury goods will be purchased by the Chinese by 2025.
“It’s a very hot market for the stuff that we sell,” he added.
“Secondly, there is an audience in Australia that want to be communicated to. There are 1.2 million Chinese born Australians so that’s a huge proportion as it’s almost 5 per cent of the Australian population.
“We want to talk to our clients in the language and way they best feel most comfortable in… and understanding and engaging in and on a platform that they feel most comfortable in.”
This approach has also been translated into stores as well with sales associates who speak fluent Mandarin, he added.
WeChat recently praised David Jones’ SS20 Beauty campaign as a part of a global showcase of best-in-class activity and it was the only international retail store featured on the list.
The beauty campaign, themed Full Bloom, included video, imagery, emails, in-store visual merchandising, a 36-page print booklet and shoppable article pages.
“With clever use of shoppable product display functions and rich graphic design elements, the campaign achieved a click through rate of more than double that of industry benchmarks,” WeChat said.
Another “incredible success story” for the China market has been landing Kim Kardashian’s popular Skims line, Mr Holloman said.
“She can be polarizing, but it’s been a commercial success and from what we hear from customers, they are excited to have such exclusive brands across our network,” he said.
The retailer copped fierce backlash when it announced it was stocking the star’s products, with loyal fans of the store accusing the world-famous influencer of diminishing the retailer’s “class” after DJ’s shared a video to their Instagram page of Kim promoting the brand.
However, despite its investment in WeChat, David Jones has no presence on another social media platform that has been blowing up – TikTok – which has over one billion users.
“We are incredibly strong on Instagram and on Facebook, we have in excess of 400,000 followers on Instagram and 600,000 on Facebook,” Mr Holloman said.
Queensland University of Technology retail expert Dr Gary Mortimer said David Jones’ use of WeChat is a “great strategy”.
“They are taking advantage of a growing middle class affluent Chinese market that does often look for Australian brands and often international brands and David Jones has the ability to provide those brands to that particular audience,” Dr Mortimer told news.com.au.
“When you look at what they are doing in that space they would be aligning themselves with Chinese influencers that connect really well with that Chinese market.
“They would be leveraging really large online promotional events like Singles Day that runs on the 11 November every year and it gets bigger and bigger.
“Singles Day is a bit like Amazon Price day but it turned over about $US85 billion ($A122 billion) last year. The Chinese market is a very valuable and viable market for Australian business and brands.”
Dr Mortimer said China’s population of 1.3 billion compared to the “tiny” 26 million living in Australia also showed it was a lucrative field to play in.
“Trust is huge issue for the Chinese population who are concerned about counterfeiting, so working on a Chinese platform gives legitimacy for David Jones in that market,” he added.
“Woolworths is playing in that space as well.”
In 2015, Woolworths opened its first overseas flagship store on the Tmall website and has also partnered with supermarket 7 Fresh since 2020 offering WeChat as a payment system.
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