Online mannequins of Taiwan

Posted March 27th, 2008 at 9:20 am by Charlene Hung, Yahoo! Taiwan

 3 Comments / Filed in: Behind the Scenes, Trends & News

At age 21, Jia-Jia was like any other college girl in Taiwan, loving fashion and fantasizing about becoming famous.

Then her dream came true — as it has for dozens of other young women, thanks to the emergence of a new Taiwanese job description: Ecommerce Model.

Jia-Jia entered and won the “EC Model Contest,” hosted by Yahoo! Taiwan Auctions. She is now not only a celebrity to the more than 300,000 people who participated in the voting process and is coveted by media for interviews and photo shoots, she regularly models women’s wear for online stores on our auctions platform.

This unique new profession was born essentially from the Yahoo! Taiwan Auctions platform, as sellers sought new ways to market their wares. We launched our first contest in 2005, and today there are 30 full-time professional online mannequins like Jia-Jia modeling for the e-stores on our platform. Many are college students fitting the shoots between classes. Some earn more than US$6,000 per month.

What’s fueling the demand? They dramatically impact sales. Items that are modeled by these young women are viewed 30 times more often and sales are 30% higher than merchandise that’s merely displayed via product images. As a result, more than 95% of our VIP sellers are now using these models. And that is, in turn, fueling the growth of online sales across Taiwan.

Within less than two years, women’s wear sales have increased from 550,000 items sold per month to 800,000 — a purchase every 5 seconds. That’s a lot of clothes, accessories, bags, shoes, and beauty products. And the market is expected to grow 36% this year, according to the Market Intelligence Center.

The growth of the industry, on the backdrop of an expanding virtual market economy, is a good indicator of the change in Taiwanese shopping behavior. Not only are people gradually embracing virtual shopping over traditional street-shopping, the competition among suppliers is now driving marketing innovation. The birth and growth of the online mannequin industry is clear evidence that consumers want a better shopping experience — demanding the same visual experience that they get while perusing shelves and racks.

This trend is setting off a positive growth spiral: As virtual shopping gets closer to replicating offline shopping, delivering goods as well as the experience, the number of regular online shoppers is bound to surge. And, after browsing the nicely put-together outfits displayed on the mannequins, how can you just buy the skirt… and not the top, the bag, the boots, and the necklace as well?

Charlene Hung
General Manager, Yahoo! Taiwan

Tagged: auctions, taiwan, trends

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3 Comments Add your own

Alexis Kauffmann - Galeria de Arte Géssica Hellmann | March 29th, 2008 at 7:37 am

That’s web 2.0 making its never-ending revolutions in the labour market! Those who complain about recession and unemployment should take a second look ast what is happening on the web.

ml | May 4th, 2008 at 8:32 am

i wish Yahoo Taiwan offers Auction viewers a choice of
English or Chinese text.

for example, i can only read chinese used in China, i can’t read the chinese used in taiwan.

as i am unable to read, i can’t check if they ship international.

tw girl | September 16th, 2009 at 11:52 pm

nice write up … i also do some part time modelling for my friends who have store in yahoo . ..

the amount is not bad :)