Xiaohongshu

Xiaohongshu was founded by Mao Wenchao and Qu Fang in Shanghai in 2013. With the mission of "Inspire Lives: Share and Discover the Wonders of the World," users can record life moments, share lifestyles, and interact based on interests through short videos, images, and text.

On June 1, 2018, Xiaohongshu completed a new round of financing of over $300 million, led by Alibaba, with participation from GSR Ventures, Tencent Investment, GGV Capital, Genesis Capital, Tian Tu Investment, ZhenFund, and Mr. Adrian Cheng of K11, among other institutions and individuals. The valuation exceeded $3 billion. As of October 2019, Xiaohongshu's monthly active users surpassed 100 million, with 70% being post-90s, and it continues to grow rapidly.
With its authentic, positive, and diverse community atmosphere, Xiaohongshu has become an irreplaceable lifestyle platform and consumption decision entry point for young people, capable of creating trends and hotspots.

Currently, Xiaohongshu's community content covers fashion, beauty, personal care, food, travel, entertainment, reading, fitness, maternity and baby care, and other lifestyle areas, generating over 8 billion note exposures daily. In the past year, content shared by Xiaohongshu users has grown exponentially; as of December 2019, user-shared notes increased by 4.4 times, with education and learning-related notes rising by 6.4 times, sports event notes by 8.4 times, and photography notes by 6.2 times.

As a lifestyle community, Xiaohongshu is known for its "grass-planting economy" (influencing purchases). Its uniqueness lies in the fact that while most internet communities rely on online virtual identities, Xiaohongshu users' content is derived from real life. For users, Xiaohongshu does not provide the instant gratification of online content consumption like other virtual communities. Whether a user discovers a suitable lipstick or finds a scenic spot or restaurant they want to visit, the satisfaction of consumption can only be fulfilled in real life.

On Xiaohongshu, a user's "online sharing" of consumption experiences triggers "community interaction," which can drive other users to "offline consumption." These users, in turn, share more online, ultimately forming a positive cycle.
Based on the "grass-planting" feature, Xiaohongshu has also become an incubator for hits and brands. To date, Xiaohongshu has brought together over 40,000 brands from more than 190 countries and regions. Relying on the massive volumes of authentic user-generated notes, Xiaohongshu has grown into the world's most authentic consumption review database and has become a crucial step for new brands, especially new domestic ones, to gain user trust.
As of October 2019, in the past year, Xiaohongshu users published over 1.8 million domestic-brand-related notes, a year-on-year increase of 110%, accumulating 300 million shares and discussions from over 42 million people. This includes beauty and skincare brands such as Natural Name, Guyu, and Florasis; clothing and footwear brands like Zhizhi, Maia Active, Ubras, and Orange Desire; and food brands like Xiaoxian Dun and Zhong Xue Gao. More and more new domestic brands are "going viral" on Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu upholds a corporate culture of being positive, user-centric, open-minded, pragmatic, and responsible, striving to become the internet company most trusted by users. In September 2015, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Xiaohongshu and remarked, "Today's achievements are three parts innovation and seven parts hard work." In March 2020, Li Qiang, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, visited Xiaohongshu and encouraged it to fully recognize development opportunities in the new economy and new consumption, fully leverage Shanghai's market, scenario, and resource advantages, identify the excitement, concerns, and focus of various consumer groups, act promptly, plan deeply, innovate methods, and further build a consumption platform, release consumption potential, and strengthen consumer brands in a precise and effective manner.
On December 24, 2017, Xiaohongshu, along with outstanding companies like Huawei, was awarded the "China Brand Award" by People's Daily as a representative of China's consumer technology industry.
Xiaohongshu's headquarters is located in Xintiandi, Shanghai, with a branch office in Beijing and a research and development center and user service center in Wuhan. Currently, the company has over 2,000 employees in total.

The authentic notes shared by Xiaohongshu's community users are influencing a generation's consumption decisions, thereby attracting top global brands to join. The Xiaohongshu Mall, as an important section of the lifestyle community, focuses on serving the young and fashionable demographic amidst the consumption upgrade trend, curating trendy products from around the world. By leveraging its unique community word-of-mouth marketing and brand content promotion, it helps brands interact more effectively with quality users and achieve rapid, sustainable growth. Currently, products sold by third-party merchants such as brand flagship stores and general stores account for 95% of the mall's total.

Xiaohongshu's Enterprise Account Department, centered around the core product of "Enterprise Account," integrates resources from community marketing to the transaction closure loop to better connect consumers and brands, helping brands complete a one-stop closed-loop marketing on Xiaohongshu and providing full-chain services. To date, nearly 40,000 enterprises across 23 industries, including fashion apparel, beauty and personal care, and lifestyle services, have opened enterprise accounts.

After nearly seven years of accumulation, Xiaohongshu's unique community atmosphere of authenticity, positivity, and diversity continues to attract more partners to explore more possibilities for a better life. Xiaohongshu's distinctive urban ecosystem is drawing more brands and industry partners to jointly explore future business value.