Journalist |
Editor | Wen Shuqi
As we get closer to the actual 618 dates, the hype feels noticeably flatter. Honestly, it’s just those relentless app splash screens popping up that remind you the mega-sale is still dragging on.
Just after mid-May, Xu Can, an e-commerce pro at a baby gear brand, was already locked into her daily price-tracking routine. If one platform dips a standard $55 item to $54, watch closely: JD.com, Tmall, and every other channel will automatically match that drop within minutes. It’s like they all share the same playbook.
What really grinds her gears this year? Even the rock-bottom prices from top-tier streamers like Li Jiaqi are now under constant surveillance. Cross that price line, and platforms won’t even warn you—they’ll just auto-adjust your listing instantly.
Sure, the back-and-forth war looks intense, but it’s mostly happening behind the scenes between platforms and sellers. Actually waking up shoppers and convincing them to crack open their wallets? That’s proving incredibly tough.
Wearing both merchant and shopper hats, Xu has clearly seen how Chinese consumers have leveled up. We’ve mastered coupon stacking, cross-platform price checks, and jumping ship for a better deal. “I’ve honestly gotten so used to refusing checkout unless there’s a discount attached,” she notes. “People will literally switch apps just to save a few bucks.”
The latest macro numbers tell the story. Released on June 16, state data shows May’s social retail sales hit 4.1 trillion yuan, dipping 0.6% year-over-year—the first monthly decline in nearly three years. Sure, online retail grew 5% from January to May, but compared to the double-digit booms we saw a decade ago, everyone in the industry agrees: e-commerce momentum has seriously slowed down.
That pressure is trickling down to every corner of the supply chain. After chatting with multiple insiders, NUPIAO noticed three major shifts defining this year’s 618:
First, low-growth era dynamics are splitting the market wide open. Legacy brands are feeling the squeeze, while fresh categories and emerging labels are doing the heavy lifting.
Second, merchants are ditching vanity metrics. Everyone’s chasing real profit margins instead of inflated GMV, and marketing budgets are finally getting surgical.
Third, AI has officially moved to the front lines, but we’re still waiting for that magical “GPT moment” on the consumer side.
AI Moves to Center Stage
“I run one main ‘Lobster’ bot plus two assistants,” shares Jia Yu, an eight-year veteran in home appliance e-commerce. He told NUPIAO that his primary agent handles approval chains, emails, and task queues, while the pair of assistants digest local files, draft reports, crunch numbers, and hand everything off to the main bot for final analysis.
“The workflow is buttery smooth now. Honestly, my ‘Lobster’ thinks faster and deeper than I do these days,” he admits.
Over the last two years, AI has seeped into every crevice of our industry. We started with copywriting, poster design, chatbots, and live-stream moderation. But this 618, with agents like OpenClaw taking off, AI is actually steering full operational workflows. It’s pulling meeting notes, running financial diagnostics, tracking competitor moves, and modeling budgets before spitting out ready-to-go strategy decks. Tasks that used to require a whole ops team can now be handled solo by AI agents.
Management teams across e-commerce firms are rapidly adopting a “one human + multiple agents” setup.
Still, deployment hurdles mean most companies haven’t fully onboarded smart agents yet. AI remains more of a support tool than a replacement. For Xu’s team, image generation for product detail pages is where AI sees the most action.
“Frontline operators don’t always wait around for photographers. They’ll quickly mock up an AI image to keep things moving, then swap in the polished shot later. Same goes for livestream backdrops and prop cards—AI lays the groundwork, and humans step in to tweak the fine details.”
At this point, AI is really just pouring the foundation. Humans still need to frame and decorate. Xu puts it plainly: we’re nowhere near replacing people with algorithms yet.
Platforms are pushing hard to bring AI out of the warehouse and into the spotlight.
Right ahead of the sale, Qwen integrated seamlessly with Taobao, letting users compare prices and check out directly inside the chat window. Meanwhile, Doubao promoted shopping straight to the top navigation bar. You analyze, compare, and get recommendations, then jump straight into the Douyin app to wrap up the purchase loop.
We used to type keywords into search bars. Now, we’re just talking to bots. New traffic gateways are definitely forming, but mass conversion hasn’t kicked in yet. Right now, everyone is just focused on training user habits.
A longtime shopper put it best when talking to NUPIAO: “I’ll ask AI for research tips, but when it’s time to actually buy? The experience still feels clunky. There are invisible walls between platforms anyway, so I’m stuck checking prices manually. Recommendations miss the mark sometimes too. Like that camera sitting in my cart for days—I only bought it last night because a flash sale coupon finally popped up.” Honestly, that thrill of hunting for deals and aimlessly browsing shops? Apps still own that territory.
Platforms and brands are always quick to grab new entry points. An insider at a domestic GEO firm told NUPIAO that demand spiked right before 618. “Even though the March 15 Gala exposed some shady AI ad practices, it accidentally gave GEO a massive awareness boost. Lots of businesses reached out during the sale window and officially booked GEO into their marketing spend.”
Bottom line: AI might end up making money off brands first. Going forward, competing for search rankings isn’t enough. Brands also need to train AI to genuinely understand their products and identity.
AI pumps up efficiency, sure, but it doesn’t spark new desire to shop.
“At the end of the day, whether someone clicks ‘buy’ comes down to human psychology, not algorithms,” Jia Yu points out.
Legacy Brands Stumble, New Products Step Up
In Jia Yu’s memory, tactics like dumping cheap inventory to spike volume, dropping midnight sales milestone posters, and bragging with rivals about who broke a billion yuan feel like ancient history now.
Starting May 20, his brand’s sales dipped 10% to 20% month-over-month. “Home appliance penetration rates are already maxed out. With government subsidies winding down, big-ticket items like fridges, washers, ACs, and TVs are under serious pressure this season.”
Her sector is seeing the exact same thing. Ironically, the biggest names with highly standardized goods are taking the hardest hits. “The more established and uniform a brand gets, the sharper the downturn,” she observes. Without real differentiation, transparent pricing, and fading traditional traffic perks, their margins are getting squeezed dry.
That anxiety isn’t hitting everyone equally, obviously.
So if legacy brands are struggling and AI hasn’t magically reinvented consumer excitement, what’s left to drive growth?
The answer lies squarely in new labels and fresh categories. Jia Yu noticed that any segment still showing real traction comes from underserved niches. “Robotic vacuums, countertop water dispensers, and fridges with built-in ice makers are posting way healthier growth curves.”
Xu had a surprising realization this year: top streamers like Li Jiaqi are opening up noticeably more slots for her brand.
“Back in the day, we’d scrape by with one or two slots. This year, we landed eight. Top streamers are expanding their horizons. New brands and categories naturally bring that freshness and scarcity factor,” she explains. Her label keeps prices accessible, builds solid brand equity, and invested heavily in differentiated drops, which directly fueled a year-over-year revenue double.
This trend is showing up everywhere. Data shared with NUPIAO by Tmall highlights the shift: last year, multi-million-yuan product launches were rare. This year, major hits emerged across seven sectors, including big appliances, wellness, small home gadgets, collectibles, automotive accessories, and FMCG. All 165 launch titles topped their specific subcategory rankings.
618 has essentially become a launchpad. Take the mosquito repellent space: Liushen rolled out a portable repellent capsule, shifting usage from indoor homes to light outdoor activities. It clocked over 6 million yuan in sales in just seven days on Taobao. Huang Jianjian, head of personal care at Shanghai Jahwa, noted that more than 80% of buyers were first-time customers who’d never tried the brand before.
Over in coffee machines, De’Longhi tapped into the massive Chinese appetite for milk-based and iced coffees. They positioned their dual-extraction hot/cold tech as the key feature and dropped the S9 LattePro. Krystal, their Tmall lead, confirmed that first-phase sales completely matched the entire previous 618 cycle’s performance for that model.
Bosszuo Ecommerce summarized the pattern nicely: high-performing launches usually nail three things. Clear use-case scenarios. Strong perceived value. And the ability to use content and service to clearly explain *why* you should buy it.
One crucial takeaway: in an environment where price wars are getting brutal, launching fresh products is one of the few ways to escape margin-damaging competition and let brands reclaim control over pricing.
Crunching the Real Numbers, Chasing Actual Profit
Every year, the 618 marathon just keeps getting longer.
“Last year, the event kicked off around May 12. This year, I felt the warm-up start closer to the 10th,” Jia Yu notes. “Shoppers are the only ones tired of it. Neither platforms nor brands mind. Platforms love the stretched-out data spikes, and brands get breathing room to plan inventory and ease logistics bottlenecks.”
But `that extended timeline is fundamentally rewriting the playbooks.` mega-sales events aren’t just about short-term fireworks anymore. It’s morphing into a month-long endurance test. Brands are done gaming GMV. The focus has shifted squarely to operational health.
Everyone’s auditing their books again, and getting ridiculously detailed. A leader at Bosszuo pointed out to NUPIAO that the industry vibe this year isn’t “more cutthroat,” it’s “more precise.” Brands are prioritizing repeat purchase rates, average order value, inventory turns, return ratios, member engagement, and pure profit quality. It’s the natural evolution of an industry maturing past reckless growth.
Old rule: chase wherever the new traffic is. New rule: follow the highest margin opportunities. Budget allocation is shifting to match.
“Macro-wise, paid ad battles have almost entirely left native e-commerce apps. Everyone’s flooding external hubs like Xiaohongshu and Bilibili to scout fresh audiences and plant seeds for future conversions,” Jia Yu explains. NUPIAO learned that several top players have scaled their external seeding budgets from tens of millions straight into the nine-figure range.
Douyin is a unique player.Jia Yu notes that back when Douyin first pivoted toward content-driven commerce, tons of appliance brands gradually adopted it as a strategic third pillar alongside Taobao and JD.
“Over the past two years, we’ve noticed Douyin shifted gears again, leaning hard into local services. That makes it ideal for high-content, lower-ticket impulse buys—not really our wheelhouse. Since big appliances rely on structured shelf-based shopping, Douyin’s strategic weight for us has quietly faded.”
Every morning walks into the office, Jia Yu starts by syncing with his “Lobster” bot. He reviews yesterday’s sales, adjusts today’s tactics, and rolls with it. The sale might feel quieter each year, but the AI revolution is probably knocking on the door. As for what the next 618 will actually look like? He’s leaving that mystery for later.
