Success belongs to the nimble

"When we tried to expand our better home organization services from property developers to more individuals, we found it difficult. Most people are more willing to pay for interior designers or interior decorators."

As November and Singles Day on the 11th loomed, Zhou had a flash of inspiration, thinking about the origins of what has become an occasion for hundreds of millions of people to go bargain-hunting on the internet.

In fact, well before the world of commercialism caught up with Nov 11 in a big way about 10 years ago, it used to be a kind of Valentine's Day, the date's digits representing those who are unattached and supposedly lonely－or possibly not.

Zhou's idea was essentially a marketing one, to tailor her online courses on decluttering to middle-aged single women and to do so through her WeChat Channels as Nov 11 loomed.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs said that in 2018 there were 240 million Chinese of marriageable age who were either single or divorced. Considered as a market, that figure is all the more tantalizing when you consider it is greater than the combined population of France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Zhou, 36, herself single, said those who belong to this group are strongly motivated to please themselves whether by making themselves look more beautiful, making themselves feel better－or possibly even relieving any anxiety some may have about being single.

"We used to help people better organize their homes, but we've been shifting our focus from decluttering the outside to decluttering the inside, the latter being something single women will increasingly want," Zhou said, "the inside "referring to matters psychological as much as physical.

"So we're trying once again to change our focus, and the emergence of WeChat Channels has provided us a good chance in doing that."

WeChat's owner Tencent launched the new video platform in March, looking to it as a powerful tool that could help the content publisher reach 1.2 billion WeChat users. And with WeChat's huge user base, its influence may eventually surpass that of Douyin, the original, domestic version of the video platform TikTok.

Another small business owner who has had to quickly adapt to changing conditions as he navigated the difficult shoals of the pandemic is Sun Mingzhe, 41, who worked in IT in Beijing for 20 years before opening, with several other investors, three medium-sized restaurants named Daddy Shrimp last year.

As the restaurant industry felt the full brunt of the pandemic in the first half of this year, the three restaurants were forced to close, and investment of more than 3 million yuan ($456,660) was washed down the drain.

In March Sun took a fresh look at his approach to business and set up a community catering service. This involved delivering popular fast foods such as spicy crayfish and lamb spine to neighbors, in tune with the lockdown zeitgeist of reducing personal contacts and dining at home rather than out. Sun later also set up a kitchen to offer family packages and healthy meals, in addition to the existing fast-food products.