Xiaohongshu (RED)

Sector

Social commerce

Chinese name

小红书

Programme

Day 2 · 12 Oct 2026 · Shanghai

Xiaohongshu (小红书, literally 'little red book') is the app where young Chinese people look up what to buy, eat or visit before they do it. Users post 'notes': photos or short videos with plenty of explanation, from a sunscreen review to a three-day itinerary for Brussels. According to Chinese media the platform has more than 400 million monthly users, earns most of its money from advertising and was valued at around 50 billion dollars in a share sale at the end of 2025. The delegation had the company on its programme in Shanghai on day 2 of the China Business Mission 2026.

From a free PDF to a guide to life

Mao Wenchao and Qu Fang, both born in Wuhan in 1985, started in 2013 with a free PDF guide to shopping in Hong Kong. Chinese tourists were already spending heavily abroad, but good shopping guides barely existed. The PDF became an app in which users share their own experiences, and that principle still shapes the culture: the users write the guide, not an editorial team. In 2018 both Alibaba and Tencent invested, which is unusual in a country where companies generally pick one camp.

Mao is CEO and Qu Fang chairs the board. Since 30 April 2026 the company has also had a president: Ding Ling, known internally as 'Conan' after the Japanese detective comic, runs community, e-commerce, monetisation and technology. Nicknames are the rule; internally Mao is 'Seiya' and Qu Fang 'Mulan'.

A search engine for everyday life

What Westerners often miss is that Xiaohongshu is less a feed than a search engine. Young Chinese people trust the experiences of other users more than advertising or Baidu's results, and search there for restaurants, skincare, travel plans or what to wear to a job interview. The home page shows a two-column grid of notes from which users choose, while Douyin plays one clip after another. Seven in ten users are women, most of them young and living in large cities.

The business model is called 种草 (zhòngcǎo), literally 'planting grass'. Desire for a product grows from other people's experiences until it ends in a purchase. Brands pay creators, often ordinary consumers with a small following, to help sow.

The company measures that logic too. At its annual advertiser event in August 2026 it reported that campaigns combining 'seeding' with direct-response ads delivered a 59% higher return after seven days than direct ads alone, as Sina summarised. Such figures come from the platform itself.

Profit, valuation and an IPO nobody confirms

Xiaohongshu is not listed, so revenue and profit are third-party estimates. The company first turned a profit in 2023, with net income of around 500 million dollars, passed the 1 billion mark in 2024 and, according to Bloomberg, expected around 3 billion dollars for 2025. Advertising provides most of the revenue. Its own shop long remained the weak spot; since May 2025, links under notes also lead directly to Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall stores.

The valuation followed. In share sales between investors it rose from 17 billion dollars in July 2024 to 31 billion in mid-2025. At the end of 2025 a dollar fund sold part of its stake at around 50 billion, Pedaily reported. The company does not confirm these figures, and a single transaction says little about a company's overall value.

On a listing, the company stays silent. In June 2026 Bloomberg reported that Xiaohongshu was preparing a confidential filing in Hong Kong, and valuations of up to 70 billion dollars circulated in the press. A dismissed employee then filed complaints with the exchange and the regulators, and on 22 July the company called all reports about an IPO 'untrue' (The Paper). As of early November 2026, no public filing is known.

The World Cup and the pressure of AI

To attract more men, Xiaohongshu secured the rights in May 2026, as a partner of state broadcaster CMG, to stream all 104 World Cup matches for free (Caixin). During the tournament it worked: in the group stage around 60% of viewers were men, in the late-night knockout matches more than 80%, and in July the time users spent in the app doubled compared with June, 36Kr reported. Whether those new viewers stay remains to be seen.

At the same time the company is investing heavily in AI. It releases its own language models under the name dots, merged its two AI assistants under the name Diandian (点点) in September 2026 and on 16 October linked its AI division with the core infrastructure team. The pressure is real: chatbots such as ByteDance's Doubao are becoming the new search engine for many young Chinese, and according to an analysis by Nomura, total time spent on Xiaohongshu fell year on year for the first time in May 2026.

What it means for Europe

Xiaohongshu has no European office, yet it is where Chinese people discover Europe. Travellers plan their trips with a 攻略 (gōnglüè), a detailed itinerary written by another user. Tourism boards therefore invest in their own accounts. In the third quarter of 2025 Visit Norway climbed to second place among national tourism organisations on the platform, largely thanks to a single video about the Lofoten Islands, and Switzerland brought a popular Chinese animated series to Zurich station and Mount Titlis (Dragon Trail). Belgium does not appear in that ranking.

For luxury and fashion brands, the platform is the main place to inspire Chinese customers; the company has already held events in Milan and Paris. In June 2026 it also launched Redshop, an online shop for customers outside China, starting with Chinese handcrafted products. The launch markets are in Asia, North America and Australia, and the United Kingdom is the only European one (RetailDetail). Nothing has been announced for the EU. What a European company can do with it today:

• Be findable for Chinese tourists, students and business travellers, who search here first.
• Do free market research: with the translate button you can read what Chinese consumers write about your category.
• Build trust before selling: an official brand account requires company verification and for foreign brands usually runs through a Chinese partner.

Others write your reputation in China

Xiaohongshu shows how Chinese consumers decide: they ask their peers, not brands. For a European company, that means its reputation in China forms long before the first sale, in notes it does not write itself. A company that stays away is still described, only by others. The same young buyers turn up at Dewu, which was on the programme the same day, and in the wider context of Shanghai. Anyone considering the step will find more under doing business in China.