Yetang, a Chinese site that sells fashion and lifestyle products by smaller brands and designers around the world, has raised $5 million led by DCM. While smaller e-commerce sites face plenty of competition from formidable rivals like Alibaba’s marketplace Taobao, Yetang co-founder Natasia Guo says her startup’s goal is to figure out how to make shopping more appealing than at other online stores.
“Seventy-four percent of our customers have stated that they usually shop for clothes and accessories on Taobao. So the important question for us is, why don’t these people shop on Taobao all the time, but come to Yetang some of the time?” she tells TechCrunch. “We believe that new and unique products and a fun shopping experience sets Yetang apart, and we will be working hard to make these qualities into competitive advantages.”
In 2014, the first full year Yetang operated, it sold 110,000 products from 800 designers in 34 countries. Guo says its revenue grows 100 percent every three or four months. Yetang is currently focused on expanding within China, but 20 percent of its products are made by overseas designers, and it would like to increase that number.
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