Chinese Maternal and Child Giant Announces to Shut down APP

Chaileedo Press
Jul 7, 2022
3 min read

The former Chinese cross-border e-commerce giant of maternal and child, MIA announced that it will shut down its APP on September 10, 2022. It is reported that MIA, founded in 2011, is a service platform of lifestyle for Chinese women.

Recently, it can be found on www.mia.com that it intends to shut down its APP on September 10, 2022, in China Standard time (all times in this article is China Standard time). Also, it said that the transaction orders of consumers will continue until the platform closes. After its closure, the company would centrally delete user information that has been collected, log out of personal accounts, and stop collecting or using the information and data of consumers and merchants.

According to CHAILEEDO, at present, Apple’s App Store cannot search the MIA, which can be searched in Android App Store while cannot be downloaded and installed, just showing the App has stopped maintaining. MIA denoted that, although the App will be closed, its Wechat Youzan mini program could provide service to users, and members can still enjoy the shopping experience.

In the light of its official website, MIA, founded in 2011, is a service platform of lifestyle for women, covering retail, private brand and membership marketing. Its e-commerce App was launched in 2013. In addition to product retail and member marketing, it also operates private brands, like MAMA SELECTION, a brand of maternal and child, whose products mainly face infants, including Face cream, Foaming cleanser, Shampoo, Lipstick, Cotton Towel, Diaper and so on. Besides, the high-end skincare brand V'ALAMIO, which includes Facial masks and essence, also belongs to MIA.

In addition, according to public reports, the MIA has raised $230 million in funding up to now. Among them, many global top venture Capital companies like ZhenFund, Xianfeng Huaxing, Sequoia Capital, H-Capital favor MIA. Baidu’s $150 million financing broke a record financing amount in China’s maternal and child industry. At that time, the MIA market was valued more than $150 million, making it the most valuable cross-border e-commerce of maternal and children in China.

However, luck is fleeting. The living space of China’s e-commerce is squeezed. Like MIA, channels and flow have become the common difficulty that vertical e-commerce is facing. The competition pattern between Ali, JD and Pinduoduo has diluted the flow of vertical e-commerce, squeezing their living space. Before then, the cross-border e-commerce Kaola was acquired by Ali, the beauty e-commerce Jumei delisted from the US stock market, and the luxury e-commerce SECOO was acquired by Qudian...

Some professionals believed that maternal and child e-commerce is a category of vertical e-commerce, which is rarely successful in the world at present because the customer cost and operating efficiency are so low that it cannot compete with comprehensive e-commerce. While at the macro level, the declining birth rate in China also induces much more pressure and costs to the development of maternal and child e-commerce. Becoming a supply chain company is the only way, to join the integrated e-commerce platform and content e-commerce platform and giveis up being an independent e-commerce platform.

Based on the public media reports, the founder and CEO of MIA, Liu Nan split MIA and MAMA SELECTION at the board level in 2021, turning them into two completely independent companies. In order to adapt to the brand transformation, Liu Nan is hands-on in product research and development and the supply chain level. At present, as the first maternal and child brand that has registered in TikTok China, MAMA SELECTION leads the race of maternal and child in TikTok China. In the last period of 818 (the promotion that happened on 18th, August annually), its 11 items ranked Top1 in the popular items list of TikTok China.

Liu Nan mentioned in a speech in June this year that, MAMA SELECTION is a Chinese professional brand of maternal and child care, positioned at the age of children. We could spend more time screening the basic materials and researching and developing basic ingredients in the economic downturn.