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Meet Kim Leitzes, the US-born female entrepreneur behind Chinese influencer marketplace Parklu

  • As the prominence of influencers expands, global beauty and luxury brands are looking for influencers, or key opinion leaders, to entice Chinese buyers
  • Fashion marketing platform Launchmetrics acquires Parklu as China’s luxury consumers emerge as a bright spot during the coronavirus pandemic

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Kim Leitzes, co-founder and CEO of PARKLU, recently acquired by Launchmetrics. Photo: Handout
Karen Chiu

When Parklu co-founder and CEO Kim Leitzes first pitched her start-up idea – a marketplace for online influencers – in 2014, most investors were sceptical.

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Would people really buy an expensive handbag just because they saw a stranger carrying it on social media?

As it turns out, many would. Top-tier online influencers, or key opinion leaders (KOLs) as they are called in China can rake in tens of millions of dollars in sales in a day just by talking in front of the camera. Live-streaming star Viya Huang once sold a rocket launch for more than US$5 million. Austin Li Jiaqi, also known as the “lipstick king”, sold a record 15,000 lipsticks in 5 minutes on Singles’ Day two years ago.
Viya selling a rocket launch service in a live stream (left) and Austin Li showing off lipstick shades in another video (right). Photo: Weibo/Xiaohongshu
Viya selling a rocket launch service in a live stream (left) and Austin Li showing off lipstick shades in another video (right). Photo: Weibo/Xiaohongshu

Five years since its launch, these online celebrities have become the bread and butter of Parklu’s business. The Shanghai-based platform matches clients to KOLs using data on over 100,000 such individuals, such as their online engagement numbers on various platforms.

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While the company declined to reveal any numbers related to its financials, Parklu said its platform has served “hundreds” of clients, naming global beauty and fashion brands such as Shiseido and Christian Louboutin among them. And this week, the company announced it had been acquired by Paris-based fashion marketing platform Launchmetrics, which serves the likes of Hermès and Cartier from its offices in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Europe.

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