Elleozhang and Weibo

Ella Zhang, a talented fashion designer, established an online presence through Taobao and WeChat in 2013. Over the following four years, she tested online advertising tools and honed her marketing to young urban women in China's first-tier cities, primarily by shifting to the Weibo platform. Through the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017, her sales continued to grow but her marketing expenses were high. The case poses multiple strategic decisions Ella must make to continue her business, ranging from budget to spend on video to raising outside capital. It highlights differences between U.S. and Chinese markets and, specifically, gives U.S. students an introduction to social media in the most populous country in the world. Excerpt UVA-M-0944 Jun. 16, 2017 ElleoZhang and Weibo Introducing ElleoZhang Ella Zhang, a talented fashion designer, sat in Marienbad Cafe in April 2017 debating how best to grow her business. Over the past five years, Zhang has grown her personal brand as a fashion designer and created a loyal customer base through social media. She considered herself an entrepreneur—she'd created a small business in which she designed, promoted, and distributed her own line. Many were more successful than her, but in the highly competitive fashion business, many others had tried and failed…and she was still succeeding. She was determined to continue building her business. She built her business on Taobao, but the platform had proven to be an expensive place to do business. Taobao was one of the first widely adopted e-commerce platforms in China on which people could sell their own products, and it had helped Zhang build her customer base. Through the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017, her sales continued to grow but her marketing expenses were high. Zhang paid Taobao more than CNY450 per post to rank higher in a keyword search result for a day. Using the site to manage her business in the expensive apparel category (more focused on middle-class consumers, with prices ranging from USD25 to USD120) had become too costly, so she stopped promoting herself there in early 2017. . . .