There are some potential challenges when applying digital platforms in Daxi leather studio. The challenges for using e-commerce and social media are summarised below:

The challenges of using e-commerce (online marketplaces):

The price of handmade products is much higher than similar products.

“Because there is a barrier to sell handicrafts on the e-commerce platform, products are compared horizontally. For example, if you look at a bag, find that the price of a handicraft bag is more than 1000 yuan, and a lot of other bags’ prices are between two or three hundred with rich styles, colorful surfaces, and fast delivery. So handicrafts are not competitive in that platform. Furthermore, selling of handicrafts needs a precision marketing strategy. The most reasonable way of selling handicrafts is that you can explain the process of hand-making products to customers, he trusts on you and is interested in your story, or something you are selling is what he needs now. Imagining that a customer needs a bag and search on the e-commerce platform, he will find the Hunan Embroidery shop sells all kinds of beautiful embroidery bags, which prices are more than 2000 yuan. Then I search a similar product to find it only sold 40 yuan. Most of the time, the customer will choose the cheaper ones, they are more inclined to the accessible thing.” said by founder Hong Daxi.

• The challenges of using social media in Daxi studio:

Top 1: The managing of social media required lots of time and energy

It’s difficult for them insisted on updating different and high-quality content on social media. Daxi stopped making Taobao live show with the factory recently because it takes too much time and energy. “After 7 or 8 months of cooperation, we decided to give up the live show， because live broadcasting takes a lot of time from the early preparation to the later resumption, which consumes too much human and material resources.” said Hong Daxi.

Top 2: The view audience is hard to transfer into consumer

The whole view counts of Taobao live are significant, but the view counts cannot efficiently contribute to increase in product sales. “Taobao seems to have a lot of people visit, but you can only attract a small part of them, or you have to pay a super high promotion fee to the platform. Otherwise, your targeted customer is only a small group of people, and the followers are always regular people. When you give up the live streaming, you can see it more clearly.” said Hong Daxi.

电商平台的经营问题：

电商平台上手工艺皮具的价格远高于其他非手工同类产品。

“淘宝对手工艺品有一个壁垒，淘宝的产品都是横向的比较。例如你看上了一个包，结果找相似发现你这里卖1000多的包，别人两三百的一大把，样式丰富、颜色多、发货还快，手工艺品就没有竞争力。而手工艺品需要的是纵向精准采购，比如你向客户阐述你做东西的这个过程，或者他信任你、对你的内容感兴趣，然后某一个东西是他现在需要的，或者说某一个东西的过程让他感到了愉悦感而去购买它，手工艺品销售最合理的是这种方式。而不是说比如说我现在需要一个，那横向对比是我现在需要个帆布包，这个是我看到了湘绣的一个东西，他卖2000上面各种漂亮的湘绣图案，我搜找相似结果出来这种50块钱，60块钱，70块钱的，那还是选它吧，因为人都会更倾向于那个更容易获得的东西。“创始人洪大西说道。

社交平台的运营问题：

1. 团队很难满足不同平台的不同内容形式的需求，也很难及时更新高质量的内容。

大西皮具前段时间停止了和工厂合作淘宝直播，其中之一的原因是花费了太多的时间和精力。大西皮具创始人说：“在七到八个月的合作之后，我们决定停止直播，因为直播很费时间，从前期的准备、策划，到直播，到后期的复盘，很耗费人力物力。”

2. 线上直播的观看量难以转化成销售量，投入时间成本与回报不成正比

淘宝的整体用户流量很大，但是访问量不能有效的转化为销售量。“淘宝看起来数据很厐大，但商户能获取到的只有一部分，你如果想要提高访问量就要向平台支付高额的推广费用，不然的话用户量只有固定的一小部分人，粉丝群体其实也都是固定的，所以其实等我们看透了这个东西之后，就是我们再返回来的时候。”大西皮具创始人说道。