Drinks Live Earthquake

Do you usually buy wine in online live broadcast rooms? Recently, new regulations have been issued regarding live broadcasts of wine and beverage e-commerce. What impact will the emergence of the new regulations have on this market? Let's take a look.

Live streaming e-commerce for alcohol and beverages has ushered in two major new regulations.

Starting from July 11, Douyin e-commerce alcohol products will no longer support the "0 yuan entry" trial operation. The categories mentioned in the new regulations cover almost all types of alcoholic beverages, including white wine, fruit wine, liqueur, pre-mixed cocktails, traditional yellow wine, rice wine, beer, wine, vodka, brandy, whiskey, gin, rum, liqueur, tequila, plum wine, sake/shochu, etc.

It is understood that "0 yuan entry" means that some qualified new merchants are allowed to enter the platform without paying a deposit for limited trial operation, and then gradually recharge the deposit to the platform standard through payment. This regulation was implemented in February 2023. Douyin has added new categories that support 0 yuan entry many times, and now almost covers most categories.

Coincidentally, Taobao officially implemented new regulations on July 15, increasing the penalties for illegal operations of alcohol merchants. In serious cases (multiple violations of a single product or multiple products), a penalty of 10,000 yuan will be paid each time.

High commissions and high demand have made wine live streaming a lucrative track. In recent years, we have seen many cases of wine live streaming going viral: Shanghai Entertainment Box Company launched the "old gun group" including Pan Changjiang and Zhang Chenguang; Make Friends Company and Oriental Selection set up wine vertical live streaming rooms; e-commerce platform Jiuxian.com launched @拉飞哥 and @酒妹妹, and the leading MCN agency Yaowang Network launched @李宣卓...

Now, after several years of rapid development, the live streaming of alcoholic beverages has finally reached the moment of great survival.

1. Who has seized the wave of wine live streaming?

Since live streaming e-commerce entered its rapid development mode in 2020, the wine and beverage track has been favored by NCN agencies and platforms, and many top anchors have emerged.

In the early stages of live e-commerce development, the popularity of live broadcasts was greatly affected by the popularity of the live broadcasts. Celebrities such as Pan Changjiang brought their own traffic and were much more successful in bringing goods than ordinary anchors. For example, @李国庆 has the dual identities of an entrepreneur and a middle-aged man, which is relatively consistent with the target audience of liquor. After understanding the rules, he quickly became the top anchor on Douyin and gradually expanded the scope of products to become an anchor of all categories. Third-party data shows that 80% of @李国庆's Douyin account fans are male, and users aged 31-40 account for more than 40%. (Click here to read: 20 million in sales in one month, can Li Guoqing become the second Luo Yonghao?)

Image source: TikTok

As Yang Ge, founding partner of Star Capital, judged, in 2020, traffic platforms in the live streaming field were all engaged in the deification movement of top anchors, but in 2021 they began to differentiate and cooperate with different vertical industries.

Kass observed that in recent years, various e-commerce platforms have continued to increase their resources in the wine category to leverage performance growth. Vertical experts have emerged, and professional ability has replaced the star halo as a weapon to attract fans . Thanks to their work experience and professional background, they have a more solid vertical field knowledge reserve than comprehensive anchors, so they can obtain longer-term support from consumers and brands.

On Kuaishou, @李宣卓 has been deeply involved in the wine and beverage industry for many years and has accumulated a lot of professional knowledge. He knows how to taste wine and is good at expressing himself. He has not only gained a lot of fans, but also accumulated a group of loyal consumers. During the 618 period in 2021, he achieved a record of a live broadcast GMV of over 60 million, of which the GMV of wine and beverage products accounted for more than 93%, with Wuliangye, Moutai and Diaoyutai being the three brands that contributed the most.

Image source: Kuaishou

Taotian, which started out as a shelf e-commerce company, has continuously introduced mature anchors from Douyin and Kuaishou (such as: Li Xuanzhuo, Li Guoqing, Lafei Ge, Jiuxianliang Ge, Jiumeimei, etc.) in the past two years, and successfully created a group of new benchmarks.

After a single platform matures, the top anchors will often copy their successful experience to more platforms, thereby obtaining traffic support from multiple platforms and maximizing their influence. Therefore, in 2022, Li Xuanzhuo entered Taobao and opened a live broadcast room @阿卓酒, starting dual-platform operations. In June 2023, Taobao also placed the only live broadcast opportunity of Messi's China tour in Li Xuanzhuo's live broadcast room, earning him all the attention.

On the first day of Tmall’s 618 sales this year, nearly 30 wine live broadcast rooms were launched at the same time, and the GMV of wine live broadcasts increased by more than 1,300% year-on-year. The live broadcast rooms of the three anchors @酒妹妹, @酒仙亮哥, and @魏俊杰 achieved sales of over 100 million.

Among them, @酒妹妹 is a practitioner with many years of e-commerce experience. She was previously a contracted anchor of Xinxuan, a leading agency of Kuaishou. She terminated the contract in 2022 and joined Taobao Live in September 2023. She insists on high-frequency live broadcast, with an average live broadcast time of more than 4 hours.

With a deep understanding of the wine industry and accurate product selection capabilities, the Jiumei team will match her with high-quality goods that best match her personality. Of course, the platform's support is also indispensable. During this year's Tmall 618 promotion, she was on the air for 43 minutes and the GMV exceeded 100 million yuan. Among them, the actual payment price of a double bottle of 53-degree Feitian Moutai 500ml was 4,802 yuan, and a single bottle was only 2,401 yuan. In comparison, the terminal retail price of scattered bottles on the market is about 3,000 yuan or more, and the online channel is about 2,700 yuan. Only a sufficiently attractive low price can make the product sold out in less than a minute after it is put on the shelf.

Image source: Taobao

On Douyin, the wine and beverage track is also constantly attracting new entrants, from the early @拉飞哥, @李国庆 to the current @疯狂小杨哥, @王小川, @郑云, there is always no shortage of new dark horses.

Kass observed that Douyin’s top wine live streaming rooms have three commonalities:

1. Similar to the trend of the entire live streaming e-commerce industry, male anchors are more popular in the wine and beverage market, especially middle-aged men who are more likely to rank among the top.

Without considering store accounts, the live broadcast rooms of "Douyin June Wine/Beverage Track GMV TOP10" are mostly centered on male anchors. For example, @王小川 ranked first, with an estimated GMV of over 100 million yuan; @郑云 ranked second, with an estimated GMV of 75 million to 100 million yuan; @嘴哥 ranked third, he is an expert under Three Sheep, with an estimated GMV of 50 million to 75 million yuan; @拉飞哥, @与辉同行, and @疯狂小杨哥 are closely behind, with estimated GMVs of 25 million to 50 million.

@与辉同行 live broadcast room mainly sells non-alcoholic soft drinks, which are not within the scope of this article. If we only look at the liquor category, the anchors with the strongest sales in June are: @王小川, @郑云, @嘴哥, @拉飞哥 and @疯狂小杨哥. Judging from the portrait of the audience in the live broadcast room, more than 80% are male, and users aged 31-40 account for the highest proportion, more than 40%.

Image source: TikTok

2. The top live broadcast rooms are all blessed with personalities, and they pay more attention to building personalities, improving content creation, and increasing the ability to carry traffic.

For example, @王小川 is a vertical category expert who started out as a wine taster and has accumulated 8.877 million followers. His homepage profile specifically emphasizes his professionalism and love for his fans , saying, "The team has more than 20 professional wine tasters with certificates, who are dedicated to selecting the most cost-effective wines at different price points for you."

From the perspective of traffic structure, among the top 5 liquor anchors in Douyin’s GMV in June, the recommended feed flow (natural flow) in the live broadcast room accounts for more than 50%, for example, @嘴哥’s recommended flow accounts for 72.6%, and @郑云’s recommended flow accounts for 68.9%. The former is a fitness blogger who is good at shooting funny jokes and life challenge videos, while the latter continues to create short videos with realistic plots (for example: the hardships of middle-aged entrepreneurship, loan collection after buying an unfinished building, and the landlord “drawing a lantern to determine the damage” after moving out, etc.). They have all created their own characteristics and topics beyond liquor through content, and accumulated strong fan stickiness.

The common feature of wine and beverage consumers is that they have a high repurchase rate. They will repeatedly hang out in the live broadcast room of a host, and because they trust the host, they will repeatedly buy the products recommended by the host, and transition from low-order-customer users to high-order-customer users. This is also the underlying support for the top anchors to stay at the forefront.

Paying for the product is a low-level trust, while paying for the person is a high-level trust. Kass recommends that wine anchors who have not yet made efforts in this area should focus on content creation and solidifying their personal image in order to gain longer-term IP competitiveness.

3. Traffic and goods determine the success or failure of a wine live broadcast. Today's wine live broadcasts compete on the depth of the supply chain and refined operational capabilities. The more top-notch live broadcast rooms are, the higher the proportion of "ordinary goods" sold, but the goods that contribute the highest GMV are not necessarily ordinary goods.

Take @王小川's live broadcast room as an example. Among the products sold in June this year, the best-selling one was a combination pack of 24 cans of Hongwusu beer + 12 cans of Loulan Secret Brewing, with an actual price of 127.8 yuan and sales of 10,000 to 25,000 units. The single product that contributed the highest GMV was the evergreen in the wine industry - Moutai 53-degree Feitian, with an estimated GMV of 7.5 million to 10 million.

Under the underlying logic of Douyin's e-commerce track, the core assessment indicator of Douyin's e-commerce for the live broadcast room is GPM (gross merchandise volume per thousand views), and the level of GPM is determined by the "unit price" and "conversion rate" of the product.

Compared with "high-end goods" that are scarce or even unique and have higher prices, "ordinary goods" that emphasize cost-effectiveness will have a higher conversion rate in the live broadcast room, richer inventory, and most of them are potential explosive products that the general public can afford. Therefore, it is easier to drive a leap in GPM. The leap in GPM will drive an increase in traffic, and the increase in traffic will in turn promote an increase in sales. It will also create a funnel effect and accumulate a target population with high paying ability for the live broadcast room.

2. Platforms crack down on "fake alcohol", and alcohol live streaming enters a cooling-off period

Judging from the data, wine live streaming is still hot. The "2023 New Consumption Potential White Paper" released by Magic Mirror Insight shows that the online wine market will exceed 120 billion yuan in 2023, and the annual GMV will increase by more than 50% year-on-year. Among them, Taobao platform has the highest increase, reaching 147.9%; JD platform has the largest sales volume, reaching 34.08 billion yuan.

However, as the entire live streaming e-commerce industry matures, the wine live streaming track has long passed its booming era and entered a cooling-off period.

Ping An Securities' research report pointed out that while online channels are driving sales, excessively low subsidized transaction prices are also impacting the original price system, and the problem of a high rate of counterfeit goods online also exists.

For example, in June this year, the top anchor Xiao Yangge was caught in the suspicion that the Moutai sold in the live broadcast room was fake. A consumer reported that he bought 24 bottles of Moutai in 2023 on the recommendation of Xiao Yangge, and sent the wine to a third-party appraisal agency in batches. The results showed that 14 bottles had problems, 13 of which had signs of "head plucking". He embarked on a long road of rights protection. In the process of defending his rights, the Douyin store "Jiu Daojia Liquor Store" that Sanzhiyang had previously cooperated with was closed. (Head-pulled wine, that is, the outer packaging and anti-counterfeiting labels are consistent with the real Moutai, but the "head cover" at the bottle mouth was detected to have signs of having been plucking)

After the relevant video sparked heated discussions, Xiao Yangge responded, "We will resolutely defend our rights to the end against those who maliciously defame us." "We have arrested several people who sold Moutai and hired professionals to remove the bottle caps, fill the bottle with fake products, and then ask us to return the products." However, the relevant litigation procedures are still ongoing and the problem has not been completely resolved.

It is worth noting that regulatory authorities continue to introduce and improve regulations to correct business behavior and promote good and eliminate bad practices.

On March 15, the State Council issued the "Regulations on the Implementation of the Consumer Protection Law of the People's Republic of China", which put forward a number of requirements for live e-commerce practitioners and platforms, such as information disclosure obligations, consumer dispute resolution mechanisms, advertising law obligations, and prohibition of false propaganda.

Major live streaming e-commerce platforms are also updating their management rules to respond to regulatory trends.

In the past six months, Douyin e-commerce has added a number of operating systems to regulate merchant behavior, especially for the wine and beverage sector, and has established higher thresholds and access mechanisms.

In February, Douyin e-commerce revised and implemented the "Liquor Industry Management Regulations", which showed that individual businesses and individual stores in the liquor industry were not allowed to enter Douyin. In addition, for 15 well-known brands of liquor such as Moutai, Wuliangye, Yanghe, Jiannanchun, and Luzhou Laojiao, Douyin also requires franchise stores, specialty stores, flagship stores, and official flagship stores to provide a first-level authorization sourced from "trademark owners and subsidiaries recognized by the rights holders."

In mid-April, Douyin e-commerce implemented 15 strict new rules, focusing on regulating excessive publicity, false efficacy and other issues. In addition, the "health score" system was officially implemented, and content anchors were "employed with points" and punished for violations. At the same time, for violations of regulations, such as spreading illegal content and suspected illegal transactions, the platform will strictly deal with certified accounts, including indefinite bans on accounts and cancellation of certification qualifications.

At the end of April, Douyin not only raised the deposit for liquor merchants from 20,000 to 150,000, but also raised the level requirement for liquor influencers to L3. In comparison, the deposit for liquor is one of the categories with the highest standards. This shows that Douyin maintains a relatively cautious attitude towards liquor sales and has set certain thresholds.

Taobao has also increased penalties for illegal operations by alcohol merchants.

In July, Taobao issued a public notice on the changes to the "Taobao.com Wine Industry Management Regulations". Taobao's adjustments to the wine industry management are mainly in two aspects: First, if there are problems with the domestic liquor category when it is released, in addition to deducting points, additional liquidated damages will be deducted depending on the severity of the situation. In serious cases, a liquidated damages of 1,000 yuan will be paid.

Second, for merchants selling counterfeit goods, in addition to deducting points, additional measures such as increasing the deposit amount, deducting liquidated damages, controlling Alipay accounts, and supervising stores will be taken depending on the severity of the circumstances. That is, for general circumstances (a single violation of a single product), a liquidated damages of 2,000 yuan will be required each time; for serious circumstances (multiple violations of a single product or violations of multiple products), a liquidated damages of 10,000 yuan will be required each time.

The introduction and implementation of various formal rules are conducive to protecting the rights and interests of consumers and enhancing everyone's purchasing enthusiasm. At the same time, it has also purified the wine live broadcast ecosystem to a certain extent and curbed the situation of "bad money driving out good money".

One visible trend is that the life cycle of wine anchors has been significantly extended compared to the early days. For leading merchants, only by grasping the two key points of supply chain and word of mouth can they stand firmly at the forefront.

Author: Bi Shisan

Source: Kas Data (ID: 736105)