Hot online sales for Palace Museum's cultural items

A phone holder is one of many souvenirs at the Palace Museum. [Photo/Beijing News]

Creative souvenirs from the Palace Museum were hot items during a promotion campaign on the Taobao's group-buying platform ju.taobao.com last week.

On Aug 5, ju.taobao.com, an online group-buying website under Alibaba's Taobao, released a batch of creative cultural products from the Palace Museum to celebrate the museum's 90th anniversary. In one hour, 1,500 phone holders have been sold out and 16,000 products have been knocked down in just one day.

The promotion lasted three days, from Aug 5 to Aug 7. However, the six featured products in the promotion were almost sold out on the very first day.

The museum's cultural products, such as luggage tags, beaded earphones, and other living goods or crafts associated with the imperial era have attracted many young people.

Actually, the last two years witnessed the increasing popularity of the Palace Museum's Taobao store and the cooperation with Ali's jutaobao platform has again proved its success.

Jewelry replicated from imperial pieces in the museum's collections and made by famous brand Chow Tai Fook, was also released exclusively on ju.taobao.com this time.

The museum is interacting well with its followers on new media platforms like Weibo, WeChat and its Taobao store. Just a few weeks ago, its official Sina Weibo account posted a series of draft pictures of the museum's architecture and invited netizens to color them, with many participating. Netizens jokingly call the color prints "Secret Palace", imitating the recent hit coloring book for adults, "Secret Garden".

Experts say that the Palace Museum's cultural creative industry has great potential, and through new media platforms, the ancient Forbidden City is graciously getting closer to people.

According to previous statistics, the Palace Museum has designed 6,746 cultural products up to August last year and six apps have been released so far. It is expected that the cultural industry will bring the museum revenues of 900 million yuan this year.