With beauty product sales declining, is Bilibili a new oasis?

Nowadays, beauty sales are showing a downward trend. Since last year, some beauty brands have cooperated with UP hosts to sell goods through live broadcasts. So, in the context of a relatively sluggish industry, can Bilibili become a new blue ocean for beauty brands? This article discusses this issue. Let's take a look.

Top anchors are unable to bring in goods, the industry's overall growth is slowing down, and the cost of acquiring traffic is getting higher and higher. This year's 618 is not only under pressure for e-commerce platforms, but the beauty industry, which is strongly tied to e-commerce, is also in a dilemma of finding difficulty in finding incremental growth.

Under multiple pressures, brands are looking for new opportunities. Recently, many beauty and skincare brands such as Proya, Mao Geping, Oshiman, Caitang, Hansu, and Carslan have begun to test the waters of live streaming on Bilibili.

Although some beauty brands have started to cooperate with UP hosts to sell goods through live streaming since last year, the previous cooperation was mostly one-off and random, mainly for those brands that have been planting grass and accumulating water on Bilibili for a long time to conduct tentative recycling. But this year, with the active efforts of the platform, entering Bilibili's live streaming e-commerce has become a new focus for beauty brands.

In the context of a relatively sluggish industry, can Bilibili become a new blue ocean for beauty brands?

Spicy visited and learned that conversion, customer acquisition, traffic generation, etc., these clear growth points have become the core factors that attract brands to join the live streaming of goods on Bilibili. "Last year, we cooperated with a top 100 UP host to do mixed live streaming, and the revenue from a single live streaming was over one million, which was a very unexpected result," the person in charge of the live streaming business of a domestic foundation brand told us.

However, from a long-term strategic perspective, the issues that have long been questioned about Bilibili, such as immature user mentality, unclear conversion efficiency, and the inability to find matching UP hosts, also affect the investment decisions of brands. "Our core live broadcasts are still on Douyin and Tmall. Bilibili has no plans to go all in for the time being. We will wait and see," more than one brand said.

1. Opportunities and concerns coexist, and beauty brands are entering the B station live streaming market in large numbers

The lack of B station in the field of beauty live broadcast is the premise for many brands to enter the market. Although B station started the live broadcast e-commerce business on the eve of Double Eleven last year, it was mainly focused on categories such as home furnishings, clothing, and 3C digital products. The live broadcast of beauty verticals on B station started relatively late.

According to the data from Huoshaoyun (which only represents third-party data), the top five live streaming UP hosts under the label of "Beauty and Care" are @英鸟梨, @大物是也, @知名跨言人物BBBB大王, @峰哥亡命天涯, and @大达达布溜-.

Although @鳥牡梨 had the highest GMV in the past 180 days, totaling 140 million to 220 million (Huoshaoyun data (only represents third-party data)), @鳥牡梨's core GMV comes from clothing and accessories. Feigua data B station version shows that in the proportion of @鳥牡梨's product categories, beauty and skin care accounted for only 1.22%.

The total GMV of beauty and makeup expert @知名跨言人物BBBBBB大王 is 3.122 million to 4.683 million (in the past 180 days), which is far behind the GMV of other top UP hosts in other categories such as @鸟鸟梨 and @Mr迷登.

This blank space also provides brands with the possibility of growth. During the visit, Doujiao Spicy found that most beauty brands have tried live streaming with UP hosts and achieved "beyond expectations" conversion.

Of course, this conversion is mainly based on long-term grass-planting and water accumulation. "We have been doing grass-planting content on Bilibili before, so the conversion effect of live broadcast is not bad. In the future, we will give priority to promoting the influencers who have cooperated with grass-planting to do live broadcast conversion, so as to achieve a closed-loop harvest of grass-planting," a domestic skincare brand that successfully entered the top sales with a big single product told us. Including the makeup brand mentioned above, many brands that have achieved "beyond expectations" live broadcast conversion have had continuous grass-planting cooperation on Bilibili in the early stage.

According to the cases officially released by Bilibili, brands such as PROYA, Kiehl's, and HBN have all achieved low cost and high conversion on Bilibili, and the premise is that these brands have effectively promoted products on Bilibili. For example, before last year's Double 11, PROYA launched the topic "Guide to Recovering Losses for Workers", which attracted more than 5,000 tap water video submissions and more than 1,000 spontaneous pictures and texts. In the end, the store's GMV exceeded 100 million during the promotion. This shows that efficient promotion in advance will eventually be reflected in conversions including live broadcasts.

However , there are also brands that started live streaming without any accumulation of fans. The domestic general agent of an overseas perfume brand told us, "We didn't put it on Bilibili before, but a while ago a UP host took the initiative to find us and cooperated with us to promote the product. The sales volume was indeed beyond our expectations."

Although the brand did not actively promote the product, it was observed that many UP hosts in the vertical categories of perfume and fragrance have released evaluation videos of the perfume and have a certain user base. This also reflects the strong ability of UP hosts in the vertical categories of B Station to promote the product and the high efficiency from promoting the product to conversion.

Due to the uniqueness of its user profile, Bilibili has also become a channel for many brands to expand their customer base . Compared with other content/e-commerce platforms, Bilibili's users are younger, mainly from the Generation Z group. On June 26, Bilibili Chairman and CEO Chen Rui also mentioned in his keynote speech at the 15th anniversary celebration that nearly 70% of people born in the 1990s (including those born in the 2000s) are active on Bilibili.

For the purpose of conversion and customer acquisition, brands generally tend to promote their hot products on Bilibili live broadcasts, and new products are still mainly promoted. "Because the hot products have been educated in the market in the early stage, they can be directly converted, and the user base of Bilibili is different from other platforms, live broadcasts on Bilibili can also continue to attract customers for the single product," said another domestic skincare brand.

In addition, the high proportion of male users on Bilibili also gives men’s skincare brands an advantage. The person in charge of livestreaming investment promotion for a domestic brand that focuses on men’s skincare and sunscreen told us, “Our products are primarily targeted at men, and the results of seeding them on Bilibili were quite good before, so we will also promote them through livestreaming.”

In addition, some brands live broadcast on Bilibili, and one of their appeals is to attract traffic to the brand's Tmall and JD stores. Unlike other content platforms that build shelves and create a closed business loop, Bilibili is currently adopting a "big open loop" strategy to connect with other e-commerce platforms, which is a kind of e-commerce that can jump to other e-commerce platforms for transactions. At present, Bilibili has opened up open-loop cooperation with multiple e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Vipshop.

Therefore, not only various beauty brands, but also the beauty business lines of platforms such as JD Beauty and Tmall Global are planning to conduct live streaming and selling products on Bilibili.

In the communication with many brands, we can clearly feel the urgency of beauty brands for new channels and the conversion pressure behind them. However, when talking about whether they will increase investment and make long-term plans, many brands did not give a positive response. "Wait and see" is the current attitude of most brands.

On the one hand, the conversion efficiency of live streaming sales on Bilibili is still unclear. "The live streaming sales ecosystem of the beauty and cosmetics vertical on the platform is not yet mature, and there are not many successful cases to learn from," said a domestic brand focusing on essential oils, "so for now, we still prioritize grass-seeking videos + blue links."

On the other hand, the mentality of users of live streaming on Bilibili is also a concern for brands. We have been told by multiple brands that many users have not yet established the habit of watching live streaming and placing orders on Bilibili, and are worried about the effect of live streaming. This problem also exists in UP hosts. Under a strong trust relationship, fans often have a certain resistance to the commercialization of UP hosts.

After @宝剑嫂 started broadcasting last year, she attracted a lot of negative comments and even lost fans. The first broadcast of @宝剑嫂, whose GMV reached 28 million last year, did not continue broadcasting afterwards.

A business manager of one of the top 100 UP masters also told us, "I don't plan to do live streaming to sell goods at the moment, because I'm worried that it will affect the fans' perception and lead to fan loss, so I'm still focusing on seeding cooperation, and I'll see if there's a good opportunity later."

In addition, the inability to match the right vertical category UP host is also a problem encountered by some brands . It is found that many UP hosts that beauty brands have cooperated with are mainly concentrated on top UP hosts such as @Mr迷登, @鹰兀梨, @Coco敲敲_, and there are not many choices for the beauty vertical category.

Under the keyword "beauty and skin care" in Huoshaoyun data (which only represents third-party data), a total of 316 live streaming UP hosts were searched, of which only 168 UP hosts had valid sales data (sales greater than or equal to 1 yuan), and there were only 59 UP hosts with sales of more than 10,000 yuan. Moreover, many of them only have the "beauty and skin care" label and are not beauty vertical UP hosts.

Ultimately, these advantages and challenges reflect the compatibility between the platform attributes of Bilibili and live e-commerce and beauty verticals. For brands, if they want to truly carve out their own space on the new platform, they still need to combine the platform's unique content ecology and explore the underlying logic between content and conversion.

2. After home furnishings and apparel, will beauty be the next growth area for Bilibili’s e-commerce?

Although it has only been in the market for more than a year, Bilibili's live streaming e-commerce ecosystem has shown good development momentum.

Official data shows that during this year's 618 promotion (data period: May 15-June 18, 2024), Bilibili's GMV increased by 146% year-on-year , and the overall order volume increased by 154% year-on-year. During the promotion period, the number of advertisers on Bilibili was four times that of last year.

In terms of category growth, the industries with the fastest year-on-year growth in GMV during the 618 shopping festival this year were apparel and accessories, digital home appliances, and home furnishings . Among them, the GMV of apparel and accessories increased by 382% year-on-year, ranking first. This also reflects the rise and potential of female consumption on Bilibili, and to some extent breaks the outside world's doubts about the female consumption power of Bilibili.

From the perspective of live broadcast UP hosts, more and more mid-level UP hosts have started live broadcasting to sell goods. This year, the number of UP hosts participating in live broadcasting during 618 increased by 143% year-on-year. UP hosts such as @鞋Club, @房靓, and @美鹿莎 all started live broadcasting on Bilibili.

In addition to several top UP hosts, some mid-level UP hosts with strong sales capabilities have also emerged. For example, @Coco敲敲_, a fashion UP host with 500,000 fans, launched his first live broadcast this year on March 16. In the end, the live broadcast received more than 110,000 orders and the sales volume exceeded 17 million in a single broadcast.

In terms of average order value, the number of orders for consumer goods worth more than RMB 1,000 during this year's 618 promotion increased rapidly by 136% year-on-year. The purchasing power of young users of Bilibili can be seen not only in the order volume, but also through the product selection and price distribution of the top UP hosts.

For example, @鳥牡梨's selection of products mainly includes niche and designer brands with high average order value. According to user statistics, the average order value of @鳥牡梨's live broadcast ranges from 76 to 2,772 yuan. The Feigua data B station version shows that in the price range distribution of its products, products with an average order value of more than 1,000 yuan account for the second largest proportion.

Data source: Feigua Data B Station version

@Mr迷登, whose annual GMV exceeds 3 billion, focuses on the high-unit-price home furnishing sector, and the unit-price of products sold through live streaming is mainly above 1,000 yuan.

Data source: Feigua Data B Station version

The overall market is growing well, the potential of female consumption is gradually showing, and the consumption power of high customer spending has laid a favorable foundation for the long-term development of beauty brands on Bilibili. But how can brands build an efficient conversion path in this new world?

Summarizing successful cases, we found that there is also a certain methodology for live streaming sales on Bilibili.

Compared with price and broadcast frequency, live streaming of goods by UP hosts is more about product selection and evaluation . Because many UP hosts’ content is more functional than interesting, fans hope to receive professional analysis from UP hosts to help them make decisions and make rational purchases.

Therefore, many UP hosts usually analyze the advantages and disadvantages of products during live broadcasts, rather than just praising them. Previously, when @Mr迷登 was live streaming, he would analyze whether a certain function was useless from a professional perspective, or even directly say that a certain brand was a second-tier brand. In this model, although the frequency of UP hosts' live broadcasts is not high, the GMV is relatively considerable.

The refined operation of a live broadcast and the pre-production of promotions are also the characteristics that distinguish UP hosts from other platforms. This method not only allows fans to deeply participate in the product selection process and define the audience for the live broadcast in advance, but also allows UP hosts to maintain a stable content output.

Before the live broadcast, @鸟鹉梨 will first collect fans' opinions through daily outfit review videos, then contact the brands in a targeted manner and publish product matching videos in advance, as well as content such as "people of different body shapes wearing the same clothes"; @Coco敲敲_ will also publish multiple grass-planting videos before the live broadcast, and will conduct a 2-3 hour live broadcast warm-up the day before each live broadcast.

Not only do they operate around live streaming, but many UP hosts also tend to choose products that they have previously recommended during live streaming. For example, 70% of the products selected in @Coco敲敲_'s live streaming room come from products that have been recommended in previous videos or nominated by fans.

With evaluation-style live broadcasts and refined operations, live streaming sales at Bilibili can not only drive high-priced products, but also reduce the return rate . The return rate of @Coco敲敲_’s first two live broadcasts was 26%, which is lower than the average return rate of 60% for clothing live broadcasts.

Although the live streaming e-commerce of Bilibili has not yet supported the platform's revenue and is facing certain difficulties at this stage, Bilibili has also shown a live streaming quality that is different from other platforms based on its unique content ecology. Especially for beauty brands, the platform at the beginning is not only a clear incremental space, but also user attributes such as high spending power, high stickiness, and trust foundation, which also provide a new breakthrough for beauty brands to break through the live streaming e-commerce.