Tech News
Cartier, Bulgari and other luxury brands are flocking to WeChat – TechCrunch

Not long ago, people in China would need to visit a posh, stylish mall for luxury shopping. That’s rapidly changing as high-end brands race to embrace digital channels, which aren’t just the obvious options of ecommerce platforms or brand-owned sites. In China, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Bulgari and other luxury brands are now connecting and selling to millions of customers through WeChat .
Many know WeChat as China’s largest messaging app, and perhaps how it has over time morphed into an all-in-one ecosystem that lets one chat, run errands, hire services, and shop for an infinite list of things. Now the flurry of different products people find on WeChat may include a $10,000-plus purse.
The trend, according to Pablo Mauron, partner and managing director for China at Digital Luxury Group, a luxury marketing agency, reflects WeChat’s huge potential as an app tailored to transactions and services.
“I think WeChat is finally becoming what it’s supposed to be for luxury brands, which is not just a social media app,” Mauron told TechCrunch over a phone interview. “One [function] could be for customers to buy the product. Another could be for brands to build a loyalty program. Customers can pre-order a product or set up an appointment with the [offline] store.”
Indeed, according to a new report from market research firm Gartner L2, 60% of the fashion luxury brands it surveyed have at least one WeChat store, surging from just 36% in 2018.
Like Facebook, WeChat allows businesses to set up their online shops. The Chinese app now boasts more than 1 billion monthly users, but these people aren’t readily exploitable as customers. WeChat, unlike Alibaba, isn’t a marketplace and does not have a central search engine that indexes all the merchants selling over its platform.
A WeChat store is thus more comparable to a site store — it exists in the online universe but requires a lot of marketing before consumers stumble upon it. People may discover Wechat stores by scanning a QR code at a brick-and-mortar outlet, clicking on an ad embedded in an online article or through a slew of other creative ways that merchants devise.
Loyalty building
Despite the challenges in driving traffic, WeChat stores hold great appeal to brands for they offer a large toolbox for boosting customer loyalty, observed Mauron.
Shoppers can, for instance, talk to shop assistants over WeChat or check their membership status with just a few taps on the screen. It’s the social prowess of WeChat that separates it from entrenched ecommerce candidates like Alibaba and JD.com, which focus more on transactions. In a way, WeChat is not directly taking on Alibaba but playing a complementary role by providing customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities.
Screenshot of Louis Vuitton’s WeChat mini app for customers in China
A lot of these service-oriented features are powered by so-called “mini programs,” which are essentially stripped-down versions of native apps that run within a super app such as WeChat. As the Gartner L2 report points out, the rise in WeChat store adoption is linked to the increased use of mini programs by luxury brands.
A total of 69% the luxury brands in the sample group have at least one mini program. The adoption rate among fashion-focused luxury brands grew from 40% in 2018 to 70% in 2019, while the watch and jewelry category climbed from 36% to 62% over the same time period.
“WeChat is becoming the most appealing option for brands that want to think about CRM, ecommerce strategies or simply other value-added services without having to rely on external partners,” Mauron suggested, referring to Alibaba, JD and others that are traditionally the more popular choices for digital sales.
From social to shopping
While WeChat imposes certain rules on sellers, it’s built a reputation for being more laissez-faire compared to conventional ecommerce companies. For one, WeChat doesn’t (yet) take commissions from ecommerce transactions as online marketplaces normally do. As Mauron noted, “Tencent’s business model is not so much about making money out of the mini program transactions.”
On the other hand, WeChat’s e-wallet WeChat Pay benefits from processing transactions happening inside the chat app where Alibaba’s Alipay isn’t available.
That’s a crucial development because WeChat Pay has been for the most part associated with micropayments, thanks to a series of early campaigns that encouraged people to send cash-filled digital packets to each other, a tradition deep-rooted in a culture of exchanging cash during holidays.
Alipay, by contrast, is more extensively used for online shopping given its ties to Alibaba.
With the rise of mini app-enabled ecommerce, however, people are starting to use WeChat Pay for big-item purchases too.
“This allows WeChat to take market share in online payments. That’s the other big battle, which is between Alipay and WeChat Pay,” said Mauron.
As of January, Alipay had at least 1 billion monthly active users through its own app and mobile wallet partners around the world. WeChat doesn’t break out the user number for its e-wallet but said daily transaction volume passed 1 billion in 2018.
Tech News
Today’s Wordle Answer #594 – February 3, 2023 Solution And Hints

If the answer is still a mystery, the word is “tasty.” Apart from describing food as having agreeable flavor, you could say something or someone is tasty if they’re elegant or tasteful. The word is a diminutive of the root noun “taste,” which is from Old French “tast,” which is the term for the sense of touch (now Modern French tât).
In the original context of its usage around the 1400s, “taste” meant a share or a small portion; or the sense by which the flavor of a thing is discerned; and savor or flavor. But by the late 1600s, it had also taken on the sense of “aesthetic judgment,” or “the ability to recognize and appreciate excellence” (via Etymonline). There are more variations of its usage, however, especially in idioms. For example, if you have a taste for something, it means you have a strong preference or desire for it, and if something’s so bad you can taste it, it means that thing is extremely unpleasant (via The Free Dictionary).
This is all based on the fact that the sense of taste is quite adept at perception and discrimination of refinement or finesse. This is the sense on which phrases like “have a good eye/nose” are also based. On average, the human tongue has 2,000–8,000 taste buds, with hundreds of thousands of receptor cells. To keep the sense of taste as keen as possible, each taste bud gets replaced about every two weeks (via Britannica).
We hope you finish your puzzle before you run out of guesses, and if you have a taste for puzzles, here are more like Wordle to keep you busy.
Tech News
A New Cybertruck Spotting Just Revealed Two Big Design Changes

The first clear change to the Cybertruck has to do with the rearview mirrors. As Electrek correctly notes, the Cybertruck was originally meant to lack side mirrors, favoring the more futuristic solution of body-mounted cameras. Assuming the particular prototype that was spotted on the road in Palo Alto represents recent changes, that’s at least one concession to reality from the aggressively conceptual Tesla truck.
The second, arguably more significant change is to the truck bed. Prior to this sighting, the Cybertruck had yet to be shown with a working, retractable tonneau cover. User Flavio Tronz on Instagram seems to have caught the Cybertruck with the cover half-retracted, suggesting that particular challenge has also been conquered.
In short, the Cybertruck seems to be getting the tweaks and flourishes to be expected for a car that is expected to enter full-scale production soon. The implementation of simple, proven solutions, like side mirrors, suggests that Tesla is getting real about putting their vision of the future on actual roads.
Tech News
Is It Safe To Charge Your iPhone With Macbook Charger?

According to Apple, if you own a Mac laptop or an iPad and have immediate access to the USB power adapter that came with it, you can certainly use it to charge your iPhone without the worry of potentially damaging your mobile device’s battery. It can also be used to charge other Apple products like a pair of AirPods or the Apple Watch. The following Apple USB power adapters are some of the options that can be used to charge your iPhone, provided that you have a USB-to-lightning cable:
- 5W USB power adapter that came with iPhones that preceded the iPhone 11
- 10W US power adapter that was included with every iPad Air and iPad Air 2, iPad 2, and iPad mini 2,3, and 4
- 12W USB power adapter that was packaged with several versions of the iPad Pro
If you have a Mac USB-C power adapter or other third-party adapters that fulfill Apple’s safety standards, they can be used to charge your iPhone as well. Certain USB-C power adapters, when used in tandem with Apple’s USB-to-lightning cable, have the ability to fast-charge an iPhone 8 and later iterations up to 50% battery in about half an hour (via Apple). This includes the 29W USB-C power adapter that accompanied older MacBook models that were released in 2015 onwards as well as the 30W, 35W, 61W, 67W, 87W, 96W, and 140W USB-C power adapters that came with certain versions of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. If you own a MacBook laptop and have its Apple-brand power adapter, you should be able to see its wattage printed right on the device itself and determine if it can be used to charge your iPhone.
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