The secret of the rapid development of the green plant industry is hidden in the shelves of Douyin e-commerce

The rise of Douyin e-commerce has brought revolutionary changes to the green plant industry. Through the interactive form of short videos and live broadcasts, combined with optimized shelf scenarios, it not only solves the problems of traditional online shopping for green plants, but also promotes direct connections between merchants and consumers, and promotes the rapid development of the entire green plant industry.

The emphasis that merchants and platforms place on shelf scenarios is also a reflection of their own continuous maturity.

Have you ever bought plants online?

Many years ago, flower markets and offline stores were the mainstream of green plant consumption, and consumers could intuitively select healthy green plants with satisfactory colors. If you buy online, it is difficult to ensure that what you see is what you get based on pictures and descriptions alone.

In addition, as living things, green plants have strict requirements on transportation and packaging. They are easily damaged, dehydrated, or even die. The return and exchange process may be more complicated. These are the difficulties faced when purchasing green plants online.

But if you pay close attention, you will find that this situation is now being broken.

With the emergence of the emerging portal of Douyin e-commerce, the content format of short videos and live broadcasts allows the characteristics and advantages of products such as green plants to be displayed intuitively, vividly and fully.

The platform has gathered a large number of professional KOLs and merchants who have been deeply involved in the industry for many years, who share their flower-growing experiences and recommend high-quality green plants, allowing green plants to gain widespread exposure and sales opportunities on the Douyin platform.

More importantly, since upgrading to global interest e-commerce, in addition to content, shelf scenes have provided merchants with more display and promotion opportunities, and the optimization of platform services has also brought more peace of mind and security to consumers.

According to the 2024 Douyin e-commerce Yunnan Flower Industry Development Report, in the past year, more than 30 million consumers across the country purchased 146 million orders of Yunnan flowers through Douyin e-commerce. At the same time, the shelf scene is also developing rapidly, with the order volume increasing by 77% year-on-year and the number of goods increasing by 99% year-on-year.

Driven by both content and shelf scenarios, flowers and green plants have continued to grow rapidly on Douyin e-commerce. This means that the emergence of Douyin e-commerce has, to a certain extent, changed the limitations of the previous flower and green plant sales model, such as regional restrictions, single varieties and opaque prices.

In the new wave, those businesses that have keenly captured market opportunities have already reaped the fruits of the new market.

1. There is no methodology for entrepreneurship, just follow the pace of the platform

Xu Songbin is the founder of Chuangxiang Oasis. Many years ago, with his deep affection for his hometown and keen insight into the market, he brought back the supply chain experience he had accumulated in Fuzhou to his hometown of Zhangzhou.

This is a city famous for its foreign trade in green plants, food and quartz watches, but in fact, despite the developed green plant industry in Zhangzhou, the supply chain is relatively weak. For a long time, most e-commerce sellers here have been self-sufficient, relying on a stable daily order volume to maintain operations, and there is no urgent need for supply chain services.

It was this "lack of urgency" that made Xu Songbin see the opportunity.

He keenly realized that emerging platforms such as Douyin e-commerce, which are known for their explosive growth, are bringing unprecedented changes to the industry. While the huge demand for orders brings more opportunities to merchants, for categories such as green plants, the sharp fluctuations in order volume also mean huge challenges in labor costs.

The traditional model is difficult to adapt to fast-paced changes. Whenever there is a surge in orders, sellers often need to temporarily hire a large number of employees to meet delivery needs. Once orders drop, these manpower becomes a heavy burden.

Xu Songbin saw the huge potential of the green plant supply chain. If these scattered orders can be integrated through large-scale warehousing and delivery, it can not only reduce the cost of sellers, but also improve the stability of the entire supply chain.

So in 2020, starting with live streaming, Chuangxiang Oasis established a complete supply chain system. In the early days, green plant live streaming was still a new thing in Zhangzhou. They started from scratch and faced all kinds of doubts. With the continuous expansion of the business, more and more influencers on Douyin began to pay attention and seek cooperation, and one-click consignment, warehousing and delivery models came into being.

By optimizing various aspects such as express delivery costs, packaging materials, and flower pot bases, Chuangxiang Oasis's supply price is 10%-20% lower than that of its peers.

They not only serve B-end merchants and influencers, but also directly face C-end consumers. Among them, the best-selling product is "Small Leaf Red Nan", with a single-store link sales of 400,000 orders and a cumulative consignment of over 1 million orders.

"I founded this company because of Douyin e-commerce, and the company has always been following the pace of the platform." Xu Songbin's words revealed a sense of sharing the fate of the platform.

This is indeed the case. In the first two years of his business, he closely followed the development of the platform, from setting up live broadcast rooms, making short videos, to cooperating with downstream companies. By leveraging the platform's traffic dividend, Chuangxiang Lvzhou achieved rapid growth and fan accumulation in the early stage, and ranked high in the green plant category of Douyin e-commerce.

Last year, the platform reached another critical juncture: the development of shelf scenarios brought new business growth opportunities to merchants.

In Xu Songbin's view, for green plants, the current shelf scene of Douyin e-commerce is a relatively blue ocean. Under the active operation of the platform, the participation rules are also more friendly to merchants. For example, the platform operation will convey the latest activities and rule updates to merchants as soon as possible. Traffic entrances such as super value purchases and flash sales allow merchants to gain more exposure and business.

In the past, Xu Songbin's in-depth research in the content field through various means has allowed the exposure of his green plant products to grow exponentially. When the video content reached a certain scale, Xu Songbin used the resources of group leaders to increase the volume and built a complete link from short videos to shelf e-commerce.

"The shopping mall shelf scene has given us a clear sense of cost advantage and growth potential."

Xu Songbin explained that compared with the investment in live streaming and short videos, the investment and operating costs of Douyin's e-commerce shelf scenes are low. If you seize the opportunity and effectively utilize the platform's natural traffic, sales will be able to grow steadily and continuously.

More importantly, the platform’s commission-free policy for commodity cards has saved them a lot of costs and provided impetus for performance growth.

In other words, the shelf scene provides merchants with a stable sales channel that can undertake repeat purchases and daily sales from old customers, bringing in long-term and stable traffic. At the same time, the traffic multiplier effect of the shelf scene enables merchants to achieve further growth in traffic through the shelf scene based on the content field.

2. The ten-year green plant business has seen the fastest growth in Douyin e-commerce

The same story also happened to Chen Peilian, the founder of Huazhitai.

Recalling the process of co-founding this green plant e-commerce with her husband, in 2015, they found that although people's demand for green plants was growing, the number of traditional flower shops was limited and unevenly distributed. Consumers often needed to go to the flower market specifically to find their favorite green plants. So they came up with the idea of ​​using e-commerce platforms to expand the sales scope of green plants.

In the early days of the e-commerce industry, competition was not fierce. With their love for green plants and their unique insights into design, Chen Peilian's team carefully selected products and paid attention to packaging details to ensure that every product could be delivered in the best condition.

After several years of hard work, Huazhitai has accumulated a certain customer base and market reputation, and in 2019 shifted its business focus to the green plant supply chain.

With the rapid development of the e-commerce industry and the intensification of market competition, the traffic dividend of traditional e-commerce platforms has gradually faded. Especially around 2020, Huazhitai also felt the pressure of a sharp decline in traffic.

Faced with this challenge, they began to look for new growth points. Chen Peilian discovered that Douyin e-commerce, with its unique content ecology and powerful traffic distribution capabilities, is gradually changing consumers' shopping habits.

"The traffic advantage of Douyin e-commerce is obvious," Chen Peilian analyzed. "It can not only quickly attract users' attention, but also push our products to potential consumers through accurate personalized recommendations."

Chen Peilian feels very lucky because when they first entered Douyin e-commerce in 2022, through cooperation with top anchors and vertical live broadcast rooms, they achieved a daily order volume of 5,000-7,000 in the first week.

The reason behind this is similar to Xu Songbin's experience. Thanks to the advantages accumulated in the supply chain in the past and traditional e-commerce experience, Chen Peilian's Huazhitai has formed unique advantages in product selection, quality control, delivery timeliness and other aspects.

So when the opportunity of Douyin e-commerce came, Huazhitai was able to quickly enter the market. They knew how to meet consumer needs and could handle huge orders, achieving seamless integration from supply chain to sales channels. Now, in more than two years, sales from Douyin e-commerce have accounted for about 80% of Huazhitai's e-commerce business.

In Chen Peilian's view, planning the shelf scene for Douyin e-commerce is a natural thing to do.

She has her own understanding of the concept of global interest e-commerce: "Global interest e-commerce is a way for the platform to explore more and adapt to the habits of different consumer groups. It breaks the past single entry model and can attract consumers through short videos, live broadcasts, searches and other methods at the same time."

On e-commerce platforms, green plants are still in a rapid growth stage. Many consumers are motivated to buy because of content, and the shelf scene has a more intuitive and systematic display method, which also meets their search needs, allowing consumers to browse products according to categories, brands, prices, etc. The dual experience of content and shelves has gradually deepened the habit of users "shopping" Douyin e-commerce.

In the operation of Huazhitai, they do not need to study various complicated rules of the game. Chen Peilian regards the accumulation and maintenance of links as the top priority. By continuously optimizing and maintaining those links with good sales, they can ensure that they obtain stable traffic and conversion effects on the shelf e-commerce platform.

"Douyin's shelf e-commerce has many outstanding advantages, such as the huge traffic from super value purchases and flash sales. We can quickly increase the store's exposure and sales by reporting activities."

In Chen Peilian's opinion, compared with traditional e-commerce, Douyin's e-commerce shelves have a clearer operating direction and relatively concentrated entrances, allowing merchants to focus more on products and services themselves;

On the other hand, Douyin's e-commerce operations team also provided professional guidance and cooperation. "They are very aggressive and responsible." Hua Zhitai was also able to capture traffic during important nodes and major promotional activities.

At the same time, participating in platform activities is actually an important opportunity to test product quality and service level. For example, at the entrances to the super value purchase and flash sale on the shelf, the platform will screen merchants and products based on entry conditions. This is not only conducive to consumers buying truly cost-effective products, but also for merchants, it can further enhance the brand image and consumer awareness, and to a certain extent avoid the phenomenon of bad currency on the platform.

3. The shelf scene is a sign of the continuous maturity of Douyin e-commerce

During the preparation stage of this year's Chinese Valentine's Day, Huazhitai's business team worked closely with operations to actively follow up on the product selection list. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the event, they carefully prepared multiple links, which not only covered Huazhitai's advantageous products, but also fully considered factors such as the product's scale and evaluation, to ensure that they could maintain their position when orders exploded.

Coincidentally, Xu Songbin's Chuangxiang Oasis also actively participated in the event. During the Chinese Valentine's Day, the team registered the store's best-selling product "Xiaoye Red Phoebe" for the platform's "Super Value Purchase", set up various coupons, and optimized the keywords in the product title and description to increase search exposure, with a very obvious growth effect.

In his opinion, it is not difficult to manage the shelf scene well. After registering the event, setting the price, optimizing the product details, and following the platform rules, you will reap rewards.

At the same time, by combining industry consumption trends and data, and gaining insight into and analyzing user needs, merchants can also use Douyin e-commerce platform tools to timely optimize product recommendations and marketing strategies.

It is reported that the Douyin e-commerce platform provides a wealth of marketing tools and promotional methods, such as product cards and Qianchuan advertisements, which can accurately reach the target user groups and thus improve marketing efficiency.

"People generally think that Douyin e-commerce is suitable for making hot products. The core reason is only the live broadcast room and short videos. In fact, the role of shelf scenes is underestimated." Xu Songbin believes that in Douyin e-commerce, the synergy between content and shelves is very strong. For merchants, it will even be easier to use shelves to make a product popular.

Chen Peilian said that in the Douyin e-commerce shelf scene, they do not need to over-operate, but put more focus on the product, from procurement to quality control, to delivery time, logistics experience and after-sales service, every link is optimized to satisfy consumers. On this point, merchants and platforms have reached a consensus.

For example, in order to ensure product quality, Huazhitai has established a good cooperative relationship with suppliers and will resolutely return any products that do not meet the standards.

The store generally requires delivery to be completed within 48 hours, and sometimes even within 24 hours. The strict quality control mechanism enables Huazhitai to stand out in the fierce market competition.

To a certain extent, the platform's emphasis on shelf scenarios is also a reflection of its own continuous maturity.

According to Douyin e-commerce data in May 2023, the platform's GMV achieved an annual growth of 80%. It is worth noting that the GMV contribution rate of shelf e-commerce scenarios reached 30%, and this proportion continued to rise in the subsequent period, and its importance became increasingly prominent.

In the year since Douyin e-commerce transformed into a global interest e-commerce, more than half of the merchants' GMV in the shelf scenario accounted for more than half of their total GMV. The shelf scenario not only injected new vitality into the platform, but also helped many merchants to optimize their sales structure and grow their business.

With the continuous optimization of digital technology and platform rules, the ecology of Douyin e-commerce is showing a diversified trend and the market boundaries are constantly expanding.

Competition in the green plant category may become more intense in the future, but as long as we work hard and continuously improve product quality and service levels, this mechanism will also help improve the health level of the entire ecosystem.

Author｜Lu Yao This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Xin Mou], WeChat public account: [Xin Mou], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

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