Chinese sneakerheads’ favourite shopping app Dewu to cut 500 jobs as weak spending persists

Dewu, founded by the young Chinese billionaire Yang Bing, is not one of the top e-commerce apps in China in terms of turnover, but it has been influential in wooing China’s Gen Z consumers, who are more willing to pay premium prices for certain types of goods.

According to the company’s promotional materials in 2023, about 70 per cent of Dewu users were born after 1995, and about 70 per cent of the 260 million people in that demographic in China have used the app.

After it started allowing users and merchants to trade goods in 2017, Dewu quickly emerged as a platform for bidding wars. In particular, it became the go-to spot for China’s young sneakerheads to bid on limited edition shoes.

In 2021, prices for some shoes produced by Li Ning and Anta Sports surged eightfold on Dewu. That year, a Li Ning pair named after former National Basketball Association star Dwyane Wade sold for as much as 48,889 yuan (worth about US$7,500 at the time) on Dewu – 33 times its recommended retail price. A pair of Anta shoes with a special imprint of the Japanese cartoon character Doraemon that retailed for 499 yuan was selling for 3,999 yuan on the platform.

How much the company itself has benefited from hype cycles remains something of a mystery. As a private company, it is not required to disclose its finances.

Yang, the founder, was listed No 32 on the Hurun Global U40 list of self-made billionaires last year with a net worth of US$1.5 billion. Yang grabbed media attention in 2023 when he spent 158 million yuan to buy a mansion in Shanghai, local media outlet The Paper reported.