Shopping app targets big spenders

Marketers are advised to tap into the demographic of affluent, tech-savvy Chinese Americans whose buying behavior reflects their cultural preferences. A mobile shopping-app company believes it knows how to reach this fast-growing group.

Weee!, a Silicon Valley-based startup, is building a mobile commerce platform bridging users to suppliers directly by providing curated and sometimes unique products through social networks.

With the app, the users can connect with other like-minded customers in their neighborhoods. They can share product information and pre-order through local group buying leaders. The company then sources and delivers the products.

Currently, the company has hundreds of partners, including farms and wholesale suppliers. Weee! has experienced rapid growth since its founding in 2015, and said its users exceed 120,000 and group leaders number more than 4,000 across the US.

The most popular products are fresh vegetables and fruits, seafood and Chinese ethnic snacks and ingredients, said Larry Liu, founder and CEO.

For instance, free-range chicken is delivered to group leaders directly from the slaughterhouse without being frozen; live fish caught in Alaska can arrive in a customer's kitchen the next day, he said.

The company has received positive feedback from suppliers. "They think the business model is very cool," Liu said.

Chinese Americans' dietary habits reflect the importance of food as a connection to cultural heritage. Chinese diets consist primarily of fresh and healthy options.

That echoes the findings by Nielson's latest Asian-American consumer report. The report, released in June 2016, found that Asian Americans purchase 72 percent more fresh vegetables and 29 percent more fresh fruits than the population at large.

"Having lived in the US for over 10 years, I feel the Chinese community has long been underserved," said Liu. "It's hard to get what we want in mainstream supermarkets, and the goods in Chinese supermarkets are often disappointing."

He said the reason for the Chinese community being underserved was because it was a small market.

But the millions of Chinese Americans represent massive spending power, and social networking apps such as WeChat bring them together, he added.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com