1.2 million pairs of trousers sold crazily, is the middle-aged man being controlled by the "high-end sister"?

The live broadcast industry is undergoing a gorgeous transformation from a "grassroots show" to an "online stage". The rise of new media, the diversification of practitioners and the effective governance of platforms have jointly promoted this change. Today, live broadcasting has not only become a new stage for performing arts practitioners to showcase their talents, but also helped the inheritance and development of local cultural characteristics, allowing the beauty of tradition to be reborn in the new era.

The difficult track for middle-aged men has finally welcomed a high-end player.

Every middle-aged man who strays into the video of "High-end Sister" may have a feeling of "Oh no, I am surrounded by high-end". Clicking on her video, the spacious and bright business-style model room, the group of black silk beauty secretaries walking towards you, the luxury car keys and Maotai inadvertently exposed, are full of the aura of successful men. At first glance, you might think you have traveled through time and space to the old novels of domineering CEOs.

KLB brand TikTok video

Under such visual impact, the audience plunged into the scene created by Gaoduanjie. When the beautiful anchor picked up the gray trousers on the tray and shouted "high-end goods prepared for capable men" in the next second, the desire to consume was successfully ignited.

Relying on videos like these that package middle-aged men as "successful men over 30 years old," Gao Duanjie quickly became the men's clothing sales champion on Douyin who is "the best at portraying middle-aged men."

According to Chanmama data, several matrix accounts associated with her, such as @KLB Light Luxury Casual Men's Pants and @KaLanFort Casual Men's Pants, have achieved a total sales of more than 5 million in the past 30 days, and the proportion of male fans of these accounts is more than 60%. KLB Men's Wear has also jumped from an unknown small brand to the number one player in the men's suit track on Douyin.

Sister Gaoduan, can you become the “solution” to men’s clothing?

1. Watch high-end sister videos and enjoy a powerful life

If "you need to be proficient in child psychology to please your boyfriend" is just a hot topic nowadays, the high-end sister who "can sell goods" has actually grasped the success theory of middle-aged men.

Gao Duan Jie is not a "jie", but a nickname for the anchor of KLB brand series videos. When analyzing their sales secrets, Kas believes that the most important thing is the "art of packaging".

If you want to package your own products, you must first package the main consumer group. On Douyin, every viewer who clicks on the high-end sister’s video will be defined as a "successful person." This kind of success certainly has many qualifiers, such as being 30 years old, capable, rich and well-known, doing business frequently, and needing to travel.

However, after watching a few videos, you will find that the brand is actually targeting people who are under 1.7 meters tall, have a small belly, and weigh between 100 and 200 kilograms. After all, one of the selling points often promoted in the videos is, "Men under 1.7 meters tall, buy our pants without cutting them," which obviously sounds a bit less cool.

Although there is a contrast between ideal and reality, this does not prevent Gao Duanjie from linking it with successful people and further creating the atmosphere that success studies should have.

First of all, the video scene is often a business-style model room. The host opens with a neat move, and then beautiful female hosts in professional suits walk into the camera one after another, showing the gray trousers in their hands; in outdoor scenes, her opening action will be replaced by playing golf.

KLB brand TikTok video

After completing the stage setting, Sister Gaoduan will speak in a professional manner, "A 30-year-old successful man must wear high-end pants" and "Men with money and status will wear high-end goods." She repeats the brainwashing rhetoric and labels the pants as "high-end" and "exclusive for presidents", successfully equating the wearing of high-end trousers with successful people.

Of course, in order to increase the persuasiveness, the video is filled with a lot of props that can show the identity of a successful man, such as foreign banknotes flying in the air, luxury cars as background boards, and Maotai deliberately exposed when steaming clothes. From this perspective, Gao Duanjie's video can be regarded as a collection of middle-aged male stereotypes, but there are many stereotypes, and both men and women can get fun from them.

Although the technique is a bit crude, it is hard for middle-aged men who click on the video not to be tempted under the layers of packaging of "successful men". After all, as long as you put on this pair of high-end trousers with "three-digit price and four-digit quality", who can tell the difference between you and the fifth generation of a chaebol?

After packaging the person, the next step is to package the product. Although the video is full of unreal arrogance, the actual selling point of the product is surprisingly simple. Middle-aged men don't want to take care of their clothes too much, so they try hard to prove that the pants are wrinkle-resistant, wear-resistant, and colorfast, and can hold a universe in their pockets.

The way of interpretation is also very exaggerated. In one video, Gao Duanjie opened the wardrobe, and sitting inside was a beautiful anchor holding an orange treasure chest. There were no upgrade props in the treasure chest, but there was a pair of high-end men's trousers with mist, which cost only 158 yuan.

KLB brand TikTok video

High-end ingredients often only require simple cooking, and high-end suit pants only require water, wolfberries and red dates. In order to prove that the product does not fade, Gao Duanjie took the pants out of the refrigerator to thaw, threw them into the pot to boil, and scooped out a glass of clear water and asked the assistant sister, "Do you want to try it?"

In order to demonstrate the waterproof function of high-end fabrics, wine and "Moutai" soy sauce were splashed on the pants in turn, and then the clean trouser surface was displayed. From then on, there would be no more green tea in romance novels that could dirty the domineering president's pants.

Tik Tok Comments Section

There are many similar operations: to show wear resistance and wrinkle resistance, twist the trousers into an alkaline knot and then unfold them, and there will be no wrinkles on the flat surface of the trousers; to show lightness, hang up the trousers with a fishing rod and then easily throw them to the female anchor; to show wear resistance and durability, brush them hard with a brush and then show a surface without any signs of wear.

KLB brand TikTok video

At first glance, it may seem very exaggerated, but users who have experienced many ups and downs on Douyin may find that similar methods are also common in other live broadcast rooms. For example, in order to show the elasticity of the shoes, the anchor of Zulijian will quickly fold the shoe body seven times, and Crazy Xiao Yangge will let eggs fall into the shoes from the air to show the elasticity of the soles.

However, with the beauty marketing and the "success-oriented atmosphere" throughout, Gao Duan Jie's videos still combine freshness and excitement, and the fast-paced, entertaining format is also easy to get addicted to. As a result, a series of videos imitating Gao Duan Jie appeared on Douyin, which sold garbage bags, wet toilet paper, and plastic slippers as products exclusively for successful people.

At the same time, Gao Duanjie also brought the style of a "successful man" into the live broadcast room. The anchors naturally switched between addressing the audience as "boss", "baby" and "brother". When talking about the quality, they were arrogant, saying "I personally selected the code for you" and "You have the ability". They also constantly emphasized, "You can buy four-digit quality at a three-digit price".

If you observe Gaoduanjie’s window display, you will find that the brand does not have many SKUs. There are probably only 17 types of trousers for all four seasons. In the live broadcast room, one single product will be explained repeatedly in order to achieve the effect of having two or three popular products selling all over the world.

According to the data from Chanmama, the brand KLB has a total of 7 live broadcast accounts, among which @kalanfort casual men's pants has 777,000 fans, making it the account with the most fans in the matrix. The cumulative sales in the past 30 days have reached 2.5 million to 5 million. The best-selling items on Doudian are trousers labeled "Fifth Generation of Chaebol" and "Seventh Generation of Presidents", with sales of more than 210,000 units. Another account @KLB light luxury casual men's pants has accumulated sales of 1 million to 2.5 million in the past 30 days.

KLB Business Light Luxury Store

According to rough statistics, this brand has sold more than 1.2 million pairs of men's trousers on Douyin, and the monthly sales of 7 accounts totaled approximately 4.35W to 9.0W, which is a good result in the middle-aged menswear market.

2. Man or woman? That is the question

In this year's King of Comedy stand-up season, actor Dai Wei complained about the current state of straight men's clothing: "The most famous men's clothing advertisement in China is actually visiting a certain Lanzhijia store twice a year. Its biggest selling point is not that it looks good, but that you can come less often."

What are middle-aged men paying for? Men's clothing may not be as important as fishing. According to Chanmama data, in the past month, @天元邓刚, whose fans are 91% male, sold 25 million to 50 million pieces through live streaming. A lightweight fishing rod priced at 636 yuan sold more than 10,000 pieces.

The grand occasion on the fishing field is difficult to replicate in the men's clothing live broadcast room. On the one hand, compared with the mature people and goods field and rich gameplay of the women's clothing live broadcast room, men's clothing, especially middle-aged men's clothing, is still in the exploratory stage.

Early men's clothing live broadcasts tried the style of show live broadcasts. For example, @格欣男装配, the beautiful anchor sold goods in a coquettish way in the live broadcast room, calling fans "milk powder group", and the monthly GMV exceeded 2.35 million, far exceeding its previous live broadcast results. Although it is men's clothing, merchants have adopted beauty marketing strategies, letting beautiful female anchors wear men's clothing to sell goods, and use this as a selling point for the live broadcast room.

In 2022, the men's clothing brand @云爸爸 men's clothing has become popular. In order to show that the pants are comfortable and of good quality, Yun爸爸 led a group of middle-aged men of average build to perform sweeping kicks and horse stances in the live broadcast room, and even danced awkwardly and performed drunken boxing. After a set of dazzling moves, the sales of the live broadcast room also soared.

At its peak, Yunbaba’s livestreaming studio had monthly sales of over 12 million yuan. However, Douyin traffic is ever-changing, and currently, Yunbaba’s flagship store has only achieved monthly sales of 250,000 to 500,000 yuan.

@Cloud Dad Clothing Flagship Store

On the other hand, due to the uncertainty of male purchasing power, most of Douyin's men's clothing live broadcast rooms are actually facing a problem: choose a man or a woman?

For some men's clothing brands, the audience of their live broadcast rooms is still mainly women, that is, they sell men's clothing by attracting female customers. @鹿竹服装旗舰店 is a men's clothing store specializing in middle-aged and elderly fathers' clothing, but female fans account for more than 69% of its live broadcasts, and female fans account for 86% of its videos. The brand even directly used "A live broadcast room to show filial piety to my father" as the title of the live broadcast, and "I also want to buy clothes for my father" was a high-frequency barrage.

QuestMobile data shows that in April 2024, the top five brands that occupied the most attention in men's clothing brand content were Romon, Heilan Home, Jeanswest, Crocodile, and Septwolves. On Douyin, these brands have a high brand effect and have built a large number of matrix accounts, but in some live broadcast rooms, female consumption power still exceeds that of males.

How to capture male consumption power may be a difficult problem for businesses. Kas extracted accounts where male fans account for more than 60% of live broadcasts, such as @Lewis Official Flagship Store, which has 79% male fans and mainly purchases in new first-tier, second-tier and third-tier cities, with sales of 2.5 million to 5 million in the past month; @Seven Wolves Official Flagship Store, with a monthly live broadcast GMV of 100,000 to 250,000.

Big brands have brand effects, so their content naturally attracts more attention. But for unknown small brands, it does take "some effort and means" to break through the siege when male consumption power is generally weak.

In addition, Kas also paid attention to an account @Xiahushijia Official Flagship Store, which focuses on "shipping from the source factory". Male fans account for as high as 84% ​​of the live broadcast room, mainly middle-aged men aged 31-40. In the past 30 days, the account has achieved sales of 10 million to 15 million.

@Xiahu Family Official Flagship Store

Interestingly, Xiahu's products are clearly differentiated by price levels and prefixes. Summer shorts priced at 69 yuan are called "landlord shorts", and the higher ones are called "landlord (Teflon version)" priced at 90 yuan. In the short-sleeved series, the round-neck short-sleeved shirts priced at 42 yuan are called "18-year-old trendy men's T-shirts", the 200 yuan ones are called "male god T-shirts", and the 230 yuan ones are directly upgraded to "prestige series". Giving users identity imagination through product naming is similar to the high-end sister in some ways.

In short, the Internet calls for male consumption power, whether it is selling goods in a conventional way or providing emotional value to men - middle-aged men should also have a consumption trap.