Wu Xiaoyu opened her first online store in 2009 before WeChat existed. 
早在2009年微信普及前，吴晓雨就开了自己的第一家网店。

She was working full time as a digital strategy analyst for a marketing firm in the city of Zhengzhou, in Henan Province, but she had a project she couldn’t stop thinking about. 
吴晓雨是河南省郑州市一家营销公司的全职数据策划分析师，但在她心中，一直有个想法萦绕不去：

She wanted to sell local products like honey and walnuts from her hometown in a mountainous region of Henan, since the children and elders still living there were not equipped to market for themselves. 
她想做生意，产品即为自己的家乡 — 河南某山区的当地特产，如蜂蜜、胡桃，因为留在当地生活的老人小孩没有能力把这些东西拖到集市去卖。

So after work, she started posting ads on online message boards and building a customer base. 
因此，吴开始利用自己的闲暇时光在网络消息平台上做宣传，逐渐打造了良好的客户基础。

After two years, Wu quit her job in order to both officially register her company and give birth to her daughter.
两年后，吴辞去工作，把精力集中在注册公司以及孕育女儿上。

Today, Wu owns two WeChat stores (Youjian Haitao  and Guozhen Liaode ), employs just under 40 people, and takes orders from about 600,000 customers. 
时至今日，吴已拥有两家微信小店（名字分别为“有间海淘”和“果真了得”），雇员不到40人，却坐拥60多万名客户，每月销售额达到了2百80万人民币（合约40万7千美元）。

Generating around 2.8 million yuan ($407,000) in sales per month, she is one of a growing number of women who are reshaping the gender balance of Chinese entrepreneurship through ecommerce.
作为中国与日俱增的女性电商企业家群体中的一员，吴无疑为推动中国企业家身份走向性别平等献了一份力。

 

“It’s not about how much power you have, or your knowledge or education or money. It’s about how creative what the merchant wants to provide to the customers is,” says Elvica Yu, CFO of the WeChat-integrated ecommerce software provider Youzan. 
“无关权力，无关学问，无关教育，无关金钱。真正重要的是商家想要为顾客发挥自己多大的创造力。”微信电子商务平台供应商“有赞”的首席财务官俞韬如是说。

Yu says that unlike traditional ecommerce sellers who attract customers by spending on advertising and sponsored placement in search results, WeChat sellers develop their customer base through personal networks and creating shareable content. 
俞表示，与传统电商不同的是，微信卖家通过个人网络和共享内容建立客户基础，而非花销在广告与占位优化上。

Yu says that over 40 percent of the company’s nearly 3 million business owners, which include Wu Xiaoyu, are female. 
俞还说，公司近300万名企业主中，女性占比40%以上，其中就包含有吴晓雨。

He expects this figure to hit 50 percent within the year.
他希望这一数据能在今年内冲破50%。

Female dominance of China’s ecommerce space is revealed by the numbers: While women account for only 25 percent of all entrepreneurs in China, they have founded 55 percent of new online businesses, according to state-media-cited research from 2015. 
数据表明，中国电子商务领域由女性主导：虽说中国企业家里仅有25%为女性，但是据2015官方媒体调查，女性占据了55%的在线商务席位。

Women-owned businesses already account for over half of stores on Alibaba’s ecommerce platforms Taobao and Tmall. And women like Wu are running a growing number of female-owned WeChat stores.
阿里巴巴的电子商务平台 — 淘宝和天猫有超过半数的网店店主为女性。而和吴一样开始经营微信小店的女性也越来越多。

 

Lily Shi , 30, started her WeChat store, Love Rabbit, using the personal networking strategy that Yu describes. 
施爱丽今年30岁，她借用俞所描述的个网策略开了自己的微信小店 — 兔子洞韩国饰品代购。

Shi began selling accessories imported from Korea on WeChat in 2014, the same year that Tencent opened WeChat stores for the public. 
2014年腾讯对大众开放微信商城起，施就开始借助微信平台销售韩国进口配饰。

Shi decided not to open an “official account,” where businesses can send messages and promotions to subscribers. 
自虽说官方账号支持商家推送信息、提供优惠给订阅者，施却并不打算开通。

Instead, she engaged in more straightforward social commerce — simply posting photos on her personal WeChat account of jewelry and accessories received from her Korean supplier. 
相反，她选择了一种更为直接的社交商务方式 — 简单地给自己从韩国供应商处进口的珠宝、配饰拍个照，再把图片晒到个人微信账号，仅此而已。

Only her WeChat contacts were able to see these posts to her “Moments” newsfeed, but as friends shared her account, her circle of WeChat contacts has grown to 2,700.
只有微信联系人才能看到她发在“朋友圈”里的动态，而她的微信联系人已经涨到了2700人。

“I didn’t think too far ahead when I started. The intention was just to make some extra money doing what I like — I myself am a fan of these accessories,” says Shi.
“刚开始的时候我没想那么远。初衷不过是想做点自己喜欢的事，顺便挣点闲钱。因为我个人也很喜欢这些配饰。”施说。

Today, she receives the majority of her orders through her Taobao store; she began renting a separate studio last summer after her operations outgrew her Shanghai apartment.
现在，施收到的大多数订单来自淘宝商城；去年夏天，她的收入在买了一套上海公寓后还有剩余，于是她租了一间独立工作室。

As more sellers crowd into WeChat and other ecommerce platforms, competition is becoming more cutthroat. “The market is changing so fast, you have to stay open minded,” says Lily Shi of Love Rabbit. Though she knows the difficulties, Shi hopes to continue to grow her business to eventually start her own brand. She says, “For entrepreneurs, persistence is crucial to success. Don’t give up easily on your dreams.”
随着越来越多商家涌入微信及其它电子商务平台，竞争变得越来越激烈。“市场变化太快了，你的思想必须得开放。”兔子洞韩国饰品代购的店主施爱丽说。虽知前路坎坷，施仍决定继续自己的事业，最终打造一个属于自己的品牌。她说：“对于商家而言，成功的关键在于持之以恒。自己的梦想，哪能轻言放弃。”

 

（翻译：Rory）

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