On September 15,Uschi Karnat Fulishe, an e-commerce platform operated by the Instagram-like lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, announced that it will stop selling goods from October 16 this year and will officially close its online store on November 16. Fulishe, the name of which translates as Benefits Club, was established at the end of 2014 and primarily sources skincare, cosmetics, and fashion related products directly from suppliers and resells them to consumers. Two weeks earlier, Xiaolvzhou (or Small Oasis), another Xiaohongshu-owned e-commerce platform that focused on outdoor and sports products, said it would cease operations from October. In recent years, Xiaohongshu has been actively seeking a unique path to enter the e-commerce industry. In late August, Chinese news outlet LatePost reported that Xiaohongshu had merged its e-commerce and livestreaming operations, establishing a new trading division in parallel with its core community division. In the same month, the company launched a new e-commerce business model which encourages bloggers and livestreamers on the platform to select and sell items in line with the personal styles that they present in their posts. [36Kr, in Chinese]
