Taobao online celebrity stores "bet" on Xiaohongshu

Nowadays, Xiaohongshu e-commerce is rising, and behind it is the "bet" of Taobao stores. Let's take a look at whether Xiaohongshu can support the "ambition" of Taobao's online celebrity stores~

More and more Taobao clothing internet celebrity stores are starting to bet on Xiaohongshu.

When Xiaofeng noticed this, she was browsing the shopping list in the live broadcast room of the buyer on Xiaohongshu. A large number of products from Taobao online celebrity stores that she was familiar with appeared in the buyer's "little yellow cart", but what surprised her even more was the discounts given by many brands. The unit price was lower than that of their Taobao stores, and she didn't even have to make a large order or add a lot of coupons. When she clicked on the links, she found that a considerable number of them were from the brand flagship stores.

Taobao's popular online stores have been on Xiaohongshu for a long time. When Xiaohongshu was seen by the outside world as a "transit station for planting grass", a group of sharp merchants rushed to open accounts, using Xiaohongshu as another "new place" besides Taobao, and deploying fashion bloggers to drive traffic to their stores.

In August last year, Xiaohongshu blew the horn of "buyer e-commerce" and accelerated its embrace of commercialization. At the same time, more and more brands have appeared on the platform and tried to "turn marketing into sales" on Xiaohongshu, either by opening stores, cooperating with buyers to take over traffic, or building a matrix to conduct store self-broadcasting sales.

Can Xiaohongshu e-commerce, which has just entered its start-up stage, support the "ambitions" of Taobao's Internet celebrity stores in the future?

1. Taobao online celebrity stores, enter Xiaohongshu

The term "Internet celebrity" originated in the era of Weibo. At that time, Taobao's Internet celebrity stores were centered on Internet celebrity IPs, such as Zhang Dayi's "My Happy Wardrobe", Xue Li's "Mrs. Qian's Sydney Customization", and Zhao Daxi's "Daxi Homemade". The former two achieved daily revenues of over 100 million yuan during the Double 11 period in 2016. At present, the definition of "Internet celebrity store" is broader, and the maturity of content platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Bilibili has further promoted the rise of Internet celebrity stores.

As early as 2020, some Taobao clothing merchants regarded Xiaohongshu as a new product seeding position, and opened accounts here to communicate face-to-face with potential consumers. This type of merchants is firmly rooted in Taobao, and most of them find it difficult to run on platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou that focus on "volume", but Xiaohongshu has its advantages: Xiaohongshu bloggers have been connected with Taobao merchants for a long time, and the consumer groups between platforms have a high overlap rate. Before placing an order, planting grass and checking guides on Xiaohongshu has become a typical link for people to make shopping decisions.

Xiaohongshu's clothing track is rolling again and again. There is a large amount of content such as dressing, recommendation, shopping feedback and evaluation on the platform. It even "rolled" out a new type of fashion blogger, who randomly "flips" an Internet celebrity store every day and "cloud shopping" to review new products.

Little Red Book blogger @Chocolate Alice

In August last year, Xiaohongshu announced that it would embark on the journey of buyer e-commerce, and Taobao stores' "betting" on Xiaohongshu was also reflected in the cooperating buyers.

@符DANCY is a fashion blogger on Xiaohongshu with over 260,000 followers on the platform. She focuses on colorful and sweet girly style.

In the early days, she shared outfits on Xiaohongshu and organized product information in her video notes. After Xiaohongshu launched live e-commerce, @符DANCY also built her own live broadcast room and started frequent live broadcasts. Brands that often appear in her live broadcast room include Liangsanshi, Youer, Kouhai, Baimiao, etc., all of which are Taobao brands with considerable popularity on Xiaohongshu and active in bloggers' notes.

@符DANCYXiaohongshu account

The overall price of items that appear in the buyers' live broadcast room is relatively more favorable than that of Taobao. For example, an oil painting-style dress from the brand Liangsanshi is priced at 389 yuan in the live broadcast room, which is nearly 20 yuan cheaper than the same item on Taobao after adding various coupons and discounts.

It is not difficult to understand why brands and merchants are "betting" on Xiaohongshu: when the traffic of Taobao as a fixed position has become stable, brands need to reach more users and find new business, and Xiaohongshu happens to come up with the concept of "buyer e-commerce", so the two sides can be said to be heading in both directions.

In the past, the more popular marketing method for merchants on Xiaohongshu was to hire bloggers to promote products and cooperate with ordinary people to publish positive feedback notes to form word-of-mouth communication, as well as increase sales through note promotion and Taobao conversion.

However, after Xiaohongshu's e-commerce began to take shape and a clear ban was issued on directing traffic to off-site transactions, brands began to measure the value of this natural grass-planting platform. On the one hand, they managed fashion content and maintained fans on Xiaohongshu, and on the other hand, they opened official flagship stores, achieving a closed loop through picture and text planting, store broadcasts, and buyer live broadcasts.

For example, the women's clothing brand Liangsanshi has opened an official store on Xiaohongshu. When users purchase related items in the @符DANCY live broadcast room, the transaction link will jump directly to the official store. The brand also marked the link as buyer exclusive.

At the end of February this year, a popular note was born on Liangsanshi’s Xiaohongshu account, “When you went to work at a clothing company for the first time, you thought you were wearing something very special, but you didn’t expect…” Young ladies dressed in oil painting style appeared one after another, bringing 150,000 likes to this note.

Image source: @两三事Xiaohongshu homepage

The clothing brand Inman is a representative of Taobao's mature brands. In 2008, "Inman" was founded and became one of the first women's clothing brands to enter Taobao Mall. It won the women's clothing sales champion of Tmall Double 11 in 2013. Inman, which is positioned as a new retailer, has spread its brand voice in various online and offline channels. On Xiaohongshu, Inman has accumulated 120,000 fans through content seeding, influencers and live broadcasts. In September 2023, Inman held a fashion show called "2023 Xinjiang Cotton Field Show" in Xinjiang, and the Xiaohongshu live show ranked first in viewership that day.

On Xiaohongshu, INMAN also operates an account matrix, including INMAN, INMAN Outfits, INMAN Children's Wear and other accounts, with content notes targeting different groups of people. For example, INMAN will release new product previews, outfits, and promotional videos with brand concepts; INMAN Outfits will link to the outfit notes of Xiaohongshu fashion bloggers, present the bloggers' ideas to the audience, and indicate the product numbers to guide users to buy.

In terms of live broadcasting, the official account INMAN started broadcasting simultaneously with Taobao. In the past 30 days, 86 broadcasts were held, each lasting about 3.5 hours, with an average sales of 93,500. INMAN, which is good at private domain operations, also applied this marketing method to Xiaohongshu. For example, the official account opened 3 group chats, named "New Kick-Tick Group", each with a maximum of 500 people, all of which are full; @Inman Dressing also has 2 full groups.

What kind of brands are more likely to be popular on Xiaohongshu?

Kas believes that on the one hand, the more in line with the current platform trend, the more niche and stylish the brand is. For example, simpleretro, the brand focuses on light retro French women's clothing. Last year, the casual and relaxed style swept Xiaohongshu, and fashion bloggers competed to promote French style. Simpleretro was also among the bloggers. Xiaohongshu shows that the brand has sold 86,000 pieces so far.

On the other hand, there are brands that collaborate with designers. For example, @八月月er, a designer of Fu Sheng Ba Ji, shares her clothing-making process, clothing details, outfit photos, and her life records on Xiaohongshu. Her notes have become a place for users to recommend products and give shopping feedback, and have also brought considerable traffic to the store.

2. Xiaohongshu “retraces” the path of Douyin?

However, looking at the operating status of Taobao online celebrity stores on Xiaohongshu, it is easy to see that these merchants are still at the stage of tasting the waters on Xiaohongshu. Although they have tried to "expand channels", they have not yet started drastic marketing. Most of Xiaohongshu flagship stores are based on the needs of taking on buyer traffic and occupying the minds of consumers, but do not undertake the most important conversion task.

To a certain extent, it is Pinduoduo merchants who are more active in operating on Xiaohongshu. Many "factory self-production and self-sales" merchants have also entered the market first, cultivating a loyal shopping population through sincere personalities and affordable products.

But from the perspective of Taobao merchants, since there is no mature precedent to follow, merchants are still in the "exploratory" stage of operation on Xiaohongshu. To some extent, they still follow the Xiaohongshu grass-planting logic they are accustomed to, and their business goal is not to establish a closed-loop business on Xiaohongshu. For example, the notes of Xiaohongshu bloggers are not completely connected with brand products, and users will still go to Taobao to buy after being inspired.

The overall live streaming traffic is still shallow, which also makes it difficult for Xiaohongshu to do live streaming business. At present, there are not many Taobao online celebrity stores that have started live streaming on Xiaohongshu. Although it has the dual value of "marketing + planting grass", from the current stage, it is not realistic for most merchants to quickly increase their business through store live streaming on Xiaohongshu.

For example, in the past 30 days, the average number of viewers for Inman's live broadcasts on Xiaohongshu was 2,527, and on the official Douyin account, the number was 110,000, of which 13% came from paid traffic. Another example is that Inman did not prepare a set of goods for Xiaohongshu. The content of the several live broadcasts that Kas watched was the same as that of Taobao. In terms of customer unit price, most of the Douyin goods were lower than those of Xiaohongshu.

Inman Xiaohongshu Live

Of course, with Taobao as their established position, merchants do not need to make a big move to expand their territory on Xiaohongshu, after all, this means another set of operating logic and more investment costs. Under the premise that the platform already has a large amount of clothing recommendations, shopping feedback, and evaluation content, Taobao merchants are still more willing to deploy buyers to promote consumer decisions with low prices and discounts, and then take over with flagship stores; or reach users through multiple content on Xiaohongshu, and then seek further store conversion.

At this stage, Xiaohongshu still plays the role of "planting grass", and is regarded by Taobao's Internet celebrity merchants as an important customer acquisition channel rather than a sales channel. To some extent, this situation is related to the fact that Xiaohongshu's closed-loop e-commerce is "closed but not closed yet", which is also similar to Douyin in 2020.

In October 2020, in order to increase the value of platform traffic, Douyin announced the creation of a closed-loop e-commerce system, no longer supporting third-party products to enter the Douyin live shopping cart. Under Douyin's drastic "outbound link breaking", creators and merchants have no choice but to follow this rule in order to seek more platform traffic allocation.

However, this "internal circulation" is based on the premise that Douyin's traffic is sufficient and the e-commerce conditions are mature enough. In contrast, Xiaohongshu's DAU will not exceed 100 million until the end of 2023. Although it has determined the buyer e-commerce route, the maturity of the e-commerce in the site is not enough. For example, the source of goods is insufficient, and the buyer live broadcast must seek support from the product pool outside the site.

In addition, once top stars like Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui start broadcasting on Xiaohongshu, the traffic of other merchants and buyers’ live broadcast rooms may decline; at the same time, Xiaohongshu users have a high degree of trust in buyers and may not actively choose to enter another buyer’s live broadcast room. At present, Xiaohongshu e-commerce is still in its early stages of development, and this situation may be unavoidable on the road to the final form of e-commerce.

Of course, compared to "wooing" Taobao merchants, Xiaohongshu prefers to support its own "red brands", including some niche and stylish brands. Such brands may not be native to Xiaohongshu, but they must be in line with the user's tone and have gained new business opportunities on the platform. Last year, Xiaohongshu launched the REDlabel certification, which means that the store is a Xiaohongshu-certified store with unique concepts, a fashionable attitude, and the ability to lead the trend.

Xiaohongshu REDlabel page

For example, the trousers brand simplepieces pioneered semi-custom sizes, pursuing both comfort and fashion, with a customer unit price of around 300 or 400. On Xiaohongshu, simplepieces has 81,000 followers, has sold 378,000 pieces, and was selected as Xiaohongshu's Focus 30 brand in 2023. In this list, similar brands include KOKIA, Yangzhidao, etc., all of which have the keywords "style" and "design".

This is also the overall image that Xiaohongshu strives to create for the clothing market, and it differentiates itself from other e-commerce platforms and maintains the platform's tone. In order to amplify the platform's crowd value, Xiaohongshu prefers "brands" over "merchants", but how to attract more merchants to join is also a major problem that Xiaohongshu e-commerce needs to solve.

Author: Lin Wu

Source: WeChat public account "CaasData (ID: caasdata6)"