Life Market: From Curated Goods of Ten to Twenty Thousand Items to an E-commerce Platform Where Everything Can Be Bought

In 2013, Life Market was established as an e-commerce platform under the umbrella of Entrepreneurial Digital Co., Ltd. By 2020, the items it featured were no longer limited to daily necessities but also included non-core categories such as 3C and food, accounting for about three to four tenths of the total revenue. On October 12, 2023, it extended its shelves overseas by launching direct international shipping.^{1 2}

This path appears to be the standard answer in e-commerce: more products, broader services, and customers can shop further. However, Life Market has a non-standard contradiction: it was not remembered for having "everything," but rather for being found through its initial positioning of "having been selected for you." As it gradually became a general platform, the original differentiation became a promise that had to be repeatedly proven.

📝 Curator's Note: The surface competition in e-commerce platforms is shelf size; the real competition is whether consumers are willing to trust the choices on those shelves.

Shelves Starting from "Daily Necessities"

The official Life Market platform introduces its starting point as 2013, listing "AI big data curated products," "price based on volume," and diverse daily living and home goods as operational strategies. The company also emphasizes year-round membership fees waived, daily limited-time sales, private brands, and personalized marketing.³

If these terms were only placed in a company profile, they might resemble an e-commerce jargon sheet. In the consumer's view, it is more like another type of shopping division: the platform handles searching, price comparison, and promotions, while the consumer focuses their attention on "is this item really worth buying?" The official App page also describes this division in more detail, listing tens of thousands of items, Life Coins rewards, diverse payment methods, and functions such as home delivery, convenience store pickup, and frozen ultra-fast collection.⁴

"Curated" does not mean few products. A 2020 report by Digital Age stated that Life Market featured approximately ten to twenty thousand items at the time. Compared to large general e-commerce platforms that often feature millions of items, this number still represented a conscious selection. The report cited the company stating that the platform aimed to safeguard price and quality for consumers through careful selection.⁵

In this model, the product page is not the end of the shelf but the place where the platform builds a relationship with the consumer. The official App description mentions real reviews, Life Coin rewards, payment options, and pickup methods; these details collectively address pre- and post-ordering anxiety: Is the price reasonable? Is payment convenient? Can I receive the package in a way I am familiar with?⁴

Life Market also integrated limited-time sales into daily usage rhythms. The official platform introduction claims to launch special limited-time deals daily, while the App page lists daily bestsellers and 24-hour specials. These descriptions are the platform's own service introductions and cannot directly imply that every item is the lowest price on the market, but it shows that they treat "checking back every day" as part of the shopping habit.^{3 4}

Thus, early Life Market was not simply affixing discounts next to products. It attempted to form a relatively short decision path by combining price, reviews, delivery, and rewards. Consumers did not need to understand the entire e-commerce market; they could judge whether to return next time after completing a process from seeing it to receiving it within the platform.

This was Life Market's most easily understood positioning in its early days: not trying to bring every item online, but tying "findable" with "buyable." The number of products itself does not automatically generate trust; trust comes from repeated ordering experiences without hitting a snag.

From public functions, Life Market's competition is not limited to the product page. The official App page lists credit cards, installment plans, LINE Pay, Apple Pay, GAI-Kou Payment (Jie-kou Zhifu), and YouYouPay, as well as options like home delivery, convenience store pickup, and frozen ultra-fast collection. These functions extend "what to buy" into "how to pay" and "how to receive," making the platform closer to daily shopping rather than relying solely on single promotions to attract traffic.⁴

How Small Platforms Face Large E-commerce

In 2020, the Taiwanese e-commerce market was not quiet due to the pandemic. However, Digital Age reported that Entrepreneurial Brothers' revenue in September totaled NT$363 million, a monthly decrease of 5% and an annual decrease of 11.04%. The company responded by announcing a brand upgrade before Double Eleven (Singles' Day/Double Eleven), redesigning the logo, image video, and corporate identity, investing tens of millions in an attempt to place Life Market alongside large general e-commerce platforms.⁵

The focus of this brand upgrade was not just changing colors or logos. After many years of establishment, the management team at Life Market clearly acknowledged that the platform was no longer just a vertical e-commerce for daily necessities but a general e-commerce. The increase in non-daily necessity items meant consumers viewed it as an everyday shopping entrance; it also meant the platform had to directly face larger competitors such as PChome, momo, Yahoo Shopping, and Shopee.⁵

Suppliers were also involved in this competition. Digital Age reported that Life Market selected one hundred suppliers from about three thousand cooperating suppliers, who accounted for about four tenths of the platform's transaction volume. The significance of this activity was not just awarding prizes, but the platform trying to turn supplier relationships into competitive assets: whether Double Eleven could get goods often depended on whether suppliers were willing to keep good stock and good prices for them.⁵

📝 Curator's Note: After an e-commerce platform grows, what is hardest to retain is often not traffic, but the sense of intimacy—"I know what you want to buy."

The Thirty Billion Milestone: A Story Told by the Brand Itself

In 2021, Cheers reported a "NT$30 billion transaction volume" as a milestone for Life Market, stating that Entrepreneurial Brothers achieved annual revenue of about NT$5 billion in roughly seven years since establishing Life Market in 2012. This article also had the nature of corporate branding news, so these figures should be understood as statements from the company or brand narrative, not financial conclusions re-audited by this text.⁶

This distinction is important. Platform transaction volume, company revenue, total product sales value, and accounting operating income are not the same concept. If they are mixed up, the numbers may look beautiful, but the reader does not know what they are measuring. Life Market's milestones can be recorded, but they should not be exaggerated into market rankings unsupported by sources.

What is more worth looking at is the sense of time behind the milestone. Cheers described the process of reaching NT$30 billion in transaction volume over "more than three thousand days," and this brand narrative wrote the platform's growth as a story of accumulated trust. Readers can accept this account, but they must remember that it comes from a brand/media article, not a line-by-line verification from public financial statements.⁶

The growth of an e-commerce company does not only happen on the homepage visible to consumers. Supplier negotiations, inventory arrangements, customer service responses, returns and exchanges, and payment integrations all determine whether a discount event results in repeat purchases or just a one-time bargain. Life Market's public data allows us to see some strategies, but it does not provide all operational indicators; therefore, the article does not rewrite "high repurchase rate" as an independently verified performance conclusion.³

Within the scope of what the articles confirm, Life Market's transformation has a clear line: starting from daily necessities, extending into categories like food and 3C, and using brand reshaping and supplier cooperation to become closer to a general platform. This is not simply adding products; it is the business model gradually shifting from "I select for you" toward "you can buy more here."

Overseas Direct Shipping: Extending Shelves Further Outward

On October 12, 2023, Life Market announced the launch of direct international shipping. Freedom E-paper reported that the first wave focused on home goods, bedding, and daily necessities, integrating logistics connections, localized customer service, one-click customs clearance, and a seven-day inspection period. CHTI News also reported the same launch date and service direction.^{1 2}

This service is not just putting overseas products online and being done. The troubles of cross-border shopping are usually hidden in payment, customs clearance, shipping costs, returns, and customer service; Life Market's approach is to package these processes into a familiar Taiwanese shopping interface. The initial promotion reported by Freedom E-paper also included limited-time free shipping, duty exemption, and LINE POINTS, which were promotions from October 2023 and cannot be considered currently valid policies.²

CHTI reported that Life Market used its base of 9 million members for cross-border services; this is a figure cited by the media in the report, and this text does not extend it into a current membership total. What is certain is that direct international shipping extended Life Market's "daily necessities" from domestic daily goods in Taiwan to overseas products and logistics processes that consumers may not be familiar with.¹

The official terms of service clearly delineate another boundary: the Life Market website and App are provided by Entrepreneurial Digital, and the service includes ordering and delivery. The summary of the terms also states that the current delivery area is limited to Taiwan's main island.⁷ This reminds us that the platform's cross-border product services do not mean the platform itself has made all delivery areas globally open.

Cross-border direct shipping also changed the distance between the platform and the products. In the early days, the platform needed to solve "where in Taiwan can I buy this," while the cross-border service had to handle "how to safely deliver overseas goods to Taiwan." Both issues relate to convenience, but the latter includes customs clearance, returns, and logistics responsibility. Life Market chose to start with home goods, bedding, and daily necessities, at least presenting a path in public reports that extends from original strengths rather than suddenly switching to completely unfamiliar categories.^{1 2}

The Boundary of Traffic Competition

Life Market and the e-commerce group belonging to Entrepreneurial Digital have also encountered legal boundaries regarding search traffic. The Fair Trade Commission's ruling (Case No. 111019 from 2022) targeted Songguo Shopping Co., Ltd., not Life Market. The ruling states that Songguo is an affiliated company wholly owned by Entrepreneurial Brothers.⁸

The Fair Trade Commission determined that Songguo automatically generated search result pages containing specific product or brand names through programming and keyword substitution. Even if the website did not sell the item, it could guide the searcher to visit the site. The Fair Trade Commission deemed this practice as an unfair act capable of affecting trade order, violating Article 25 of the Fair Trade Act, imposing a fine of NT$800,000 and ordering a suspension.⁸

The most noteworthy part of the ruling is that it translated "traffic" into consumer time. If search results lead someone to believe an item is on the page, only to find out it isn't upon clicking, the consumer wastes time searching and judging. For the platform, this might just be one visit. For the searched brand and the consumer, however, it is a sequence of choices that has been altered.⁸

This ruling cannot be simplified as "Life Market being fined for SEO." The subject of the case was Songguo Shopping, and the legal determination targeted specific actions in the ruling. It is relevant to Life Market's story because it reveals another side of platform competition: when a platform wants to bring people into its website, the convenience of search results cannot be built on making consumers mistakenly believe "that item is really here."

📝 Curator's Note: The cheapest traffic in e-commerce might be one click; the most expensive traffic is the consumer who no longer trusts your search results.

What is Left of "Curation"?

Life Market's story does not end with "growing from small to large." The real question it leaves is whether, after a platform that built its identity on selection and price begins expanding categories, investing in brands, and connecting cross-border logistics, consumers can still feel that someone is responsible for the choices.

The official narrative mentions AI, big data, personalized marketing, and private brands. The App page features Life Coins, limited-time sales, and diverse payments. Media reports mention brand upgrades, supplier relationships, and overseas direct shipping. These are all tools of the platform, but tools are not positioning. Positioning must answer a harder question: When a consumer opens Life Market, why do they not go to another platform with more products?^{3 5 4}

The answers confirmed from public data remain several conflicting terms: curation, price, daily necessities, process, and repurchase. Life Market proved that it can change the shelves by going from daily necessities to cross-border services starting in 2013. Whether it can retain the feeling of "thinking for you" while its shelves grow is up to future products, customer service, and every actual transaction.

This is what makes Life Market more worth writing about than a company history. It is not just a shopping website; it is an interface that rearranges selection, discounts, logistics, and attention. Every platform expansion asks the same question: after the shelves get longer, can the consumer still see who made the choice for them?

What Public Data Can Confirm

This table also illustrates the writing style of this text: the same number requires not only a source but also an indication of who said it, when they said it, and whether it measures members, revenue, transaction volume, or merely product quantity. Only in this way can the platform's story avoid being carried away by a string of seemingly precise numbers.

Public data does not answer all questions. For example, the official page mentions personalized marketing and high repurchase rates, but this text could not find enough independent data to convert these statements into comparable repurchase rates; CHTI reported 9 million members, which this text only places in the context of the 2023 report and does not treat as a scale valid in 2026.^{3 1}

The restraint in research is not to make the story thin, but to keep every sentence at the point where evidence can reach. The truly interesting part of Life Market lies precisely on this boundary: its public materials are enough for us to see how a platform expands, but not sufficient to pass final judgment on every achievement.

References

===== Expanded Research Data =====

The public data of Life Market can be divided into four layers. The first layer is the official platform and App page, which confirms how the platform describes its positioning, products, promotions, payments, and pickup functions. The second layer is media reports, which supplement the context of the 2020 brand upgrade, category expansion, supplier cooperation, and the 2023 overseas direct shipping. The third layer is corporate branding articles, which show milestones like NT$30 billion in transaction volume, but these figures must be marked as company or brand narratives and cannot be taken as independent audit results. The fourth layer is the Fair Trade Commission ruling, which confirms the legal facts of the Songguo Shopping case, but the subject of the case is not Life Market; the two cannot be mixed up.

From a business model perspective, the core of early Life Market was not simply increasing product quantity, but reducing shopping decision costs through curation, pricing, and limited-time promotions. The 2020 report mentioned that the platform had about ten to twenty thousand items and noted that non-daily necessity items like 3C and food accounted for about three to four tenths of the total revenue. This indicates that the platform gradually shifted from a vertical e-commerce for daily necessities to a general e-commerce, but public data does not provide enough information to prove its actual repurchase rate, average transaction value, or profitability of any single category after the transformation.⁵

From a usage process perspective, the functions listed on the official App page include product browsing, Life Coin rewards, diverse payments, and multiple pickup methods. Options such as credit cards, installment plans, LINE Pay, Apple Pay, GAI-Kou Payment (Jie-kou Zhifu), and ATM transfers show that the platform considers payment convenience part of the shopping experience. These are official public functional descriptions and do not mean that every product, delivery method, or region necessarily applies the same conditions; actual rules should still be based on the checkout page and terms of service.^{7 4}

From a supply chain perspective, Digital Age reported that Life Market once selected one hundred suppliers from about three thousand cooperating suppliers, who accounted for about four tenths of the platform's transaction volume. This data shows that the platform not only manages consumer-end traffic but also manages supplier-end resources in terms of products, pricing, and scheduling. For e-commerce, whether a platform can ensure stable supply during large promotions directly affects consumers' judgment of price commitment and shopping experience. This section is a business analysis based on report data and does not extend into conclusions about supplier satisfaction without sources.⁵

From the cross-border service perspective, the overseas direct shipping launched in October 2023 initially focused on home goods, bedding, and daily necessities, with services including localized customer service, one-click customs clearance, direct logistics, and a seven-day inspection period. This means the platform attempted to integrate the relatively complex processes of customs clearance, payment, logistics, and after-sales service in overseas shopping into a familiar Taiwanese shopping interface. The free shipping, duty exemption, and LINE POINTS mentioned in the media reports were specific activities for that date and cannot be rewritten as currently valid regular policies.^{1 2}

During data verification, there are three points of confusion. First, there is a difference between the establishment year of Entrepreneurial Brothers and the Life Market platform in different articles—2012 versus 2013. This text distinguishes by subject: 2013 is the establishment year mentioned in the official Life Market introduction, while 2012 is the description provided by Cheers regarding Entrepreneurial Brothers. Second, transaction volume, revenue, and membership numbers are different metrics and cannot be substituted for each other. Third, the Fair Trade Commission ruled on Songguo Shopping, so this text only places that case within the context of group e-commerce traffic competition and does not state that Life Market was fined.^{3 8 6 1}

The public data is insufficient to answer all questions. For example, the official page mentions personalized marketing and high repurchase rates, but this text could not find enough independent data to convert these statements into comparable repurchase rates; CHTI reported 9 million members, which this text only places in the context of the 2023 report and does not treat as a scale valid in 2026.^{3 1}

The restraint in research is not to make the story thin, but to keep every sentence at the point where evidence can reach. The truly interesting part of Life Market lies precisely on this boundary: its public materials are enough for us to see how a platform expands, but not sufficient to pass final judgment on every achievement.