Connecting Major USA All Recipes to a Chinese Ecommerce Startup

Allrecipes has arrived to China! I have been talking to Dennis from all recipes for a few months now, about coming to China and learning the market more. They do have allrecipes.cn domain, but have not yet invested in opening a company or an office in China, currently have one Chinese staff residing in America, Joyce, working on the content, moderation, and promotion of the Chinese site.

This is their first trip to China as a company, and they’re very curious and open minded on how to further develop and grow partnerships here. I have been working with startups and e-commerce businesses in South China for years now, and have been introducing them to a few.

I was worried maybe these companies I am introducing Dennis too were too small, but he is so excited to work with startups – he says that allrecipes was a startup in the late 90s when it was founded, and that entrepreneurs are the ones that get things done. I think he, like many, have trouble getting through to large Chinese media companies, and he likes this angle of starting slowly in China with some startups, especially foreigners – as he is more comfortable this way, and can get some China exposure without jumping in head first. I do agree this is a better strategy in China, to start slowly, learn the market, and then make some bigger moves!

One that I thought was a rather creative and interesting startup is no go go – an online grocery delivery company here in Shenzhen. It is a joint venture Chinese e-commerce startup with a 4 million yuan initial investment, been in business a couple years and below are some stats:

• 25 staff currently, and growing rapidly.

• chinese new year, 2 people

• brands from all over the world

• tmall (taobao) store

• Most Chinese customer sales are in Taobao, nogogo is more for english-speaking customers in China

• Investing in advertising with IMHaiGui magazine (magazine for Chinese who studied overseas and returned to China), and all the major english language Shenzhen websites such as Shenzhen Party, Shenzhen Standard, SZ stuff. Wiki Shenzhen.

For allrecipes.cn – they do not currently host their website in China nor have the proper license (ICP) to promote properly in China, but currently have 700,000 weibo followers in sina weibo and a huge database of recipes from their english website. They will continue to study and grow in the China market, and this is just one step further into doing so.

Ideas for a USA / China cross promotion and alliance

The goal, help create intelligent and informed food shoppers in the Chinese internet community. Grow traffic to Allrecipes Chinese property website. Many people comment on all recipes Chinese weibo blogs on where to get the recipes here in China, possibly can drive those visitors to nogogo. Also, there is the need to teach Chinese about these foods….some products aren’t popular on nogogo because the chinese consumers are not aware of the goods.

With Nogogo, the goal was first to first teach people to buy groceries online. to trust the company that they can buy online and wait for it to be received
Next, the next step, teach them how to use these imported foods, how to cook, how to use these ingredients successfully so they will re-order the food.

We discussed the new, young Chinese are open to foreign products, foreign food. Curious people. Travel all over the world. They are open minded, and want to be sophisticated, not simple.

Both sides are very excited, and there will be more recipes on nogogo soon, with sponsored links from allrecipes for branding and traffic building on their China property. I can’t get into too many details, as the deal is still in early stages, but its exciting and is on track to be mutually win-win.

I love this kind of connecting, deal flow. Bridging China and USA. Connecting startups to larger businesses to create synergies.