Taobao’s 10 Hottest Products of 2020 Reflects Key Trends & Impactful Moments

On December 21, for the first time ever, Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao published a list of the 10 hottest products of the year. 

With 2020 being such a turbulent year, it is interesting to see what items made the list and how they are reflective of both major events, new regulations, and even some fun consumer trends. 

Below is the list of the top 10 items, in no particular order.

Face mask

The most significant change brought by COVID-19 is that wearing face masks when going out has become a must-do instead of a nice to do. 

In 2020, people searched for face mask or “口罩” on Taobao 7.5 billion times. 

Eggbeater

This may seem random, but this is another byproduct of COVID-19. When many people were confined at home, they started to learn baking and make cakes, therefore they needed an eggbeater. There were almost 100 million searches for eggbeater. 

Helmets

The product started to be searched a lot in May 2020 when China’s traffic administration published new regulations requiring people to wear helmets when riding an electric bike or a motorcycle. In May it was the product with the most growth year over year on the entire Taobao platform. 

Number 24 Jersey

On January 26, basketball star Kobe Bryant left the world. In remembrance, many Chinese fans searched for his jersey on Taobao. Many fans remarked, “I got his Jersey, but I will never have the chance to get it signed.” The sales volume of Number 24 jerseys was 6.8 times the sales in 2019.

JK Uniforms

There is a slang Chinese term called “three broken sisters” (破产三姐妹), a play on “two broke girls” which refers to girls who love dressing up in JK uniforms (Japanese school uniforms), Hanfu (traditional Chinese dress) and Lolita outfits. This is a very popular trend among Chinese post-00s consumers. They are referred to as broke girls because they spend a lot on these costumes.

Just how popular are they? A Taobao JK uniform store called Tufengfeng (兔缝缝) once launched a JK dress and the store sold more than 300k dresses just within 20 minutes after it was launched. Customers’ enthusiasm surprised the owner of the store and she had to stop the pre sell.

In Q2 2020, year-over-year sales of JK uniforms increased 255%. 

Pet Feeding Services

The past few years the pet economy has been booming in China, particularly among young people. When people are working away from home, they are lonely, so they raise pets as companions. When couples living together and they don’t want a child or they are not married yet, they raise a pet.

While they are raising pets, they may not always have time to take care of it or they go out for a journey and can’t be at home. Because of this, many businesses have launched on Taobao offering pet feeding services. 

In a Taobao store’s comment area, a user said: “It’s (the service) is way more professional than me. I went for a trip and when I got back home, the cat was bigger.”

Orders for pet feeding services increased 220% year over year. 

Re Gan Mian (a traditional Wuhan noodle)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we know the city of Wuhan was the one that suffered the first and the most in China. At that time, people outside Wuhan were praying for the city and giving their support. 

Wuhan is well-known for a type of noodle dish called Re Gan Mian. Because of this, an illustrator drew an image with a Re Gan Mian patient in the hospital. Outside of the glass window, there were many other local foods encouraging the patient to be strong. 

To help Wuhan’s economy recover from the effects of the virus, many ecommerce platforms, including Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao, started working with local Wuhan merchants to help promote their products online. Many of the top live streamers such as Viya and Austin Li also promoted Wuhan specialties. Re Ga Mian was one of the popular products that they promoted, with some netizens commenting, “I will gain several pounds to help Wuhan!”

5G Mobile Phones

Chinese people were very excited about the rollout of 5G which was searched 290M times on Taobao.

Ultraman

Ultraman is a character from the Japanese cartoon The Science Patrol. He is a hero in many people’s eyes. People who searched for this were mostly males. There were over 200 million searches for this term in 2020. 

One of the key reasons that Ultraman was searched a lot in 2020 was that, there was a new series of Ultraman released in the past year: Ultraman Z. It has a very high score (9.0) on Douban (豆瓣), a platform where users create content related to film, books, music and events.

Blind Box

From POPMART’s recent IPO in Hong Kong, you may already know the popularity of blind boxes in China. While other brands have started using the bllind box or mystery box concept, in China it is often synonymous with POPMART, the Chinese top toy maker. 

POPMART creates limited edition series of toys. Consumers purchase a toy from the series but they don’t know which one they got until they open the box. Some of the toys are very rare, which makes it even more exciting. 

With their relatively low price point and high resale value, buying POPMART blind boxes can be addicting and many Chinese consumers have grown massive POPMART collections. 

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