You might not think that cake-based e-commerce would be a hugely competitive market in China, but at least in Beijing, you would be wrong. In honor of the strange craving I’m having for cake right now, let’s talk about a couple cake-based e-commerce startups in Beijing.
In one corner, we’ve got the challenger, iYueCool. iYueCool offers cartoon-themed cakes for all occasions with the added bonus of their cartoons (allegedly) not being copyright infringement. According to the company, it has partnerships with Nickelodeon, Hasbro, and the BBC, along with some other companies. The site is pretty standard Chinese e-commerce fare; there’s nothing flashy here but the process of purchasing is straightforward and simple.
The cakes are flashy but all quite similar as they’re based on the same edible printing technology (the company calls this the “perfect match between technology and food”). Most cakes will run users around 250 RMB ($39) although the site does also offer cupcakes and “classic European” cakes for less. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to try iYueCool’s cakes yet, but they’re supposedly handmade using “original” materials, so I guess that’s something.
In the other corner, we’ve got CCSweets, another Beijing-based cakery that has been around for a couple years. The site is super-slick and easy to navigate, with English and Chinese versions to make cake-browsing convenient for everyone. You can’t order directly from the site; however CCSweets also operates a Taobao shop that you can order from.
If you click that link, you’ll see that these cakes are not cheap; some run up above $300. That might sound insane — and it is a little insane — but having once had the pleasure of tasting some CCSweets cupcakes, I feel pretty confident saying that high-rollers’ tastebuds will not be disappointed. Neither will their eyeballs, of course; CCSweets offers custom-built cakes of all kinds, and most of them are a cut above the basic printout art of iYueCool. That picture at the top of this article, for example, isn’t a bag, it’s a cake. Oh snap.
Of course, there are lots of other startups doing cake e-commerce on the web, but let’s all just take a second to pause and thank the universe that cake e-commerce is an actual thing. Right now, if I wanted to, I could fire up a new tab in Chrome and acquire cake. The future is now, my friends, the future is now.
The post Beijing Cake Startups: Cartoons Vs. Custom Cupcakes appeared first on Tech in Asia.