Xiaohongshu is focusing on store live streaming. Who is getting the benefits?

This article will explore in depth the charm of Xiaohongshu’s store broadcast model, why merchants choose to carry out store broadcast business on this platform, and reveal the business logic and trends behind it.

Wu Junjun probably didn't expect that her false eyelash shop, which had just exceeded 150,000 fans, would have sales of over one million on Xiaohongshu every month.

In September 2023, Wu Junjun, the brand manager of "Nye White", published the first note about new glue-free eyelashes on Xiaohongshu. This note had only 4 comments and 28 likes. In less than a year, the highest sales volume of a single product in the Xiaohongshu store has exceeded 40,000.

When "Nye White" was founded, it only had 3 products. In November last year, it began to broadcast its store live on Xiaohongshu, which allowed them to quickly accumulate 150,000 fans. Sales also increased accordingly, making it a vertical brand that seized the opportunity.

"When we do store broadcasts, we can hear the user's original voice for the first time, which can drive us to make better products," said Wu Junjun. Now, the products in the store have been updated from the original 3 to 7.

This is a cross-section of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce merchants. In the first half of 2023, Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui's live streaming sales went viral. After Xiaohongshu held the Link e-commerce partner week, Tech Planet observed that a large number of merchants entered Xiaohongshu. In addition to cooperating with Xiaohongshu buyers, opening store broadcasts has become the key to the operation of these merchants.

On the first day of 618 this year, according to official data, the GMV of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce store live broadcast was 4.2 times that of the same period last year. Store live broadcast is becoming a direction in which the platform is investing heavily.

1. People who receive dividends

Jiang Xin, a veteran e-commerce entrepreneur, is the agent of many domestic and foreign shoe and clothing brands. In June last year, Jiang Xin started to open a brand account on Xiaohongshu. At the beginning of this year, he established a Xiaohongshu-related team in the form of a company and decided to delve deeper into Xiaohongshu.

Jiang Xin told Tech Planet that the reason he noticed Xiaohongshu's e-commerce was simple: "The quality of users on Xiaohongshu is quite high."

When I entered Xiaohongshu, Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui were both popular. The emergence of two phenomenal cases brought positive feedback to Xiaohongshu, not only a breakthrough in sales figures, but also a change in the attitude of merchants and brands towards Xiaohongshu.

Meng Qi, founder of the ceramic tea set brand "Zhuo Shou Su Xin", told Tech Planet that because live streaming has already been deployed on platforms such as Douyin and Video Account, Meng Qi did not intend to live stream when she first operated the Xiaohongshu account, but only to create content.

But after seeing Dong Jie's live broadcast, Meng Qi realized that Xiaohongshu live broadcast was valuable.

The emergence of top buyers made Jiang Xin and Meng Qi realize that Xiaohongshu is not only a platform for seeding products, but also an efficient conversion channel. They also became the ones who benefited from Xiaohongshu's e-commerce bonus and store broadcast bonus.

Over the past year or so, more and more merchants and brands have flocked to Xiaohongshu. Many merchants and service providers told Tech Planet that merchants in all categories have grown rapidly.

Official data shows that the number of merchants broadcasting on Xiaohongshu's e-commerce platform in April 2024 increased fivefold year-on-year compared to April last year.

Jiang Xin revealed to Tech Planet that the monthly sales of a single store under the company can exceed 500,000. He admitted that the data may not be comparable to other platforms, but the input-output ratio exceeded his expectations.

Meng Qi also revealed that half a month after the broadcast started, the first time she tried to do a small store live broadcast, the transaction volume exceeded 100,000. This result exceeded everyone's imagination.

2. Why do merchants do store broadcasts?

In the e-commerce industry, store live streaming is nothing new.

As early as 2021, brands on platforms such as Taobao, Douyin, and Kuaishou began to try the store broadcast format. According to the Crawley report, in 2022, the average duration of merchants' self-broadcasting on Douyin and Kuaishou platforms was higher than that of Dabo, at 7.19 hours and 9.18 hours respectively.

However, the early store broadcasts were more like live broadcasts of store customer service. It was not until 2023 that the value of store broadcasts became apparent. According to data released by Taobao on Double 11 last year, among the 58 live broadcast rooms with a turnover of over 100 million, brand store broadcasts accounted for more than 60%. 2023 is also known as the first year of the store broadcast explosion. This year's 618, store broadcasts still played an important role.

In the past, brand merchants often regarded store live broadcast rooms as a marketing tool for their stores, mostly to take over some of the traffic from Dabo. But in the past two years, the attitude of brands themselves towards store live broadcasts has changed. For them, store live broadcasts are one of their business positions.

This change in concept means that store live streaming is no longer just about chasing sales, but a "long-term operation" that takes both sales and brand into consideration.

Xiaohongshu is a new player in the store broadcasting market, and it has not been long since it started to develop store broadcasting. What attracts merchants to do store broadcasting on Xiaohongshu is not the form of live broadcasting, but the value of the Xiaohongshu platform itself.

In Jiang Xin's opinion, Xiaohongshu e-commerce is one of the few platforms that still has natural traffic. Jiang Xin does not have a large number of cooperative buyers during the operation. Most of the sales come from store broadcasts, and some come from note links. Jiang Xin obtained traffic in the early stage through content.

However, if you can find your own customer base, you may get results on Xiaohongshu. For merchants, Xiaohongshu has a low threshold for trial and error. When many merchants set up Xiaohongshu teams, they did not recruit new people at the beginning, but let the operation staff take on the role. Today, when traffic costs are getting more and more expensive, no one will give up any opportunity to make money.

A merchant in the food industry told Tech Planet that they did not need to invest in traffic on Xiaohongshu. Before the live broadcast, they would publish more than a dozen preheating notes, relying purely on the notes to warm up and attract natural traffic and old customers who had accumulated seeding content. Their first live broadcast on Xiaohongshu sold hundreds of thousands of yuan, and the sales performance was similar to other platforms, but the cost was lower.

What surprised Jiang Xin was that on other platforms, short video links and live streaming with goods are two independent tracks. On Xiaohongshu, pictures, texts and short video content can add to the live streaming traffic, and the content has extremely strong long-tail value. As long as the content can meet user needs, it can continue to generate traffic.

Unlike other platforms, Xiaohongshu’s live broadcast is not only a conversion channel but also a content product for merchants. Store live broadcast is not only about selling goods, but also a part of building brand awareness and attracting accurate users.

Mengqi spent a long time selecting anchors, and also changed her live broadcast equipment from mobile phones to cameras. Although the live broadcast time is not long, she must make the live broadcast room aesthetically pleasing and professional, "This is a window for direct communication with users."

3. Buyers and store broadcasts

Over the past year or so, Xiaohongshu, which has declared that “the buyer era has arrived”, has made buyer live streaming a feature of its e-commerce business.

A group of native buyers with GMV of over 10 million have appeared on Xiaohongshu, and some buyers who have transformed from ordinary people have also appeared frequently: "Pineapple Blowing Iron", who has only 100,000 fans, has a monthly sales of over 500,000 GMV on Xiaohongshu, and "Xiao Xiao", who has less than 100,000 fans, has a monthly sales of over one million by doing food live broadcasts.

During this year’s 618, Xiaohongshu’s store live broadcasts and buyer live broadcasts also performed outstandingly, and the faces on the buyer live broadcast schedule were obviously more diverse.

Many merchants admitted that before, even if Xiaohongshu had a store, users were still used to placing orders on shelf e-commerce. The continuous emergence of buyers has given users a consumer mentality.

Xiaohongshu, which has been making frequent efforts in store live broadcast, also launched a large number of buyer incentive policies during the 618 shopping festival this year. Because a healthy and benign live broadcast ecosystem must have the coexistence of live broadcast by experts and store live broadcast. This is the case for Taobao, Douyin, Kuaishou and other platforms.

Buyers are the characteristic of Xiaohongshu e-commerce, but Xiaohongshu also needs store broadcasts. After the buyer live broadcasts have established the user mind, it is time for Xiaohongshu to focus on store broadcasts.

According to media reports, at the beginning of this year, Xiaohongshu e-commerce organized a round of store broadcast research to understand the problems encountered by merchants 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.

The development of store broadcasting is actually a sign that Xiaohongshu's e-commerce is moving to the next stage.

Merchants are willing to do store broadcasts on the platform, which means that they regard the platform as a long-term operation platform and plan for long-term layout, not for the purpose of obtaining short-term traffic from buyers' live broadcasts. Store broadcasts can increase the stability of merchants' operations and attract more merchants to settle in, enriching the supply of goods in the entire e-commerce.

Store broadcasting may not bring new concepts, but it can indeed make Xiaohongshu's e-commerce more solid.

However, Xiaohongshu still has a lot of work to do.

(Note: Jiang Xin is a pseudonym in this article.)

Author: Xi Rui

WeChat public account: Tech Planet