In the pain points of young Asians, Chinese merchants' "secrets" for going global are hidden.

Ask AI · How can Taobao’s overseas expansion plan help merchants achieve lightweight global expansion?

【Global Network Technology Composite Report】Inside the transparent outer bag, you can display the anime pins and plush toys you love—that’s the “pain bag” rooted in the subculture of otaku culture. In recent years, it has jumped from being a “secret code” reserved for the niche subculture to a trend item sweeping across Asia. Taobao data shows that over the past year, overseas sales of pain bags surged by double digits; in markets such as Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and others, year-on-year growth exceeded 60%, becoming “social currency” that young people are eager to collect.

Photo: A pain bag filled with anime merchandise

“Last year, we transformed from traditional kids’ backpacks into pain bags. Not only did our domestic sales revenue grow by 10 times, but we also unexpectedly gained growth in the overseas market!” Yang Xiaohua, head of aorda’s Taobao Tmall flagship store, said. As a second-generation entrepreneur with its own factory, when Yang Xiaohua took over the business from her parents, she was facing a situation where the kids’ backpack track was highly homogeneous and dominated by involution-style competition. After sharply noticing that young people in China are passionate about pain bags featuring otaku culture and celebrity merchandise, she made a decisive decision to combine her factory’s strengths in bag and luggage manufacturing with the emerging trendy toy culture, fully entering the “pain bag” track on Taobao.

Seeing the success of product transformation, Yang Xiaohua sees an even broader market: “Asian cultures share the same roots, and consumer aesthetics are similar. If pain bags can catch fire in China, they will also become popular among young people in more countries.” Although she lacked overseas expansion experience, Yang Xiaohua still found a “lightweight” path to go global. By signing up for Taobao’s overseas expansion, aorda only needs to use Tmall’s “one inventory batch” and doesn’t have to build an overseas operations team, nor does it need to deal with complex cross-border logistics—achieving simultaneous sales in both domestic and overseas markets. The market has responded: over the past year, aorda’s overseas sales revenue increased by triple digits. In countries including Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, and South Korea, it even achieved growth rates of 3 to 5 times. “Finding the right niche track and fully leveraging platform dividends is the core secret to achieving ‘double growth’ both at home and abroad,” Yang Xiaohua concluded.

Photo: A pain bag featuring items like keychains and badges

As a derivative product of the trendy toy industry, the rise of pain bags is a snapshot of the rapid growth of the entire trendy toy sector. According to the 2025 industry white paper released by the China Toy and Juvenile Products Association, the market share of China’s toy and trendy toy segment (including online and offline) is about 153.6 billion yuan, up 26% year over year—an emerging “new consumption wind” on the scale of hundreds of billions. A report from Qianqian Middle Platform points out that in the first stage of 2025’s Double 11, Taobao Tmall’s sales revenue in trendy toys accounted for 75.8% of the overall market—making it the largest domestic online trendy toy “main platform,” with a very strong industrial clustering effect. While Taobao has continued to deepen its focus on the domestic market, it has also opened up a bigger market for merchants—overseas expansion.

From globally popular brand merchandise such as Blizzard games and Riot Games to numerous top otaku merchants like Jingying and Anyuan, many have turned to Taobao’s overseas expansion to develop global markets. It’s understood that currently more than 18,000 Taobao otaku and trendy toy merchants have joined the Taobao overseas expansion program.

To help merchants get goods to customers worldwide, Taobao’s overseas expansion has offered cross-border shipping-with-postage services in 12 countries and regions. Logistics times have been accelerated, with delivery to the world’s fastest in as little as 3 days. Improvements to service measures have also gradually enhanced consumer experience. It is reported that as of 2025, Taobao’s overseas GMV has maintained double-digit growth for five consecutive years, and the size of overseas new users has increased by nearly 200% year over year. At present, more than one million merchants have joined the Taobao overseas expansion growth plan, making Taobao the preferred platform for many domestic merchants to achieve lightweight overseas expansion. (Bocan)