An online game built in two weeks helped this Chinese claw-machine maker climb back from the brink to thrive amid Covid-19
Working with Alipay, MOMO Fun Star obtained a business-saving loan and created a claw machine mini program game, drawing online customers that helped it tide over the worst days of the virus pandemic
In the spring of 2015, Mo Jiaxuan quit his job at a university in Beijing, where he worked as an administrator, to pursue his passion. He had been a fan of claw machines for many years and wanted to turn his hobby into a business.
According to Mo, “My purest initial aspiration behind launching a claw machine business is to bring happiness to everyone.”
Without any business operating experience, he got to work. At the end of 2019, MOMO Fun Star had 18 profitable brick-and-mortar claw machine arcades across China.
The company had also collaborated with a business incubation platform and planned to open 180 franchise stores in the next two years.
At the time, the future was looking bright for Mo. But then the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020.
As people were forced to self-isolate, consumer-facing businesses like Mo’s were deeply affected and all of his plans for expansion were upturned. All of his arcade stores were recording zero profit and with monthly expenses totalling RMB500,000 (USD80,000), he was very worried.
On top of this, Mo had increased his inventory ahead of the Spring Festival shopping season in January and liquidity was going to be an issue. He desperately needed a way to generate revenue and maintain existing clients during this period.
On February 21, Mo sent out an appeal online. In the letter, titled “My company might be dying”, the entrepreneur described the growing pressure of making rental payments, staff salaries, as well as his company’s outstanding loans.
The appeal spread quickly among his contacts, and luckily, one of his former classmates put Mo in touch with Alipay.
In addition to an SME loan from MYbank to help Mo tide over his funding difficulties, a team from Alipay also worked with Mo to roll out his claw-machine mini program in as little as 14 days, allowing it to reach the over 900 million users of the Alipay platform.
While the technical aspects of creating a mini program were straightforward, the challenge was ensuring consumer’s rights and interests were protected, as well as that of Mo’s company.
Employees from Alipay’s mini program, payment technology, legal and compliance and customer service teams worked together to ensure MOMO Fun Star’s mini program launched smoothly on March 25, 2020.
The next day, Mo announced that revenue for one single day of online operations was five times higher than before the Spring Festival and 200,000 people were lining up to pay for virtual tokens in order to play the game.
Because the mini program can only support up to 100 players at a time, numerous others waited their turn in a virtual room where they could watch and cheer on the moves of the players, as well as share their observations through the messaging function.
In addition to the income from those actually playing the virtual game, the mini program became an excellent way to engage MOMO Fun Star’s audience and build its brand.
Innovative approaches were also used on Chinese social media to promote MOMO Fun Star’s service, including a hashtag for #theugliestdoll used on different platforms to generate discussion among Alipay’s users about the ugliest toys they won from a claw machine.
Alipay also purchased 1,000 dolls from MOMO Fun Star as prizes to the winners of an online lucky draw.
Recounting his company’s return from the brink of closure, to its new and exciting online ventures, Mo remarked: “Opportunities often appear in desperate situations, maybe this is life!”
