Museums join online marketplace

Nation’s prosperous creative and cultural industry is thriving – and it’s just the tip of the iceberg, say experts

When the British Museum opened its online store on Alibaba’s marketplace Tmall on July 1, more than 50 types of products based on the institution’s collection sold out within days.

Revenue amounted to more than 1 million yuan (£114,000) and the store attracted about 160,000 fans in just one month. Sales were beyond the expectations of both the museum and its Chinese licensee partner, Alfilo Brands Co.

“We’d anticipated the museum’s online store being a success but never thought it would be so big,” said He Yizan, chief executive of Alfilo, which operates the online shop. Annual revenue of the museum’s Tmall store is expected to be between 20 million yuan and 30 million yuan, he said.

The bulk of the products that sold out, such as teacups, bags and fans, were tailored solely for the Chinese market. They were inspired mainly by the museum’s Egyptian collections and the Rosetta Stone, a slab found in 1799 inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty (305-30 BC).

The best-selling item was a set of black decorative tape inscribed with words from the Rosetta Stone, the British Museum’s signature work, priced at 19 yuan. A pop-up store will open under the name of the British Museum this year and will run for four months in Shanghai, where art lovers will be able to experience replicas and products in the museum’s worldwide collection via high-technology.

“When people’s income reaches a certain level, the art and culture industry will witness a boom,” he said, adding that this point has already been reached in China. Consumers’ desire for the British Museum’s products is just the tip of the iceberg for China’s prosperous museum-related creative and cultural industry.

In 2016 four ministries, including the then Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Finance, adopted a regulation to support museums in developing their collections to sell gifts and souvenirs. By last year about 2,500 museums and cultural institutions had begun to design and produce merchandise, the Ministry of Culture said.

When Qiu Tong introduced her team’s designs based on the Summer Palace – the imperial garden in Beijing listed as a Unesco world heritage site in 1998 – to many brands and e-commerce platforms last year, her targeted consumers were surprised.

This was because they still had the impression that the Summer Palace only had an on-site store offering low-priced and poor-quality souvenirs. Last year Ms Qiu set up China Cultural Tourism and Creativity, a company in Beijing, to help museums and cultural institutions design and promote brands and products.

Her team of about 50 is dedicated to working with the Summer Palace, a must-see destination for travellers to Beijing.

The palace, overlooked by mountains and boasting lakes and traditional architecture, is regarded as a masterpiece of Chinese garden design. It was built by the Emperor Qianlong during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) to celebrate the 60th birthday of his mother.

“It’s common to associate the Summer Palace with the Forbidden City, since both are related to royal families,” Ms Qiu said. “However, if you look into its history, the Summer Palace is more about females. That’s the basis on which we design its products, which are more orientated towards women.”

Indeed, buyers of Summer Palace items are mainly women aged from 18 to 28 who want beautiful items, Ms Qiu said. While the Forbidden City was China’s seat of power and home to emperors, the Summer Palace acted as a resort where emperors and their family members spent their holidays.

The Forbidden City, also known as the Palace Museum, now leads the way for China’s creative and cultural industry, with millions of fans following its online stores on various e-commerce platforms. The Summer Palace set up its online merchandising business only last year.

Ms Qiu and her team spent almost a year getting ideas on how to design products for the public. The first items were based on animals, plants and buildings, and included paper tapes, teacups, bookmarks, jewellery and accessories. An online store opened under the name of the Summer Palace on Tmall in June.

Chinese festivals are used to promote its products in conjunction with JD or 360buy, another Chinese e-commerce player. In January 2018, the store sold tens of thousands of red envelops on 360buy before Spring Festival with patterns inspired by buildings at the Summer Palace.

During the Dragon Boat Festival in June, the Palace put thousands of boxes of zongzi –  a Chinese rice dish specially prepared for the Dragon Boat Festival – on the market for 360buy. They sold out within a week, each priced at 188 yuan – double the average price.

Ms Qiu said that working with e-commerce platforms is a quick and effective way to reach more consumers and make them aware that the Summer Palace has its own products.

“I think the rise of the Chinese creative and cultural industry can be partly attributed to the boom in China’s social media and new media,” Ms Qiu said, referring to the rapid spread of information on social media such as the instant messaging app WeChat, microblogs and short-video apps such as Douyin.

The Palace Museum’s online store opened in 2008 and quickly caught the public eye with a series of interesting promotions on social media. In 2016 a short animation on emperors and their concubines in the Forbidden City went viral on WeChat, quickly attracting numerous fans to the Palace Museum. 

This also happened in May 2018, when seven museums, including the National Museum of China, the Shaanxi History Museum and the Hunan Museum, made a short video depicting antique statues and sculptures performing a pop dance on Douyin.

The video, which lasted less than two minutes, was watched millions of times, resulting in numerous searches in online stores. Ms Qiu said the Summer Palace also plans to make short videos on apps such as Douyin to promote its products.

In December 2017, the British Museum turned to streamlining platforms in China to promote its products to buyers. Despite these various promotion channels, according to industry insiders, the key to the popularity of museum-related products lies in the design and the cultural history behind them.

This article was originally produced and published by China Daily. View the original article www.chinadaily.cn