In the second half of the super anchors’ career, they all bet on their own brands

The enthusiasm of the super-head anchors to create their own brands is high, and their own products are selling well. Super-head anchors have natural advantages, such as traffic, data, and sales. However, branding is a long-term thing, and whether it can really become an influential brand still requires continued efforts. Recommended to Internet friends to read.

Li Jiaqi has finally started to build a brand.

On June 15, the Meiwan Youxuan Tmall flagship store was officially launched. That night, a number of products with the "Mei ONE Youxuan" logo, such as laundry beads and latex mats, were launched in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room. Mei ONE Youxuan adopted a co-branding method with the factory, and each product was marked with words such as "Mei ONE Youxuan × Xiaochao", "Mei ONE Youxuan × Para", and "Mei ONE Youxuan × Fenmo".

Li Jiaqi introduced in the live broadcast: "China now has a very strong supply chain capability. We hope to bring all these high-quality products hidden behind to the Meiwanxuan Tmall flagship store and bring them to everyone."

As early as 2018, Li Jiaqi registered his own brand trademark "2+7". Li Jiaqi himself also expressed his hope to create his own brand and become the Estee Lauder of China. Now, Li Jiaqi and Meiwan have finally taken the first step in operating their own brands.

Meiwan once revealed to the media that MeiONE Optimization is Meiwan's application of its years of practical experience to the product creation process, to match better production capacity and merchants, and to deeply participate in the supply chain cooperation. "Meiwan Optimization's products are currently mainly in the lifestyle category, and future category expansion is still in the planning stage."

1. A frequent visitor to the sales list, self-operated brands have become the standard for super-head

Li Jiaqi is not the first super-head anchor to launch his own brand. In the past few years, several super-head anchors/live broadcast rooms (hereinafter referred to as "super-head") including Simba, Make Friends, Oriental Selection, and Crazy Xiao Yangge have successively launched their own brands.

Simba was the first to start the layout. As early as 2017, Simba began to layout his own brand, and promoted the sanitary napkin brand Cotton Code in the live broadcast room in 2018. After 6 years on the market, the total sales of Cotton Code have reached 3 billion yuan.

Last year, Simba personally led the team to launch the food brand Jianfeng Shike, and achieved a GMV of 113 million yuan and 975,000 orders in the first live broadcast.

It is reported that Xinxuan, led by Simba, has launched dozens of self-operated brands, covering multiple categories such as personal care and beauty, daily necessities, clothing, shoes and bags, home appliances, mother and baby, and fresh food. Among them, nearly 20 brands have sales of over 100 million yuan.

In addition to selling products in the live broadcast room, Simba's own brand has also begun to develop offline channels. A relevant person in charge of Xinxuan revealed that in the future, Cotton Code plans to be launched in chain convenience stores and large supermarkets, and Jianfeng Foodie may open offline stores this year.

Following closely behind is Wei Ya. In 2021, Wei Ya's MCN agency Qianxun and celebrity Nicholas Tse jointly established the food brand Fengweipai. At first, Fengweipai mainly sold in the live broadcast room. After several years of development, Fengweipai has not only deployed mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Douyin, Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, but also entered offline channels such as Hema Fresh and RT-Mart, covering 160 cities across the country and more than 15,000 stores.

According to data from Euromonitor International's research, based on the retail sales of juicy grilled sausages in retail channels in 2022 and 2023, Fengweipai's juicy grilled sausages ranked first in the country for two consecutive years.

At present, Fengweipai is gradually building a three-dimensional sales channel, and plans to try sales in overseas regions and channels in the future.

Also in 2021, Jiaogepengyou launched the footwear and clothing brand Reloading, which mainly produces and sells more cost-effective footwear and clothing products through classic designs with expired appearance patents and OEM factories of the same styles as big brands. In 20222, Reloading's annual cumulative GMV reached 200 million yuan.

It is understood that Jiaogepengyou uses a horse racing mechanism to deploy its own brands, first letting more than a dozen brands try together, and then leaving the ones with better performance. In addition to Reloading, Jiaogepengyou's own brands also include home furnishing brand What Horse and accessories brand Joshua Tree.

In addition to conventional consumer brands, in December last year, Jiaogepengyou also launched a new live broadcast brand, Factory Open Sales. The business model of Factory Open Sales is similar to Taobao's Tao Factory, which directly cooperates with factories to sell industrial products through live broadcasts.

At present, Jiaogepengyou has set up at least 9 live broadcast rooms for factories to sell on Douyin, covering multiple categories such as food, tea, home furnishings, and plus-size women's clothing.

In 2022, Oriental Selection and Crazy Little Yangge rose one after another and began to deploy their own brands.

From the very beginning, Oriental Selection determined the strategy of operating its own brand, building its own supply chain, and focusing on agricultural products.

Oriental Selection is also the most obvious leader of the self-operated label. In 2022, when it became popular, the sales revenue of Oriental Selection's self-operated products accounted for about 15%. Now, the GMV of some of Oriental Selection's popular self-operated products in the Oriental Selection App has accounted for more than 40% of the GMV of the entire network.

According to the latest data released by Oriental Selection, the GMV of Oriental Selection's self-owned products exceeded 3.6 billion yuan from December 2023 to May 2024. As of now, the total number of Oriental Selection's self-owned products exceeds 400, of which more than 100 products rank in the top three of Douyin's product rankings. At present, Oriental Selection's self-owned products have accumulated sales of more than 100 million orders on Douyin.

The latest financial report released by Oriental Selection shows that self-operated products have been promoted to one of the three major strategies of Oriental Selection.

Crazy Xiao Yangge began to accelerate the layout of his own brand in 2023.

In January 2023, Yang's Choice officially went online and launched a number of popular products such as garbage bags and toast bread. As of now, the cumulative sales of Yang's Choice Douyin flagship store have reached 31.97 million, of which a garbage bag priced at 9.9 yuan has sold 14.76 million orders.

Since May 2023, the skincare brand Jiao Run Quan, which is closely related to Crazy Xiao Yang Ge, has begun to explode on Douyin, and has been in the top five of Douyin's beauty monthly list for four consecutive months from July to October of the same year. The official account "Jiao Run Quan Investment Department" revealed that Jiao Run Quan's monthly sales flow currently reaches 200-300 million yuan, and a total of 30 million orders have been sold across the entire network in 2023.

Tianyancha data shows that the trademark of Jiaorunquan belongs to Hefei Hongwen Biological Co., Ltd., and Three Sheep’s partner Lu Wenqing and CEO Du Gang were both its direct beneficiaries.

With the support of Crazy Xiao Yang Ge, Xiao Yang Zhenxuan and Jiao Run Quan not only frequently appeared in the live broadcast rooms of Crazy Xiao Yang Ge and his apprentices "Zui Ge" and "Qi Lao Ban", but also received systematic traffic support from the Three Sheep.

In November 2023, Crazy Xiao Yangge spent over 30 million yuan to launch a star-studded concert. This concert, titled Xiao Yang Zhenxuan, not only had a cumulative live broadcast of over 65.72 million views, but also increased the number of fans on Xiao Yang Zhenxuan's official Douyin account by over 4.05 million in one day.

With the help of the Three Sheep Slice Team, the sales data of Jiaorunquan has also increased greatly. Using the self-developed App "Zhong Xiaoer" as a platform, Three Sheep has organized tens of thousands of editors to publish videos in real time to promote and sell related brands.

According to statistics from Xinbang's Douyin data tool XinDou, video sales accounted for 31.61% of Jiaorunquan's Douyin sales in the past 30 days.

2. Why are the super-heads interested in self-operated businesses?

Why are super-brands launching their own brands?

First of all, when it comes to branding, superheads have a natural advantage.

Superheads have traffic, which can ensure that the brand has a basic sales volume, so there is no need to worry about not being able to sell out; Superheads have data, which can tell which products are easier to sell, which categories are more profitable, and which supply chains have the best user feedback. The most authentic first-line consumer data allows superheads to save market research and trial and error, and directly find the brand track with the highest success rate.

The relevant person in charge of Qianxun told the editorial department of Xinbang that initially Qianxun mainly played the role of a channel, whose main task was to help users select good products. Later, it gradually began to transform into a bridge, helping brands open up the market and expand their influence. However, with the development of the business, when they were unable to help consumers find corresponding products, they began to have the idea of ​​​​creating their own brand.

The extremely developed OEM industry in China has also greatly lowered the threshold for brands. For example, a tea merchant in Anxi, the "Millennium Tea Town", once told the editorial department of Xinbang that if a host wants to create a tea brand, the local tea merchant can provide one-stop branding services, and the host only needs to be responsible for sales.

Many times, for a brand to become successful, it is a natural thing.

Secondly, compared with live streaming, branding is considered to be a more imaginative and vital thing.

Huang He, the founder of Jiaogepengyou, once told the editorial department of Xinbang that being a channel (anchor, MCN) is relatively stable, but the imagination is poor. It is not a business that becomes more valuable as it is done. Moreover, there is no threshold and it is very insecure. "There is only one thing that becomes more valuable as it is done, and that is brand."

Du Gang, CEO of Three Sheep, also mentioned in an interview with Jiupai Finance that live streaming cannot last for decades, but brands and products can last for a long time. "Although Xiao Yang is young, he will also worry about what to leave for his children when they grow up."

Compared with simply being a channel, the superheads are doing something more important. In 2022, Dongfang Zhenxuan built an independent app and later launched a membership mechanism. Currently, more than 90% of its self-operated new products will be launched on the Dongfang Zhenxuan App. In 2023, Dongfang Zhenxuan also spent 17.52 million yuan to expand its sausage factory in Jiaozuo, Henan.

Finally, as live streaming e-commerce entered the second half, the super leaders began to look for a second growth curve.

The relevant person in charge of Xinxuan mentioned that he hopes to explore more business growth for Xinxuan by laying out new consumer tracks. "Ximba hopes to prove himself in food, which is also something Xinxuan is willing to spend a lot of effort on."

In fact, there are many successful cases of self-operated brands in the Internet celebrity industry. Overseas, there is Jeffree Star, a brand created by YouTube beauty star J, and in China, there is Li Ziqi, a snail noodle brand with the same name founded by Li Ziqi.

From live streaming to branding, in the next few years, the super heads may start a new round of competition in this new track.

3. Traffic dependence and product failure, what is the difficulty in operating a private brand?

Although the super brands are enthusiastic about creating their own brands, they also encounter many problems.

According to a marketing return analysis conducted by consulting firm Kantar, only 30% of a company's sales come from its short-term traffic, and 70% of sales are contributed by its brand assets.

Real brands often have their own brand stories and product designs, and can penetrate multiple online and offline channels. But an objective fact is that most of the self-operated brands of superheads come from the traffic of superheads.

Some industry insiders believe that some of the self-operated brands of some super-heads are closer to OEM in nature, and are white-label products with labels produced based on the logic of hot products in live broadcast rooms. "This allows them to get profits from upstream in addition to commissions."

In addition to the single traffic channel, the brand is much more complex than live streaming and needs to solve a series of problems such as products, operations, and management, which has caused the super heads to fall into many pitfalls.

Last year, the suppliers of many products launched by Xiao Yang Zhenxuan, such as Shaqima, pickled cabbage rice noodles, and toast bread, were ordered by the Market Supervision Administration to make rectifications. Previously, professional counterfeiter Wang Hai's anti-counterfeiting of Oriental Zhenxuan's self-operated products has also been on the hot search of various platforms many times.

In order to make up for the shortcomings in brand experience, some super-headlines hope to develop their brands through investment and shareholding.

In recent years, Qianxun and its chairman Dong Haifeng have successively invested in two listed brand companies. In 2020, Dong Haifeng invested 150 million yuan in the electrical appliance brand Deerma, holding a 2.84% stake; in 2022, Qianxun subscribed 0.86% of the shares of the skin care brand Juzi Bio for 168 million yuan.

In August last year, Crazy Xiao Yangge reached a cooperation with an A-share listed company to set up a joint venture and jointly establish a new brand, tentatively named "Mengshiqing".

It is reported that in this type of cooperation, the production and operation of the brand are more the responsibility of the cooperating brand company, while Chaotou does what it is better at, such as live streaming and online marketing.

For Chaotou, compared with the ease of live streaming, branding is almost a new track, which requires completely different capabilities. If live streaming is the extreme of short-termism, then only long-termism can win the final victory for brands.

Now most of the superheads have a good starting point, but whether they can truly become influential brands still needs to continue to work hard.

Author: Yun Feiyang

Source: WeChat official account: "New Ranking (ID: newrankcn)"