Japan’s Line Corp, creator of the fast-growing social messaging app Line, yesterday said it plans to begin a pilot program on June 10 to host “flash sales” for consumer brands in Taiwan, one of its largest markets.
Line users in Taiwan can add an official account for the “Line Flash Sale” to their “friends” list from today, which will give them access to exclusive sale events on the platform, including sales of cosmetics, footwear and Line’s own-branded merchandise.
The messaging app teamed up with Uitox (優達斯), a Taiwanese e-commerce group, earlier this year to build the mobile commerce platform and it is seeking more brand partners to be included in the flash sale campaigns, the developer said in a statement.
Taiwan is the second country to launch Line’s flash sale initiative after the developer announced in December last year that it had teamed up with all-in-one e-commerce logistics firm aCommerce and the cosmetic brand Maybelline to sell the cosmetics to customers in Thailand.
DIRECT APPROACH
Flash sales are becoming an increasingly popular way to sell products online in Asia because the direct-to-customer approach allows companies to save costs on excess inventory and distribution to third-party vendors.
Taiwan has become Line’s third-largest market with more than 17 million registered users, behind only Japan with 49 million and Thailand with 20 million, driven by its popular oversized emoticons, or stickers.
The messaging app tallied 400 million worldwide users last month and expects the number to reach 500 million this year.
Line processes more than 7 messages a day and more than 1 billion stickers sent by worldwide users, the developer said.
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