Savvy mooncake sellers make big use of the Internet
EVERY year around the Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese people give and receive millions of mooncakes - more, in fact, than they can eat - and the question often asked is: "Where do all the mooncakes go?"
Now the Internet has the answer: from scalpers selling cut-price mooncake gift coupons to those unwanted gift boxes going for a song, mooncakes are becoming the ultimate recycling industry.
"Mooncake gift boxes for sale, 50 percent off. Be quick," says one ad posted on a city-based community bulletin board system.
In the run-up to Mid-Autumn Festival, today, the war for mooncake sales is heating up in stores and restaurants. Meanwhile, a discount mooncake market is booming on the Internet, with the number of related posts hitting 551 on a Beijing sub-BBS alone.
"Mooncakes are more a symbol of the Mid-Autumn Festival than something to eat. A few bites are enough to taste the tradition."
Xu, who works at a real estate firm, posted an advertisement and sold four Haagen-Dazs mooncake gift coupons at 30 percent below cost price in a day. "Most of my buyers bought them as gifts," Xu said.
One post was seeking mooncake gift certificates in quantity. The poster surnamed Zhang said he had bought hundreds of gift certificates via BBS and sold the lot at a margin of about 10 yuan (US$1.3) each.
"The mooncake market is really big, since the custom of mooncake gifts is still popular," Xu said. "When I saw how business was thriving on the Net, I found there might be some profit between buying gift certificates at a very low price online and selling them off-line. I've been dealing in them part-time since last Mid-Autumn Festival."
However, Wu Jianyong, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, warned people to be careful of online purchases.
"The online mooncake business makes a good use of the Internet, but people should also be aware that it might be a channel for overpriced mooncakes," said Wu
