After several years of fierce competition over homogeneous prices, the e-commerce industry is undergoing a fundamental logical reshaping.
The 2026 Tmall 618 clearly released an industry signal: the era of extensive growth that once relied on low prices to drive volume and currency to offset scale has come to an end. The innovation-driven model with new products, new categories, and new brands as the core has officially become the mainstream development line of the consumer market.
This transformation is not just a short-term change in the direction of a major promotion, but also the only way for the e-commerce industry to move towards high-quality development under the resonance of platforms, merchants and consumer demand.
For a long time in the past, low prices have trapped the entire e-commerce ecosystem.
The market is flooded with currency, counterfeit products are prevalent, and the high degree of homogeneity on the supply side directly creates endless price competition.
In exchange for short-term sales, merchants continue to compress profit margins, and eventually fall into the dilemma of “volume but no profit”.
Behind the seemingly lively sales data of the promotion, most brands have good revenue and meager profits, and their operations are completely dependent on continuous paid traffic to maintain exposure; once the advertising budget is reduced, customer flow and sales will decline rapidly, making it difficult to accumulate their own user recognition and brand value.
The extensive impulse model overdrafts product quality, compresses merchants’ living space, and plunges the entire industry into a vicious cycle of low quality and low price.
Industry consensus has formed: the criterion for growth must shift from single GMV to comprehensive operating efficiency.
Today, mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin are all adjusting their policies simultaneously to guide merchants to escape from vicious price wars and focus on profit margins, brand awareness, and long-term sustainable development.
For current brands, operating efficiency has three cores: first, to get rid of the red ocean price comparison quagmire and have stable and reasonable profits; second, to establish unique brand recognition and no longer be swayed by traffic; third, to build a long-term development chassis and achieve stable operations that do not rely on large promotions or launches.
Under the multiple demands, the old path of simply lowering prices and selling goods has completely failed. Finding new growth breakthroughs has become a common proposition for all businesses.
The core answer to the problem lies in “innovative supply”.
Homogeneous products in the market have no bargaining power. Only original new products and differentiated products can firmly grasp the pricing power, push the industry price band up, and escape the trap of low quality and low price.
Under this trend, Tmall continues to implement the “supporting excellence” strategy, tilting platform traffic and resources towards original designs, high-quality new products and emerging featured brands, and fully activating the potential for innovative growth from the three dimensions of single product, track and brand.
From a single product perspective, the industry-wide explosion of new products has achieved an order of magnitude leap.
On June 18 this year, high-quality growth signals appeared in the consumer market, and new product-driven growth became the brand consensus.
First, the outbreak of new products is accelerating.
Tmall data shows that the number of new products that were launched after the launch of 618 and sold quickly exceeded 10 million yuan increased by 60% year-on-year; among the top 100 single products sold in the first stage of sales, new products accounted for 1/3.
Second, the categories of new product explosions are more diversified.
Last year’s 618, tens of millions of new products were mainly distributed in 26 categories. This year, the number expanded to 53, doubling year-on-year.
165 million-level new products won the single product transaction championship in trend tracks such as colored facial creams, zero-sense underwear, smart mattresses, merino wool, and AI toys.
Sony, adidas, Cartier and other big-name brands have announced their arrival, COFMI, Dyson and Razer have launched “network-wide exclusive new products”, and Xiaomi and other brands have co-created customized new products with Tmall, all of which will be launched on Tmall 618.
The essence of new products is a barrier to differentiation. When a brand comes up with a unique product on the market, it naturally does not need to participate in the low-price competition and can keep its profit margin; on the contrary, replicating popular products will only continue to lower the average price of the category and continue to intensify the involution.
High-end beauty brand Ifidan began to increase its investment in Tmall last year, and its transaction volume grew at a double-digit rate. This year, it launched its first wave of sales during 618. While continuing to achieve double-digit growth, its new products have achieved over 10 million transactions, which is very conspicuous among beauty brands.
The person in charge of the Ifidan brand said that Tmall’s repurchase rate is quite high, and new customers have been growing.
Tmall is also a place where high-net-worth users accumulate. Users who place orders through search on Tmall have identified the brand value and are the core traffic base that the brand attaches great importance to.
In Ifidan’s business logic, brand layout always takes into account both short-term performance and long-term value.
Compared with simply increasing sales, indicators that reflect the health of operations such as user acquisition, repurchase, and customer orders are what brands value.
Based on the excellent performance and deep potential of the Tmall channel, Ifidan remains highly optimistic about the full-year growth. “The Tmall channel will definitely be better in 2026 than in 2025.”
From Ifidan’s continued heavy position, we can get a glimpse of the underlying logic of the current high-end beauty group taking root in Tmall: As the core online main position of beauty brands, Tmall has gathered core beauty groups with stronger spending power, higher loyalty, and more stable repurchase, which can help high-end brands escape from low-price involution and truly achieve high-efficiency, high-quality, and long-term brand growth.
From a track perspective, segmented demand has given rise to an incremental blue ocean in the red ocean.
The needs of contemporary consumers are becoming increasingly refined and personalized, and large categories are constantly splitting into niche and vertical emerging tracks. These unsaturated market segments are high-quality fertile ground for brands to avoid fierce competition and take the lead in making profits.
Relying on the massive high-value 88VIP membership group, Tmall continues to incubate a large number of new trend tracks. The brand continues to explore the unmet potential needs of members with high stickiness and high spending power to open up new incremental space.
Zhu Bingren, a time-honored Chinese brand, has a history of more than 150 years and has opened a flagship store on Tmall for more than 10 years. It is the core position of the brand’s online and digitalization.
In the first wave of Tmall 618 sales this year, Zhu Bingren’s Tmall transaction volume increased by 300% year-on-year. Among them, jewelry products, such as Fulu Shengjin, Sifang Laicai and other jewelry, are selling well. The expansion of new categories has brought new customers and made more young people fall in love with time-honored brands.
“We will pay more attention to membership operations and private domain operations. For example, Tmall’s 88VIP currently accounts for a high proportion of transactions in stores and has a relatively high repurchase rate. These high-quality customers are in line with the brand’s mentality and are our core group. As brand assets, they are of great value to the long-term operation of the brand.” Shen Wei, vice president of Zhu Bingren Copper Art Co., Ltd., said, “At the same time, we are also constantly launching new products on Tmall, such as the upcoming and third-party products.
Xingdui co-branded new products, as well as a series of museum co-brands, are also developing other types of products to bring new groups of people and transaction conversions.
For time-honored brands, they hope to have more young consumers. After all, if you control the young people’s market, you will control the future, so they will pay more attention to attracting new customers and breaking the brand.
“
This year’s 618, brands that are the first to lay out the segmented tracks can quickly seize the minds of users and establish first-mover advantages.
The mental memory, repurchase users, and platform category labels accumulated in this major promotion will continue to the e-commerce node in the second half of the year, helping the brand to maintain its leading position in the segmented track for a long time.
From a brand perspective, the new e-commerce ecosystem is incubating new leading brands in batches.
The comprehensive reform of Tmall platform operating rules, traffic distribution logic, and support policies has completely rewritten the brand growth path.
A large number of cutting-edge brands have accurately anchored emerging market segments. Relying on differentiated original new products, they first established themselves as champions in the segment during the daily sales stage, and then relied on the 618 promotion to amplify market volume and transaction volume, becoming the top ten echelons in the industry in a short period of time.
These emerging new brands confirm a new growth logic: they do not rely on low-price involution or huge investment, but rely on product innovation to leverage simultaneous growth in scale and profits, and embark on a lightweight and sustainable brand growth route.
On June 18th this year, Rong Mei, the “No. 1 women’s wear brand on Taobao”, participated deeply in Taobao’s “Super Fashion Release” for the first time.
While many brands are struggling to compete on various emerging traffic platforms and are stuck in the quagmire of price wars, Rongmei has chosen to devote all its efforts to the Taobao ecosystem over the years. In 20 years on Taobao, Rongmei has achieved a repurchase rate of 70%, and its members’ transaction contribution exceeds 60%.
Thanks to the precise promotion of the platform, the cumulative number of views in Rongmei’s live broadcast room during the event soared to 8.7 million+, twice the historical number of views. The live broadcast transaction broke the historical record since the store opened, and five “million-breaking items” were born in one go.
Rongmei Chairman Guo Jian said frankly, “We started from Taobao for 20 years and have not found a reason to leave.” Behind this is not conservatism, but a strict business account. “Taobao has the lowest operating costs, the highest retail efficiency, and the lowest overall expense rate.”
On the eve of 618, Zero Point Memory brand leader Yang Kang posted in Moments that this year 618 will redo Tmall, and go to the place where the brand can best be achieved to compete head-on with industry giants.
This new sleep brand, which started as a content e-commerce platform, is increasing its investment in Tmall and releasing blockbuster new products, hoping to become a national brand on Tmall.
Zero Point Memory is not only the breakthrough of a traditional manufacturing factory from behind-the-scenes OEM to front-end brand, but also a microcosm of the wave of transformation from “Made in China” to “Chinese Brand”.
“This year’s 618, Zero Point Memory will launch a major new product on Tmall. It plans to launch 3 –
5 innovative products, deeply involved in the field of professional sleep.
In addition, we have increased investment in marketing, and have been endorsed by Haiqing, and a matrix of stars such as Guo Tao and Huang Junpeng have joined forces with leading Taobao experts such as Li Jiaqi and Lieri Baby to detonate the product.
What we want is not just sales, but to use this round of product innovation to make Zero Point Memory a national brand in the home furnishing industry.”
Big brands emerge from small tracks.
Tmall 618 data shows that 127 new brands have risen from niche market champions to the top 10 in Tmall’s industry, and have grown into new forces at the forefront of various industries.
The scalp care brand Off&Relax became the third in personal care, the disposable facial essence brand became the tenth in the same frequency, the 3D printer brand Tuozhu became the first in office supplies, and the detachable mattress brand Qizu became the seventh in bedroom furniture… The growth path of these 127 new brands on Tmall shows a high degree of commonality: they all completed the “triple jump” from new faces, niche market champions, to industry leaders within 5 years, and on 618 this year, they showed explosive power and brand power comparable to mature brands.
2026 Tmall 618 is the watershed between the old and new growth cycles of the consumer industry.
The underlying logic of the old cycle is currency, low prices, and short-term momentum, at the expense of profit loss and brand hollowing; the core logic of the new cycle is innovation, differentiation, and long-term operations, relying on new products, new categories, and new brands to build competition barriers and achieve coordinated growth in sales, profits, and brand value.
In addition, the current development directions of platforms and merchants are highly unified: actively giving up the short-term low-price game, reconstructing product supply with original innovation, and deeply exploring the real needs of segmented groups.
In the future, innovation ability will no longer be a brand bonus, but the core hard power of being based on the market.
This industry transformation that started on Tmall 618 will eventually push the entire consumer market to get rid of the shackles of low prices and move towards a new stage of high-quality development that combines quality, innovation and value.
