Xiaohongshu e-commerce promotes store broadcasting, merging buyer operations with merchant operations

This article introduces the relevant information about Xiaohongshu's establishment of an e-commerce operations department. It is recommended for those who are interested in Xiaohongshu's e-commerce to read and learn~

36Kr has exclusively learned that recently, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce buyer operation business has been merged with the merchant operation business to form the e-commerce operation department, which is a second-level e-commerce department. Previously, the buyer operation business and the merchant operation business were scattered in two independent departments.

The newly merged e-commerce operations department will unify the management of buyer operations and all merchant operations. It will be led by Gintoki and report to Xiaohongshu COO Conan.

The merger of Xiaohongshu's buyer operations and merchant operations is an important change since the establishment of the transaction department last year. The signal it sends is that after Xiaohongshu has established the mindset of live streaming with the help of buyers, it is gradually enriching the supply of store live streaming, forming a state of parallel development of buyer live streaming and store live streaming.

"Yintoki was previously the head of Xiaohongshu's live streaming business. His background can also better achieve the joint development of buyers and store broadcasts." The above person said.

According to people close to Xiaohongshu e-commerce, live streaming is the key investment direction of Xiaohongshu e-commerce this year. Buyer operations and merchant operations are integrated into one department to achieve the unity of "people" and "goods", which can also improve efficiency.

According to 36Kr, Xiaohongshu e-commerce achieved rapid growth in 2023, with transaction volume in many industries such as fashion trends increasing by 380% year-on-year, and home furnishings increasing by 300% year-on-year. Expanding from buyer live broadcasts to merchant store live broadcasts is the only way for Xiaohongshu e-commerce to establish a wider range of purchasing minds and expand the scale of transactions.

01 Buyers and store broadcasts develop in parallel

Last year, Xiaohongshu integrated its e-commerce business and live streaming business into a new first-level department, the Transaction Department, which is parallel to the Community Department and the Business Department. After the adjustment, live streaming has been placed in a more important position.

The subsequent actions of Xiaohongshu also confirmed this. In August 2023, Xiaohongshu proposed that "the buyer era has arrived". Today, the buyer model has become a feature of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce, and Xiaohongshu buyers such as Dong Jie, Yike KK, Short Head Flower, and Miss Wild Persimmon have entered the public eye.

As reflected in the data, the Xiaohongshu 618 opening battle report data released on May 20 showed that the GMV of store broadcasts on the first day of 618 increased by 4.2 times year-on-year, and the number of store broadcasts on the first day was 3.8 times that of the same period last year.

A merchant who participated in the 618 event on Xiaohongshu told 36Kr that he clearly felt that Xiaohongshu has increased its support for store broadcasts. But for merchants, the number of store broadcasts has increased, so the competition will be more intense. The above merchant said, "The commissions of some top anchors have doubled, but Xiaohongshu is still very cost-effective compared to the top live broadcast e-commerce platforms."

In order to better support store broadcast merchants, Xiaohongshu e-commerce organized a round of store broadcast research at the beginning of this year to understand the problems merchants encountered when doing store broadcast on Xiaohongshu. After that, Xiaohongshu launched a set of store broadcast practical methods, and improved the product chain based on the difficulties of merchants in obtaining traffic and conversion skills.

A person who participated in the survey revealed that merchants would mention Xiaohongshu's low return rate, high repurchase rate, strong interactivity and other characteristics. "The merchant's live broadcast room should not be a single store, but should patiently explain, provide good service, interact with users and provide a rich variety of goods, so that users can feel like they are shopping in offline stores when watching the store broadcast."

Over the past year, e-commerce merchants in the competitive red ocean have been rapidly pouring into Xiaohongshu. 36Kr learned that in Xiaohongshu's two important industries, fashion trends and home furnishings, the number of new merchants entering in 2023 increased by more than 6 times and 4 times year-on-year respectively.

02 “Old players” and “new catfish” in the e-commerce industry

In the early days of live streaming e-commerce, brand merchants could quickly gain popularity through live streaming by buyers (experts, anchors). However, with the development of the platform and the growth of brands, the certainty and sustainable operation of merchants became more critical issues. Store live streaming is a means to retain users and achieve stable operations.

A merchant told 36Kr, "It is inevitable for brands to attach importance to store live broadcasts. Having their own channels can better express brand concepts." More importantly, if store live broadcasts are well operated, they can create new growth outside of the buyer's live broadcast room and save traffic costs.

The introduction of store live streaming indicates that Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce business has entered a new stage.

2024 marks the eleventh anniversary of Xiaohongshu’s establishment and the tenth year of its exploration of e-commerce. E-commerce and community are like two ends of a scale, and it has been a difficult problem for countless content communities in the past. From the earliest cross-border e-commerce “welfare club” to Dong Jie’s live broadcast, Xiaohongshu has finally found a new direction for e-commerce.

36Kr once learned that when Dong Jie started to attract investment for her first live broadcast in February last year, brands were not sure how much the Xiaohongshu e-commerce live broadcast room could sell. But when the report of Dong Jie's second live broadcast GMV exceeded 30 million, the result exceeded Xiaohongshu's internal expectations, and brands also regretted not getting in early.

After Dong Jie, more and more buyers emerged, and the performance of buyers' live broadcast rooms also rose steadily. A person close to Xiaohongshu told 36Kr that a buyer with 35,000 fans can even leverage a monthly GMV of 3 million.

In the stock stage of e-commerce, there are not many companies that can still create incremental growth, and Xiaohongshu is one of them. Although content e-commerce, which Douyin, Taobao, and Video Account are all investing in, has passed the fastest growth period, it still has growth advantages compared with shelf e-commerce and the retail market.

According to Nielsen IQ monitoring data, the overall omni-channel sales of China's fast-moving consumer goods retail market in 2023 fell slightly by 0.04% year-on-year compared with 2022, but in online channels, the sales of content e-commerce increased by 55.9% year-on-year, while the sales of comprehensive e-commerce fell by 5.8%.