Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Group team up with RedNote

Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Group have partnered with lifestyle content platform RedNote (also known as Xiaohongshu or ‘Little Red Book’) to launch a new initiative named ‘Red Cat.’

Unveiled on Wednesday, the collaboration aims to bridge content and commerce by integrating product discovery with direct purchasing. Merchants will be able to embed product links from their Taobao and Tmall stores directly into RedNote social posts with the aim of creating a unified, data-driven ecosystem that connects the entire consumer journey. The initiative is designed to help brands drive growth by offering a more cohesive, smooth and seamless app-to-app conversion while enhancing users’ shopping experience across platforms.

“This collaboration with Xiaohongshu marks a new chapter in our support for brand growth in 2025,” said Liu Bo, vice president of Alibaba Group and president of Tmall. “By combining Taobao and Tmall’s commerce expertise with Xiaohongshu’s strength in lifestyle content, we’re helping brands reach consumers more effectively and drive incremental growth.”

According to a press release from RedNote (Xiaohongshu), the newly announced ‘Red Cat’ initiative represents the first full integration of RedNote’s signature influencing or content seeding strategy with Taobao and Tmall’s robust consumer conversion infrastructure.

Speaking at the launch event, RedNote’s chief operating officer Annie Ling Ding (Conan) emphasised the strategic significance of the partnership: “Tmall is a key partner in our journey toward greater openness. For brands, content discovery on Xiaohongshu is not just the first touchpoint with users, but it’s the starting line for full-funnel operations. Xiaohongshu will leverage its strengths in demand generation and precise audience targeting to help more brands achieve seamless, end-to-end growth, directly from inspiration to transaction.”

The collaboration underscores a growing trend in China’s digital ecosystem, where content platforms and ecommerce giants are increasingly aligning to streamline the consumer journey and unlock new value for merchants in the face of intense competition.

Both platforms began piloting content-driven commerce in 2023 by measuring content seeding effectiveness and performance. By 2024, Taobao and Tmall merchants experienced a 20% increase in click-through rates and doubled the engagement on RedNote product recommendation content year-over-year.

Late last year, Taobao and Tmall rolled out a series of new moves towards integration, including partnerships with industry players and competitors, such as WeChat Pay and JD Logistics, to broaden payment and logistics services. So far, the Taobao and Tmall Group collaborates with more than 200 internet platforms, ranging from social media to mobile payments.

Over the past few years, RedNote has solidified its position as China’s top content-seeding platform, attracting increasing investment from brands seeking to influence consumer behaviour through lifestyle content.

In a surprising turn earlier this year, RedNote saw a surge of nearly three million new users in the US, many of whom were dubbed ‘TikTok refugees.’ The influx came in January, following the temporary suspension of TikTok in the US. Amid the uncertainty, RedNote quickly climbed the charts to become the top free social-media app on Apple’s App Store. The spike in downloads came as the US Supreme Court upheld legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell its US operations to a non-Chinese buyer or face removal from American app stores. 

During that period, RedNote remained publicly silent but swiftly rolled out an in-app translation function. Earlier this year, RedNote also expanded its international footprint by opening a new office in Hong Kong.