Xiaohongshu local life is coming? Don’t worry! You may be scammed!

As Xiaohongshu gradually expands its layout in the local life field, many businesses are gearing up to expand their business with the help of this emerging platform. However, there are also many fake investment promotion and group buying services under the official banner of Xiaohongshu on the market, which put many businesses in trouble. This article will deeply analyze the current situation of Xiaohongshu's local life, reveal the scams and traps, and provide practical suggestions and identification methods for businesses interested in entering.

Recently, a boss asked me how to do group buying on Xiaohongshu. How to open a group buying store for a medical clinic and health club on Xiaohongshu.

In fact, as early as last year, the brand I serve had already started group buying on Xiaohongshu.

But at that time, Xiaohongshu was testing the local life market internally, and the brand was able to obtain the testing qualification through some internal relationships and its own sufficient scale.

Even so, there were many twists and turns from the beginning to the final launch. Due to various platform rules, we had to make great compromises before it was successfully launched.

The boss who consulted me also sent me some information and chat records, saying that someone contacted him and wanted to start a group purchase on Xiaohongshu, and asked me if I could be trusted.

After I read it carefully, I replied: Don’t worry, you may have been deceived! Let me explain the details.

If you are also paying attention to Xiaohongshu group buying, you may even encounter people who claim to be Xiaohongshu’s official service provider and tell you that you can start a group buying.

I hope today’s sharing can help you who may have been deceived!

Does Xiaohongshu have local life services?

some.

However, the official local life has previously only opened group purchases for catering in the following 49 cities. The latest announcement on February 26 revised the city scope to all mainland merchants, and the new implementation standards will take effect on March 4, 2025.

That is to say, at present, only merchants in the catering category are allowed to settle in, and other categories are not open for the time being.

The method of joining is relatively simple. Just go to the official homepage of Xiaohongshu Local Life, register an account, and apply on your own.

What does a serious official group purchase look like?

Take catering group buying as an example. I searched for a restaurant on Xiaohongshu at random. You can see the picture below:

As can be seen from the picture, the official group purchase is based on the corporate blue V number. A store is opened and posted on the note column of the homepage. By clicking on the products in the store, you can view the details, click to buy, and so on.

The UI design of this store, the smoothness of the purchasing experience, and the fact that it does not leave the original environment of Xiaohongshu all allow you to place an order with confidence without worrying about encountering any problems.

At this point, you may be thinking, in addition to catering, can’t we also buy Chinese medicine and health products in group purchases?

Don’t be impatient, keep reading.

How to do group buying on Xiaohongshu for categories other than catering?

Non-catering businesses can also use other methods to allow customers to make in-store purchases after placing orders on Xiaohongshu.

This is what was mentioned earlier. Some people are claiming to be Xiaohongshu service providers, saying they can help merchants start group purchases in any category.

This is achieved through the open function of Xiaohongshu’s mini program.

Simply put, after you create a corporate account, you can develop a mini program mall yourself, or find a third party to develop a mini program mall and post it on the homepage of your account.

The so-called official service provider of the mini program is the MCN agency that previously operated the Xiaohongshu account, and the technology development + account operation business that has been derived from it.

If you have your own Xiaohongshu operation team and have the technology to develop a Xiaohongshu mini program store, then you can do it yourself.

However, our industry is relatively traditional, and many companies do not have Internet technology R&D and operation teams in their organizational structures.

Therefore, finding a reliable and responsible operation team for Xiaohongshu business is also a good solution.

This type of mini program store can be seen in the screenshot below

As can be seen from the screenshot, this type of store is mounted as a mini-program at the bottom of the homepage. After clicking, it will jump to a page that is very different from the style of Xiaohongshu, and then the transaction will be completed on this page.

Because this is a third-party page, when you place an order, you may need to enter your mobile phone number, verification code to log in, and then fill in the corresponding order information, etc.

It seems good to place an order on Xiaohongshu by mounting a mini program and then make purchases in the store. However, there are several risks:

• For C-end consumers, jumping out of the native environment of Xiaohongshu and placing orders on third-party pages poses certain security risks, which may reduce their desire to place orders.
• If the mini program is not self-developed, but provided by a third-party service provider, there will be certain risks in terms of transaction data, cash flow, and operational stability.

If you bosses do not have the technology and financial reserves to develop your own mini-programs, it is recommended that you choose some large, well-known domestic Internet companies with mature technology, such as service providers like Youzan.

At this point you might be thinking, since you said that the mini program can be used for group buying, then what about the scam you are talking about?

The scam of Xiaohongshu’s local life

This type of scam is actually very simple. It takes advantage of the fact that brick-and-mortar merchants do not understand the Internet but are eager to gain online customer traffic, and takes advantage of information opacity to make money.

There are two main methods:

1. Under the official banner of Xiaohongshu, they hold offline investment promotion meetings in various cities, promote how great Xiaohongshu is for local life, and how rare the opportunity is, and then ask you to pay a deposit to open an online store. In order to close the deal quickly, they also tell you that any category is fine, and the deposit will be returned after a certain transaction amount is reached. After receiving the money, the promise becomes a dead letter, and the mini program store delivered to you is extremely crude and has no operational capabilities. Of course, reaching a transaction amount is even more distant;
2. Under the official banner of Xiaohongshu, they promote Xiaohongshu’s local life as a hot spot where you can make a lot of money. Then they brainwash you into paying agency fees, becoming their investment agent, and helping them expand city merchants to make money together.

If you search for this type of scam on Xiaohongshu, you will find many cases where people have been deceived:

The method of identifying a scam is also very simple. I consulted the customer service of the Xiaohongshu merchant, and the customer service gave a method to verify the authenticity:

Just go to the Xiaohongshu agent operation service provider platform and enter the other party’s company name to find out whether it is true or false.

Final Words

It is worth mentioning that no matter what method everyone uses, they have successfully opened a store on Xiaohongshu.

That’s just the most basic entry-level work, just like opening a Meituan store.

Whether we can achieve growth in passenger flow and performance will be a test of our team’s operational capabilities.

For example, content operation capabilities/expert operation capabilities/platform activity operation capabilities/promotion and delivery capabilities, etc.

Therefore, if you are interested in joining Xiaohongshu to do group buying, you must match the corresponding human resources and financial plans.

Otherwise, Xiaohongshu is nothing more than multiple stores for you, and even if you open a store, it will be difficult to attract customers.