Qieke was Alibaba-backed and dead in 18 months — the shortest sneaker platform life

Qieke was a sneaker and streetwear resale platform launched in 2019 by Zhuanzhuan, China's second-hand marketplace that had received investment from Alibaba Group and Tencent. The platform entered a market already dominated by Poizon (得物) and Nice, aiming to capture the sneaker speculation wave that was peaking in 2019.

Qieke could not differentiate itself. It had no proprietary authentication system, no exclusive seller network, and no user base of its own — Zhuanzhuan's C2C model had struggled with trust issues and fraud, problems that carried over to Qieke. The platform failed to gain traction against incumbents with established authentication moats and larger seller networks.

By December 2020, Qieke was removed from both Apple's App Store and Huawei's AppGallery. The entire experiment lasted approximately 18 months. Rather than shut down completely, the functionality was folded back into Zhuanzhuan's main app under a 'sneaker' channel with an authentication service. The failed standalone platform was a recognized strategic error for Zhuanzhuan and Alibaba in the sneaker resale market.