Pinduoduo wins Domestic E-Tailer of the Year — China award

Pinduoduo transforms Chinese manufacturing with its consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M) revolution, working with over 1,500 manufacturers to develop new SKUs generating 460 million orders in two years.

Pinduoduo, China’s largest online retail platform by active buyers, won the Domestic E-Tailer of the Year — China award at the Retail Asia Awards for its pioneering work in enabling manufacturers to tailor their production to consumer needs.

The company’s New Brand Initiative (NBI) is part of the C2M revolution it pioneered.

Traditionally, manufacturers are separated from consumers by layers of intermediaries, including designers, brand owners, wholesalers, and retailers. This model relies heavily on guesswork to determine demand and advertising to stimulate it. Consumers end up paying higher prices for products and have little say in how they are designed. 

Pinduoduo’s C2M inverts this model. It creates useful insights for partner manufacturers by analysing the spending patterns of its more than 800 million users. These insights enable manufacturers to customise their products to consumer preferences, and create their own brands under which to sell these products quickly and directly via Pinduoduo. Consumers who enjoy lower prices for better suited products are apt to return for more, contributing to a virtuous cycle of growing demand and scale.

C2M’s effectiveness is amplified by Pinduoduo’s defining social and interactive user experience, which enables more precise understanding of different user clusters. Pinduoduo’s continued commitment to this means that it is to-date the only 100% mobile platform in its class.

Pinduoduo applies C2M through its NBI. Since the launch of the program in December 2018, Pinduoduo has worked with over 1,500 Chinese manufacturers, developing more than 4,000 new SKUs that have generated over 460 million orders.

NBI was particularly effective in helping many export-oriented original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners survive the drought of international demand during the COVID-19 pandemic by increasing their sales domestically.

Participants in the program include Stanley Agriculture Group, one of China’s largest fertilizer companies. It developed a new fertilizer line suitable for home horticulturists based on analysis provided by Pinduoduo, which identified four types of fertilizers for home gardening.

Home organisation retailer Younai Home also became a bestselling brand by drawing on Pinduoduo’s insights to develop nonstandard large-size drawer cabinets that were in demand in lower-tier cities and rural areas.

Pinduoduo announced in October 2020 that it would be upgrading its NBI. From 2021 to 2025, it aims to support 100 industrial belts, create 100,000 new brand projects and drive $210 billion (RMB 1 trillion) in sales. It also aims to expand the number of partners to 5,000, devote more resources to promoting custom products, as well as help contract manufacturers nurture their own brands. The program will also help well-known brands create subsidiaries and rejuvenate heritage brands.

Now in its 16th year, the Retail Asia Awards event presented by Retail Asia lauds exceptional retailers, projects and executives who have introduced remarkable initiatives and solutions that have further changed the retail industry.

Watch the interview below to know more about their winning project: