About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

I consider Wang Jianshuo one of my blogging mentors, and I read on his blog about the announcement that Kijiji.cn is changing to Baixing.com (百姓网):

Baixing logo

Kijiji logo

Baixing screenshot

Kijiji screenshot

Baixing.com seems like a great name for China

Baixing (百姓) is reminiscent of the term lao bai xing (老百姓), or literally “old hundred surnames” and can be used to refer to the “ordinary people” or “commoners.” This is meant in a positive way, like “people power” or “The People.” As such, the name seems very populist, and very Chinese. Kijiji, on the other hand, is a completely foreign name that means “village” in Swahili. So maybe to Chinese the new brand means “The People’s Classifieds Network” or something like that!
History: Kijiji started in March, 2005

Wang Jianshuo joined Kijiji around March, 2005. At that time, Kijiji was just getting started. According to Wikipedia, Kijiji launched in March 2005. China was one of the initial launch categories at the time. Here is a picture from the Wayback Machine of Kijiji.com on March 6, 2005:

Today: Kijiji in the United States

Meanwhile, eBay Live is going on in Chicago and eBay (the owner of Kijiji worldwide) just issued a press release celebrating Kijiji’s launch in the US (h/t AuctionBytes):

Kijiji will mark its one-year anniversary in the U.S. online classifieds market and commemorate its success of reaching more than four million unique visitors per month. This milestone clearly positions Kijiji well ahead of most major competitors who have targeted the online classifieds market. With the goal of creating a free, clean, and easy-to-use online classifieds platform for local communities, Kijiji has exceeded expectations with phenomenal growth and adoption since the site went live on June 29, 2007.

So clearly eBay is not abandoning Kijiji worldwide…yet.

Question: Are international brands an asset or a liability in China?

The big question this name change raises is: is an international brand an asset or a liability in China, and in which categories? Clearly you can identify foreign brands that have cachet, especially in luxury goods. But what about internet brands?

Kijiji has been in the market for 3 years, and is the dominant classifieds site in Shanghai. They have been building the Kijiji brand for over 3 years. The classified business is competitive, and Kijiji competes with many classifieds players including Ganji (赶集), Koubei (口碑), and Taobao (淘宝). This change suggests that a good local brand that is memorable, easily recognizable and has some Chinese meaning and positive connotations was worth the switch.

The other implication is that Kijiji failed to build sufficient brand preference in the last 3 years such that the switching cost of changing to a new brand was low relative to the benefit of a good brand foundation for the future.

Last year, Wang Jianshuo also highlighted some of the historical reasons why classifieds was not popular in China in the past, and his belief in why that will change in the future. Many of the reasons offered were because of historical restrictions around where to live and where to work. Many of those restrictions are now gone, and Chinese have the same needs as people in other countries to buy and sell things. So this change may also be driven by a belief that there is a great future for classifieds in China and it is not too late to make.

Congratulations to Wang Jianshuo for driving this decision and doing what he felt was right for China. It was probably a difficult decision for an international company like Ebay to make and I can only imagine the amount of convincing that he had to make.

Here are some pictures from the Baixing office from our recent visit!

Baixing.com office building:

Jianshuo Wang, Head of Baixing.com and blogger at Wangjianshuo.com

View from the Baixing office down onto the grounds of the Shanghai Jiaotong University Xujiahui campus (SJTU):

Congratulations again Jianshuo!