Brother Yang and Simba are leading the trend of top anchors going overseas. Is it possible to “recreate Douyin on TikTok”?

As domestic e-commerce competition intensifies, many top anchors such as Xiao Yangge and Simba have turned their attention to overseas markets, especially the TikTok platform, and actively explored ways to replicate their successful domestic experience in different cultures and consumption habits.

"I'm not working hard enough and I don't deserve to watch you dance." After Li Jiaqi participated in the Mango TV variety show "Brother Who Overcomes Troubles", there were many sarcastic voices in the comment section. Because of last year's "Why is the eyebrow pencil expensive" incident, Li Jiaqi's exposure in public continued to decline for a long time, and he even wanted to retire from the live broadcast room selling goods.

It's not just Li Jiaqi. Among the top anchors, Brother Yang is interested in going overseas, Luo Yonghao's appearance rate has decreased, and Li Jiaqi started to try out variety shows after the eyebrow pencil incident.

In addition to these various choices, the top anchors have a common plan B in their career curve - going overseas.

What’s different from the domestic situation is that overseas, most Chinese anchors prefer a single channel to go online, which is TikTok.

Today, live streaming and selling goods on TikTok has become a must for more and more cross-border e-commerce practitioners. Not only is it vigorously promoted by top domestic anchors, but anchors are also selling goods very well in overseas markets. Many Chinese-made products and branded goods have also gained considerable traffic on TikTok, laying a good reputation foundation for Chinese-made products to go overseas.

Problems follow.

The slogan of going overseas has been shouted for a while. What fields are the top anchors exploring? What is the layout direction of those anchors with high traffic and good data in China?

Of course, cross-border sellers are more concerned about what those big foreign anchors are selling in overseas markets and on platforms such as TikTok, and how they are selling.

1. The road to overseas expansion is long and arduous

Brother Xiao Yang is probably the most popular one among the overseas anchor team. Recently, because of the news that his company Three Sheep’s Hangzhou headquarters was for rent, Brother Xiao Yang’s team has once again become the focus of attention.

Brother Yang's overseas expansion has been relatively high-profile. In January this year, Three Sheep Network collaborated with local influencers in Singapore to conduct its first live broadcast selling goods, setting a new record for TikTok's e-commerce sector in Singapore.

After that, Xiao Yangge's team accelerated its layout in markets such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States. Xiao Yangge's team completed the IP accumulation of 2 million fans in Southeast Asia in 3 months, and its US branch is expected to open around September this year.

"Why do we want to open this branch in the United States? China's e-commerce is currently far ahead of the world in terms of application. Of course, live streaming e-commerce can be done very well in China. I think TikTok is also a great opportunity for the entire group." Lu Wenqing, founder of Three Sheep Group, once publicly expressed the company's future overseas layout direction in a live broadcast.

Beyond China, Three Sheep's e-commerce business seems to be spreading all over the world. Southeast Asia and the United States are currently the most important markets for overseas cross-border e-commerce. The speed of Three Sheep's layout is enough to show its team's confidence in the development of these regions.

Replicating domestic experience overseas is only the basis for the three sheep to go global. Judging from recent developments, the team’s more important focus is to open up the entire industrial chain, and it intends to expand overseas in a more large-scale direction.

On August 12, Sanzhiyang and Jitu Express officially signed a global strategic cooperation agreement. Jitu is already a super leading enterprise in Southeast Asian e-commerce logistics. Sanzhiyang’s move to cooperate with Jitu is obviously intended to make a great layout in the Southeast Asian e-commerce market.

In addition to taking over the important link of logistics, the Three Sheep team also replicated its killer "slicing" editing method overseas. Judging from the data that it has accumulated 2 million fans in 3 months, "slicing overseas" has achieved good results.

Compared with Xiao Yangge, Simba, another top anchor in the industry, started his overseas expansion relatively early.

When Xiao Yangge was preparing for going overseas last year, Simba had already started its overseas expansion in Thailand in May 2023, with a GMV of over 830 million yuan.

However, unlike the Three Sheep team, the Xinxuan team's current overseas expansion layout is more focused on selling high-quality overseas products to the domestic market. Its traffic base and market are still domestic, and the direction of overseas product traceability lies in product selection.

From another perspective, the path of the Xinxuan team is to start from the production end of the product industry chain and realize monetization at the traffic end. The advantage of doing so is that Xinxuan's traffic base is relatively fixed, and its GMV data can help the team gain higher bargaining power on the supply chain end.

Based on this, it can be inferred that the Xinxuan team may continue to promote the construction of local live broadcasts in Southeast Asia as the overseas live broadcast market environment develops.

The layout of the Three Sheep and Xinxuan teams is aimed at the Southeast Asian market. Whether it is the construction of the local TikTok platform or the control of products on the upstream supply chain, the ultimate goal is to open the door to overseas markets and copy the traffic code of Chinese e-commerce.

As Xiao Yangge’s team mentioned before, “Do Douyin again on TikTok.”

However, does Douyin's logic work on TikTok? What are the similarities and differences between buyers on TikTok and buyers in China? Are there similarities between creating hits on TikTok and in China?

The sales data of TikTok anchors can provide answers to these questions.

2. Who is making money on TikTok?

In the past week, TikTok's product with the best sales data in the US market was a vitamin D gummy. This product was launched on June 29. Since its launch, its total sales have exceeded 80,000 orders and sales have exceeded US$1.11 million. A total of more than 800 Internet celebrities are associated with this product. Since August, the sales data of this product has entered a period of explosive growth, with the highest daily sales exceeding 98 million orders.

From the perspective of product categories, health care products are definitely not the mainstream products favored by users when sold on domestic platforms such as Douyin, but they have received considerable attention overseas, which fully reflects the differences in consumption habits between Chinese and American consumers.

If we expand our perspective, we can see that among the top six items on TikTok’s best-selling list in the United States last week, two were health products, followed by furniture, women’s clothing, shoes and mobile phones and electronic products.

In particular, another healthy product for cleansing the intestines was launched on the shelves at the end of September 2023. To date, its total sales have exceeded 2.1 million orders and its total GMV has exceeded US$28 million.

However, similar to the domestic situation, household products, women's clothing, and mobile electronic products are still the first choice for TikTok consumers in the United States.

Compared with the US market, consumption habits in Southeast Asia are more similar to those in China.

In the past week, the top products with the best performance on Indonesia's TikTok sales list were: Muslim headscarves, children's tops, fruit vinegar, vacuum cleaners, etc.

In terms of categories, the main products are women's clothing and accessories, children's products and household items, especially headscarf products for Muslim women. This is related to the needs of the local religious population in Indonesia and is a unique local consumer demand.

And judging from the local market demand, the local population is more focused on purchasing daily necessities.

However, in terms of money-making ability, among the top ten products with the highest sales in the Indonesian TikTok market in the past week, except for a pair of slippers, the other nine are care and beauty products, including facial masks, essences, facial care sets, air cushions and other products.

In this regard, the purchasing habits of users in the Indonesian market are similar to those in China. The average order value of women's cosmetics and facial skin care products is relatively high, and sales volume is at the forefront.

For the top domestic anchors, whether it is Li Jiaqi, Xiao Yangge, or Simba, among their cooperative categories, women's cosmetics products account for a very high proportion, and the top anchors are also well versed in the sales strategies and user psychology of the women's products market.

In overseas markets, especially the Southeast Asian market, top anchors who are accustomed to targeting female users for sales find it easier to tap into local consumer demand.

From this perspective, it would be easier and faster for Yangge’s team to replicate the idea of ​​“re-doing Douyin on TikTok” in Southeast Asia.

However, can high sales be achieved if the number of fans is large enough? Looking at TikTok’s data, this is not the case.

In the past week, among the top ten influencers in TikTok's US market, except for @Brother Cosmetics, the number of fans of other influencers did not exceed one million.

Among them, @Dad Just Living The Dream, which ranks fifth in sales, has only 21,000 followers, but its sales of products last week reached 9,233, with a gap of more than 3,000 orders from the first place. The GMV of the products sold in the current period was 270,000 US dollars, which exceeded the GMV of the first place by 60,000 US dollars.

The Indonesian market also shows similar characteristics.

In the past week, among the top five influencers in Indonesia’s TikTok, @Cahyaniryn had 21.5 million followers, and @Mamanya kamari had 8.3 million followers. They ranked third and fifth respectively among the influencers in the current period.

The blogger ranked first on the Indonesian TikTok influencer list is @MBA My Blank Apparel, with only 70,000 followers. The second is @ MARCO COSTNER, with only 94,000 followers.

When it comes to selling products on TikTok, fans are the basis, but not absolute. Channel selection is more critical.

From this point of view, the current strategy of the Xinxuan team is more worthy of reference.

For cross-border e-commerce, whether it is Temu, TikTok or other platforms, price is still the most important advantage at present. If you can grasp the bargaining power from the perspective of supply chain channels, then the core of product price can be grasped more smoothly.

Author: Zhou Ke Editor: Firefox This article is written by Operation Party author [null], WeChat public account: [Set sail to the sea], original/authorized to be published in Operation Party, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.