Japanese online retailer Belluna opening Chinese website

Baby clothes, cosmetics in lineup of 8,000 items

by Azoya

May 25th, 2017; Nikkei


TOKYO -- Online retailer Belluna will launch Thursday a shopping site targeting consumers in China, hoping to catch the boom of international e-commerce in the world's most populous country.

The company will get help from Chinese company Azoya to run its own website rather than sell on a third-party site in China. This will ease expanding product offerings and targeted advertising.

The Belluna site will carry about 8,000 items, including baby apparel and cosmetics from group members BestThanks and Ozio. Products that are rather rare in China, such as baby clothes that can be worn as a skirt or pants depending on how they are buttoned, will be available. Health foods also will be introduced.

Belluna anticipates sales per customer of about 10,000 yen ($89.22). Around 20-30% of charges paid by customers go to transportation and customs duties in cross-border e-commerce, so people tend to buy in bulk, according to the company.

Azoya, based on the Guangdong city of Shenzhen, will handle everything from logistics to customs clearance and call center operations.

The popular mobile app WeChat -- which boasts 900 million users -- will be used as a promotion platform to demonstrate how Belluna's cosmetics are used, for instance.

Don Zhao, co-founder of Azoya, said his company's strengths include attentiveness in website design and sales promotion.

In April, Akachan Honpo, under Japan's Seven & i Holdings, set up shop within the Chinese virtual mall JD Worldwide. The baby goods company sells about 200 items there.

Belluna will tout its wide variety of offerings by showing baby goods alongside maternity clothing, for instance.