From likes to buys: Understanding social commerce

We have the rich experience about engineering and data modeling. So that's what we are doing to contribute to the product. So we don't know the market, we don't know the culture. That must be operated locally. Hi, my name is Janine Matos and I'm the host of the "Peace of Me" podcast by Zalando. Career development advice, industry insights and stories from leaders at Zalando to supercharger career and fashion and lifestyle e-commerce. So let's get started by meeting my guest for today. Chao Chao, the VP of the Shenzhen Tech Hub for Zalando. Hi, welcome. Hello. It's so nice to have you here. So you actually have already been one week now in Berlin. Yeah. I already found out it's your third time in Berlin. Right. What would you say is maybe the biggest difference from the Shenzhen office to the Berlin office? Relax. We are more relaxed. For sure, much more relaxed. Really? So you can see Shenzhen is one of the competitive, innovative cities in China. Okay. Everyone on the street is busy and can wait for one moment for waste. So every minute has to be well-used and has to be productive. So okay, so the Berlin office is more relaxed. The city. The city itself. So not only the office. Not at the office. So you were the first employer from the Tech Hub in Shenzhen. So you actually were part of the entire how to set up, how to connect, how to onboard people. Was it the first time for you to actually also set up a Tech Hub? For sure. This is my first time. And a very interesting challenge. It's also very excited when I come to the office after the onboarding. No one there, only me. And it's very excited to see that now we have close to 60 team members. And they all come from big internet company with rich experience about e-commerce or social to work together for the London. So this is very excited moment. So yes, this is a brand new experience for me. And super interesting. And what was the biggest challenge in that entire last 12 months? My former experience is more like engineer leader. So focusing on developing products, design the platform. But now I also need to take the side as a product. Think about the investment, think about the outcome. So this is a very interesting part and a brand new experience for me. So the lesson learned would be always think about the cost as well as the outcome. Combine them always together. But actually we need to think about just like a startup, like a company, how to run the team. Make sure that it can contribute more value than the investment. So this is a very interesting and challenging part. So the London invested for the first time in the live streams. And of course, for them, it was a new market and seeing how to set it up, how to start it. So bringing you in, of course, we had the experts who could also teach us a lot and shared the knowledge that you gained in the last year since the Chinese market has been already ongoing with selling in live streams for a long time. We just want to make sure that we can get the benefit from the team about experience for e-commerce combining with content or we call it social. For example, brands, if they do the marketing, now they will always think about the three categories. One offline, for sure, traditional. Second one is the e-commerce. And the third one is social media. And we, of course, are very focused on we have an e-commerce shop. We have maybe offline with the outlets. So of course, getting into this third branch of social media shops, do you see that the market is actually accepting it really well? I think it takes time. It's never going to be happen just one night. That's true. Yeah, so it is time. But we need the investment and the trade to see the customer feedback. But especially for fashion industry, it's super good. So with the videos that I've seen when they're from the Chinese markets, they have a very different pace in the ways of communicating and storytelling. Then what I have seen, of course, from Zalando, the ones that I have seen were very fast paced. It was really hold it up, put aside, hold it up, put aside. Your mother! So that's the one that I have seen here on social media. But then here I see more of Zalando's conversation as a very big storytelling. So we will not try the way you just mentioned. It's kind of like the TV shopping. That's not our style for sure. You know, live streaming is including many different type of content. Because live streaming is a new content format. It's easy to understand. And the best part is we'll introduce the authenticity. You can feel it's real material, the design, and also it can easily for you to imagine how it looks like. It gives you more of a real look and feel and it's closer to reality. Instead of just seeing a picture and you don't know how much is Photoshop behind or any other tool. Overall, it's a different way of shopping and seeing people actually having a real reaction to the product. But that's actually not the site that you were on. Your team is, since the Tech Hub, you are building everything around so that it works when here in the cities in Berlin. How deep are you involved when the live stream is ongoing? Do you have to be actually on site in the Shenzhen office? How does this work? So you know that the benefit from the Shenzhen team, especially at the Tech Hub, we have the rich experience about engineering and data modeling. So that's what we are doing to contribute to the product. So we don't know the market. We don't know the culture. That must be operated locally. You know, it's never going to work if we just, you know, move everything exactly the same from China or from elsewhere to here. So we need the technology from Shenzhen Tech Hub, as well as the operational experience here to make it work. And the Tech Hub was opened around a year ago. So when you look back at the last 12 months, has it been going, let's say, according to the success that we were expecting? What was your first takeout from the last 12 months? I would say it's a very exciting experience. Every day, we can see new genre and they can always bring new stuff to us all together. It's also very challenging for us because of the culture difference. And the time difference and especially language difference. All the Internet companies in China, due to the very fast growth and development, they are very focused on local market, which means they do not have a lot of practice for English communication. And if offering locally that they actually do not have to focus on international companies or the markets, because it's a funny thing. So Zalando is a Berlin base and a German company. And when I started, there were a lot of German people working. And of course, with the time since it became international, more markets were open, of course more international people started, that at some point we got an official email from now on, the official language in the company is English. So please make sure that all your emails, everything is in English. So that of course, even if I write an email to somebody who I know speaks German, I will write it in English to make sure because it could be that this email has to be forwarded to someone else. So how is it being managed in Shenzhen? We try the best, you know, English is actually, to be honest, very not easy for the team there. So we run a program. We call the program Shameless English Program. We will invite all the product manager, engineers from our EU team, and they will introduce the product by English. And I like the name of Shameless English because no one is being shamed for the way they're talking. It's about learning and improving. Looking at the time and we haven't spoken about your pieces yet. So let's get started with that. I asked you to bring three pieces or to think of three pieces as every guest has to. So what is your close to the heart piece? I would not say it's an item. It's actually my daughter. When I first saw her own boss the first minute, you know what? In my mind, I was just angry about the future boyfriend. That's actually the first song in my mind. I'm just crying. What if some bad boy just take her away from me? It is a difficult topic. No, but it is the first thing when you see then your baby is maybe the fear of all the danger, everything that's out there, how to keep it protected from the world, right? This is actually what I'm thinking. You just helped me complete it. So it's not really about the symbolism of the man, but it's about the world is so big. There's so much out there how to protect the child from this world. Just parents and to accompany her girls and be there, especially for her important moment of her life. And I think that's the meaning of life, purpose of life. The family is very important. How old is she? Eleven. Oh, she's already big. Yeah, she's going to become a teenager already. But it's amazing because there is so much that already happened. So, I mean, all this toddler and small child time. I mean, this is the time that I am right now. I have elementary school kids, but coming now into this teenager age, of course, personality wise, they change a lot. They get their own mindset. So I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to that age. So it's also very challenging for me that, you know, I live in Shanghai, but our office is in Shenzhen, which means that I need to fly back during the weekend because she had school friends and living there in the city for a long time. But anyway, it's already worthwhile. Thanks for the support from family in China. Make sure that you can focus on the work. This is really a family collaboration to make it work. It's challenging, but we will try our best to make the moment we are together very efficient. How long is the flight from Shenzhen to Shanghai? Two and a half. That's okay, but it is challenging having to do that every weekend. It's good that you have that support system and then being able to, of course, and use the time that you have when you're in Shanghai and focus. So do you actually stay from Monday to Friday in Shenzhen? Or are you able to also do then some home office then from Shanghai? I will stay in Shenzhen during Monday from Friday because, you know, in Shenzhen team, we all go to the office together every day. So has she been with you into Germany or Berlin yet? So for now it has been work-related trips. So then that means that you're this week going gift shopping for your daughter and bringing all the things that you can get from Berlin. What is her name? Cindy. Cindy? Yeah. Nice. That's a beautiful name. Okay, then moving on. The second one was a piece from your career. What is your career piece? The career piece, I would say it's very big. It's a drum. A drum? Yeah. You know, there is a very interesting history for China in the ancient age. If you have some, you know, incorrect penalty, you will hit the drum right outside of the government to asking for some support from the government. So this drum is used kind of like an appeal system. So there is outside of the government building, there's a drum? Yeah. And if you need support, you'll go and okay. So this is actually what I'm joining Alibaba before, and I work for IBM first international company working as an engineer for middleware development and management. But this is a big leap for me to joining Alibaba back 2014. So it's brand new and different tech stack, different experience, extremely different culture. So which means that this is the first project, so we call it a petition drum. Okay. It's designed for the seller on the e-commerce platform for them to appeal. If they will receive some malicious ordering from the consumer, they can appeal to the platform, then we handle it to make sure they will not impact by the operation for this penalty. The great part is that also Jack Ma, you know, the founder of Alibaba, he also signed on this drum for us. So this is a very, very important project for me because it's a big leap and a transition for my career from traditional IT company to a big internet company. And bringing also this historical item then into it, it's a really good piece. I really like it. I did not know about this, having the drum to ask for support. And I really like how you then reuse it for Alibaba to incorporate it. So then what is yours Alando piece? Alando piece, I would say it's the selfie picture when I first entered in the office. The first moment, excited and a lot of work to do. And it's also a challenge for me to fill the whole office with expertise for Alando. So I think this is a great moment for me. That's a really good piece, since you were employer number one in the Shenzhen office, and you are the one who brought that into life also. But that's a really good piece. Now the second selfie would be with the entire 60 people with you having like 12 months difference. Now you are moving away from WeWork. Next year you can actually move into your own or into the first Alando official tech hub. How exciting is this for you? It's super exciting, because you know, every team member are asking where we can go to the new office now. But you know, a lot of team members here are helping us to design, decoration design, planning, all the facilitators, so it would be very exciting. We can help our own office. So like here, like burning, we can tell it's the Alando directly. You will bring it your own life, your own taste, and then just feel a little bit more, like a nice space to be at to work. Maybe I can come and visit one day. Let's see how that works, let's see how that works. You're very welcome. Next year then, when it's all set up. All right, we can do the podcast there. That sounds good, part two, I like that. Before we wrap up, do you have any final advice you would like to give the listeners? I would say, you know, what we have learned from China, how it grows, is that sometimes we can move first and take actions. It might be make some error, maybe small, maybe big. We always do some preparation to make sure that we will not make any mistake. But you know that life is full of, you know, uncertainty. We can never prepare 100% accurate. We just need to take the first step, just like Shenzhen team. We need to start to work on the project we're trying to deliver and figure out how it works with Alando to combine the live streaming and our fashion industry. It might not work, maybe not work right now, maybe in the future. But at least we have the lesson learned. We know the experience and why it didn't work. It will work sometime. I really like it. People tend to overthink sometimes instead of just trying it out. It's something I try to also myself incorporate and say, if it doesn't work, then I can just move on to the next project. Maybe not overthink it, right? I just try. If it comes in error, move on to the next one. If it works out the first step, then check how the second step goes. I really like that. Thank you so much for being my guest today. Thank you. Thank you for the time. And I'm really looking forward how... We did the China. Thank you all so much for listening. If you'd like to know more about careers at Zalando, go to jobs.zalando.de. You'll find that link in the show notes. Or check out our Instagram page, inside Zalando. Our next episode is coming in two weeks, and I'll be talking to another guest from Zalando about life inside the fashion and tech retail industry. And of course, there are three pieces of me.