The old domestic products are divided into two categories: some are revived, some are in the final glory

How can old domestic brands achieve self-salvation and transformation? This article deeply analyzes multiple successful cases, from content e-commerce to channel strategies, revealing how old domestic brands can regain growth momentum in the context of the new era. These stories not only demonstrate the resilience and innovation of the brands, but also provide valuable market insights. Are you ready to learn how they did it?

It has been almost a year since the Li Jiaqi incident, and Hua Xizi, which was ridiculed by the public, still tops the list. But how are those old domestic products that successfully "went ashore" through collective self-rescue doing?

In May this year, Vitality 28 held a special live broadcast on Douyin to celebrate the 8th month anniversary of live streaming sales, to build momentum for the big promotion in advance. In the recent 618 list, it ranked 6th in the GMV of the cleaning detergent/sanitary napkin/paper/aromatherapy category.

Compared to Vitality 28, which fell into bankruptcy eight months ago, it is now a completely different company.

However, it is rare to see old domestic products like Huoli 28 "revive" online. In that vigorous collective self-rescue event of domestic products, Fenghua, which had the most momentum, failed to become popular again on Douyin. For example, Lotus MSG, Yumeijing, Shanghai Sulfur Soap, etc., the peak sales on Douyin only existed in the Li Jiaqi incident.

Do old domestic products have to rely on traffic from nowhere? How do old domestic products that can remain popular for a long time do so?

01 Channel logic comes first, and the goal is to be a "big brand substitute"

During last year's collective self-rescue incident of domestic products, there was a detail that left us puzzled.

Led by Fenghua, many domestic brands have started to make money on Douyin. Among them, Yumeijing, a brand founded in 1958 and focusing on children's skin care products, learned to open a Douyin account to sell products because of this marketing event. But ten years ago, Yumeijing learned to enter Taobao Tmall and opened its first flagship store.

Ten years later, they missed the dividend of content e-commerce and even almost missed the small profits. Old domestic brands like Yumeijing seem to be hesitant to try content e-commerce. In the past year of Douyin performance, old domestic brands have not continued their past popularity. I can't help but wonder, do old domestic brands not pay attention to content e-commerce, or are they just unable to learn?

After analyzing the development of domestic brands such as Yumeijing, Fenghua, and Huoli 28 in recent years, Daofa believes that the poor performance of old domestic brands in content e-commerce may be due to the following two reasons.

Reason 1: Offline channel logic cannot adapt to content e-commerce

Yumeijing's attitude towards Taobao, Tmall and Douyin also represents the attitude of traditional Chinese brands towards shelf e-commerce and content e-commerce. The logic of shelf e-commerce is similar to that of offline channels. Customers search for specific categories/brands in the search box with their needs, and then what appears in front of them are the products arranged on offline shelves.

In offline channels, traditional Chinese products rely on their long-term brand influence. Once they have distributors, they can roughly estimate their annual revenue. Revenue growth tends to be stable and has a strong degree of certainty. In shelf e-commerce, the marketing methods that brands can use to influence consumer purchases are all obvious and easy to imitate. Advertise products to rank high, and participate in platform activities to offer discounts. In addition to price and brand value, what can convince consumers to buy is product reputation.

Offline channels and shelf e-commerce are actually the comfort zone for traditional Chinese products. Here, from offline to online shelves, as long as the store reputation/store rating is maintained and search SEO is done well, the natural traffic will be relatively high.

Thinking about it the other way around, this is also the reason why new Chinese brands choose to enter Douyin first and become Douyin brands instead of focusing on Taobao and JD. Without brand influence, there is no persuasiveness. However, the existence of content e-commerce is an opportunity for new Chinese brands to stand shoulder to shoulder with old Chinese brands or even surpass them.

The root of content e-commerce is content. Unlike the marketing 1.0 and 2.0 eras, the marketing in the 3.0 era is diverse. Live streaming, content streaming, and product promotion... In the face of traditional Chinese products, this is an era where data can be used to quantify marketing strategies, but it is also an era where they cannot understand that consumers will sell out products just because the chairman dances in the live broadcast room.

Let me give you a specific example.

The video works of Fenghua Douyin official flagship store can be divided into three types of content: one is to respond to netizens' comments, which accounts for a large proportion; one is the live broadcast room discounts and lottery notifications; and the other is product introductions, which have less material. The video works mainly show the production workshop and product effects. This type of content can highlight the price and product effects, and uses traditional marketing methods, but it does not achieve differentiation and does not meet consumer needs.

There are many cases to refer to in this regard. Here we use the video works of Liby Douyin flagship store to illustrate.

It is not just about promoting low prices and discounts in live broadcast rooms. It is more about creating content based on specific needs from the user's perspective, such as scenarios, laundry needs, and fragrance characteristics. It makes users feel that "I need to buy this bottle of laundry detergent for a certain reason" rather than "this bottle of laundry detergent looks good."

Reason 2: Hesitation in transformation and becoming a "substitute for a big brand"

The typical case is actually Fenghua.

From the new products released by Fenghua in recent years, we can see that Fenghua is trying to transform itself. However, there is a sense of disconnection between products and between products and brands.

Let the pictures speak for themselves.

While actively following the trend to launch new products, we are also wavering between "being ourselves" and "learning from the benchmarks".

In the shampoo line, Fenghua believes that shampoo has become a classic hit because it is cheap, large, and has simple packaging without any extra cost for design. Therefore, this logic is followed in the shampoo-related product series.

However, when it comes to the personal care and cleaning products that are occupied by other brands, such as hair masks, dry hair sprays, and hair care essential oils, Fenghua's logic has changed again. Its model is to be a "big brand substitute." It learns from the top brands from 0 to 1 and wins only by low prices. The sense of separation between products and brands also comes from this.

By launching multiple business lines and exploring the mid-range market, Fenghua is actually aware of the diverse needs of current consumers for scalp care. The general direction is correct, but the specific strategic positioning is slightly off . Fenghua chose to use a low-price strategy to grab market share. In other words, Fenghua has embarked on the path of Perfect Diary, focusing on "substitutes for big brands."

Choosing the mid-to-low-end market does not mean that the brand is destined to be a substitute. Once labeled as such, the brand will always become a shadow of others.

For consumers, the reason for choosing Fenghua is that it is cost-effective and domestic products are worthy of trust. What Fenghua needs to do is to develop products with the brand value of "Fenghua" based on its core competitiveness of cost-effectiveness and in combination with diversified needs, rather than becoming a "substitute for big brands" and imitating the language of big brands to communicate with consumers.

02 Get rid of the unbranded products and remake the old domestic products

The traditional marketing thinking of old domestic products is to market around products, with hot products but no brand. In the era of content e-commerce, in addition to this approach, brand content marketing can also be specifically divided into group brands, channel brands, category brands and scenario brands. At the same time, these four types of brands are not fixed and can circulate among each other. We disassembled four marketing cases of old domestic products to explain.

1. Crowd: Little Swan, looking for new growth in the broken circle crowd

In conventional marketing strategies, Little Swan, a long-established home appliance brand, first looks for home lifestyle bloggers when looking for advertising. The fan audiences of these bloggers are exactly the precise groups covered by Little Swan.

But this time, Little Swan chose to do the opposite.

Not only should we cover the precise target groups through conventional marketing methods, but we should also find people who break through the circle and reach high-potential customers.

In 2023, Little Swan launched a new product, "Little Black Plum", which features ultra-thin and fully embedded cabinets, which is in line with the product differences of mainstream cabinets. After several rounds of targeted home furnishing bloggers, the penetration rate of new products has become the top in the category. In order to find new growth, Little Swan tried to find the overlap between the incremental population and the target population on Xiaohongshu.

Among them, there is a high degree of overlap between the Chinese health-conscious population and the fashion-conscious population . Their spending power and the importance they place on clothing cleanliness match the brand's target population, which confirms the feasibility of finding incremental growth from segmented populations.

In order to address the concerns of fashion-conscious people who are worried about the damage of autumn and winter clothes in the washing machine and the wrinkles after washing, Little Swan focuses on the drying function and high appearance in its content delivery. For people who care about their health, Little Swan starts with the importance of cleaning clothes immediately to prevent the growth of bacteria, starting from the moldy clothes in the rainy season and the washing and cleaning of special clothes for babies and women.

It is understood that the penetration rate of "Xiao Wumei" products in two high-potential groups has soared by 192% (health-conscious people) and 226% (dressing-up people). At the same time, the active users of Xiaohongshu account for 67% of the total number of Little Swan purchasers on a certain e-commerce platform channel, and the GMV contribution accounts for 50%.

2. Channel: Vitality 28, looking for new growth in incremental channels

The popularity of Vitality 28 is due to the "three old men" in the live broadcast room. The three factory executives who were once pulled in to act as anchors due to lack of manpower became famous overnight for their clumsiness and sincerity in front of the camera. Later, the "three old men" became the IP of Vitality 28 and continued to serve live broadcast sales.

From bankruptcy to rebirth, Vitality 28 relied not only on the "three old men", but also because Vitality 28 found an incremental strategy suitable for brand development on the Douyin platform, namely: low price + expansion by tail influencers.

According to Chanmama data, within 30 days, the average customer unit price of Hurry 28 was as low as 12.44 yuan, and the unit price of the two products in its Douyin flagship store that sold over 10 million yuan was 9.9 yuan. This is the golden signboard of Hurry 28 and has become the foundation of the brand's online presence.

Among them, Vitality 28 is relatively dependent on influencers to bring goods. During the 618 promotion, influencers accounted for 50.1% of sales. So far this year, influencers accounted for 38.85%.

According to Chanmama data, since November last year, Vitality 28 has increased its efforts in the advertising of influencers, and has launched a large number of amateurs and low-end bloggers with less than 10,000 followers and between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. Vitality 28 has a low customer price, and coupled with the brand effect, it has a relatively high cost-effectiveness. Considering the efficiency of advertising, putting the budget on amateurs and low-end bloggers is conducive to conversion and can also save costs.

In addition, live broadcast and product card channels contributed the majority of sales. Among them, the traffic in the live broadcast room within 30 days basically came from the recommended feed flow, that is, natural traffic, accounting for 58.6%, and paid estimates accounted for only 22.9%. Compared with the industry average provided by Chan Mama, the natural traffic of the Vitality 28 live broadcast room is nearly twice the industry average, and the paid estimate ratio is also nearly half the industry average.

This also means that Vitality 28 did not spend a large budget on live broadcast room recommendations, relying on the "three old men" to attract users into the live broadcast room. In addition, Daofa speculated that the reason why the sales of commodity cards accounted for 21.94% was also due to Vitality 28's low-price strategy.

The channel strategy of Vitality 28 on Douyin is worth learning for traditional Chinese brands. When the product price is relatively low, how to use a cost-effective delivery strategy to find new growth on the Douyin channel.

3. Category: Beibeijia, beautiful torture instruments, no substitute in the whole network

Beibeijia’s counterattack proves the importance of category, that is, brand.

The back corrector that was once a nightmare for students has now transformed from a "hot potato" for the group to a "beautiful torture device" for women.

After Zhang Yuqi made it popular, Beibeijia made its debut quickly, signing spokespersons, sponsoring variety shows, and entering the content e-commerce market. By selling anxiety, it activated users' focus on body shape, and mainly promoted the idea that wearing Beibeijia can create a perfect figure and improve temperament in a short period of time. According to Chanmama's backend, Beibeijia's sales on Douyin have exceeded 100 million in the past 90 days.

After many years, Beibeijia still firmly occupies the market share of posture correctors, with no rivals on the entire Internet.

In the past, the brand became popular all over the country thanks to founder Du Guoying's spending of nearly 90 million in four years, and he seized on parents' anxiety about their children's posture. Now, under the operation of Kefu Medical, Beibeijia has become the antidote for women's posture anxiety. When the appearance and figure cannot be changed in a short time, as long as you wear Beibeijia, a good posture becomes a tool to quickly improve your temperament.

Since its establishment, Beibeijia has always grasped the urgent needs of consumers.

4. Scenario: Xilinmen, creating a lifestyle for consumers

Similar to Little Swan, Xilinmen has found a new solution to sell mattresses. Instead of explaining the functionality of the mattresses, it creates an atmosphere of a better life to attract consumers.

When buying home furnishings, young people today not only pay attention to price and performance, but also consider the compatibility with the overall home decoration and the appearance as important factors in their decision-making. Combining the popular trends of home decoration styles on Xiaohongshu and Douyin, cream-style decoration ranks first. In combination with the new floating bed, Xilinmen has created a series of atmosphere words on Xiaohongshu that can arouse consumers' interest in it, such as: fairy, cream, appearance, etc. The notes on the fairy bed all satisfy consumers' yearning for the appearance of home furnishings.

It is understood that during the 618 period last year, the single product ranked second among the best-selling bedding products on the e-commerce platform.

03 Analyst Comments

The reasons behind the inability of old domestic products to adapt to content e-commerce may be very complicated.

For example, Yumeijing, which has a state-owned capital background, was relatively slow to respond and still focused on offline channels. It was not until last year’s brand upgrade conference that it officially proposed to transform from a traditional business model to a brand marketing development model.

Or brands like Fenghua that focus on making affordable domestic products are now facing the difficulty of hesitating and struggling between maintaining Fenghua’s unique personality and meeting the needs of current consumers.

Brand upgrading is the result of a series of small events. Start by learning from excellent domestic product cases.

References:

Knife Skills Research Institute, 2024, 0624, "The worst 618 in history, which brands are secretly counting money?"

Salt Finance, 2024, 0606, "East Asian women can never escape from the bad habits"

Xiaohongshu e-commerce, 2024, 0531, "A washing machine becomes a "health partner"? How can standard home appliances achieve a 300% monthly growth?"

Xiaohongshu Business News, 2024, 0417, "Breaking the dilemma of home furnishing, Xilinmen's production increased by 9 times"

Zinc Finance, 2023, 0915, "Fenghua shampoo, White Elephant instant noodles, old domestic products set off the "most unpretentious" business war"

Author | Lao Xie