Why do Chinese Copy Cats Clone?

Just as what US Tech Start-ups are complaining about, the copy cats in China copy almost everything that are successful or almost successful in the western market. This is called the C2C (Copy to China) Model. 9Luxe is a C2C version for the Gilt Groupe. You’ll find that the color and design are identical with Gilt in many senses.

I talked to a Tumblr engineer last week and he’s shocked that the Chinese Tumblr Diandian.com copies almost everything from Tumblr, even the layout and color scheme.

Well, in certain sense, they want to be exactly the same because they want acknowledgement and direct match. It is interesting to note that copy cats that do not follow the exact design of the copied site are not running as well as those that do. Check out Renren.com, which just went IPO last week, and soon becomes one of the top 4 IT stocks in China. Its competitor Kaixin001.com emerged to have its own style rather than purely clone, but does not do as well as renren.com.

Maybe being different is the motto for start-ups in US. But being the same is the motto for Chinese start-ups.