Middle-aged and elderly women's clothing is becoming a hot topic in the e-commerce industry

It has been four years since the launch of WeChat Video Account, and middle-aged and elderly women account for more than 50% of the consumption on the platform. This article analyzes the marketing model of middle-aged and elderly women's clothing e-commerce on WeChat Video Account. Let's take a look.

With money and free time, middle-aged and elderly women have found a new shopping paradise on Video Accounts.

"Our flower embroidery is made in three dimensions, and the rhinestones are also hand-sewn. You will look young and elegant when you wear them. If you like them, you can click on link No. 1. They will be available in seconds and you can wear them in the beginning of spring!" In a live broadcast room of women's clothing on a certain video account, the host is introducing the products enthusiastically, calling her "sister" sweetly and crisply. Users in the comment area also left messages saying "I have taken the photos" and reminded the host to remember to send the free brooch and belt.

Similar scenes are common in the women's clothing live broadcast rooms on video accounts.

Middle-aged and elderly women have similar aesthetics in clothing selection: one is bright styles with visual impact , accompanied by flower embroidery and sparkling rhinestones, and the other is low-key and dignified texture styles , emphasizing the quality of fabric craftsmanship. Although the clothing styles are very different, these brands are often traditional offline brands that are well known to the elders and rarely purchased by young people, or personal online store sellers who claim to purchase goods from factories and focus on high cost-effectiveness.

Video account screenshot

Women's clothing for middle-aged and elderly people is becoming the main contributor to the GMV of video account e-commerce. According to official WeChat data, women accounted for 78% of video account purchase users in 2023, and clothing orders accounted for 38%, ranking first in the industry.

"Middle-aged and elderly aunts may be afraid of being cheated and dare not place orders on Douyin or Kuaishou, but they must use WeChat Pay to transfer money frequently, and over time they will feel at ease shopping on Video Accounts," Yu Ming, a person in charge of middle-aged and elderly women's clothing, told Yiyuguancha . The brand he operates had annual sales of more than 10 million yuan on Video Accounts in 2023, making it the fastest growing channel.

He believes that in 2024, the popularity of middle-aged and elderly women's clothing will become more and more popular on Video Accounts.

The video account has been online for four years. Has it successfully found the e-commerce spark that can set the prairie on fire this time?

01 Middle-aged and elderly women's clothing dominates the video account

Being not proactive in work indicates that there is something wrong with one's thinking.

On February 19, just as the horn of resumption of work after the Spring Festival was sounded, Video Account announced the launch of the hourly sales ranking, seemingly making every effort to get a good start for its e-commerce business.

As the first e-commerce ranking in the video account station, the hourly ranking of goods sold is divided into the overall ranking, brand ranking and industry ranking, and trendy clothing ranks first in the industry ranking. According to the official introduction of the video account, the ranking is comprehensively ranked based on four indicators, including the sales power, attention power, interaction power and attractiveness of the goods sold in the live broadcast room, and the settlement is made every 4 hours.

In the hourly ranking of video accounts, middle-aged and elderly women's clothing brands gathered together and showed their talents. Yiyuguancha randomly recorded two time points, and it can be found that the competition in the middle-aged and elderly women's clothing track is fierce. At 12 noon on February 29, Yiyuguancha found that among the live broadcast rooms with goods in the previous stage of the top ten in the overall ranking, clothing live broadcast rooms accounted for more than half, including "Xizi Little Boss Lady", "Shenzhen Guofeng Xiangyunsha 3rd Store", "YIYI Italian High-end Women's Clothing Store 2", etc., among which the heat values ​​of the first and second places exceeded 30 million; and at around 3 pm on March 11, when checking the hourly ranking again, Chanchan WANG, an original high-end women's clothing blogger with new Chinese style as a selling point, took the lead. In the top ten positions, except for "mom sees the world", almost all bloggers are involved in women's clothing brands, some from body shape, yoga, and cashmere, Chinese style, silk and other texture samples.

The hourly ranking of the most popular products sold on the video account around 15:00 on March 11

Although the target customer groups are mainly middle-aged and elderly women, the anchors in these live broadcast rooms are basically young girls in their twenties and thirties, and there are very few middle-aged and elderly anchors who personally broadcast the programs.

Yu Ming said that a live broadcast needs to last at least four or five hours. Not only can middle-aged and elderly models not bear the physical strain, but it is also difficult for them to master various new rules and logic of speech in a short period of time. However, when selecting anchors, they will try to give priority to women who look mature and reliable to bring affinity to the audience.

At the same time, in order to adapt to the work and rest habits of middle-aged and elderly women, the live broadcast rooms of middle-aged and elderly women's clothing on video accounts often start broadcasting between 10 am and 4 pm during the day, which is just between the time when middle-aged and elderly women finish their morning housework and prepare dinner for the whole family. In the evening, the live broadcast rooms of middle-aged and elderly women's clothing will also avoid the square dance time between 6 and 7 pm, and after that they will frequently "upload great goods and give away gifts", and the broadcast time is usually around 10-11 pm, and rarely after 12 o'clock in the evening.

"The aunts are basically asleep at this time, so there is no need for us to drag it out any longer. It is better to finish early and rest up to recharge our energy for the next day," Yu Ming added.

Further focusing on the middle-aged and elderly women's clothing group, the purchasing power of middle-class women aged 40-60 living in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen is obviously stronger. These customers have stable pension income and a decent life. Even in middle age and old age, they still have certain pursuits for clothing. In order to provide a one-stop shopping experience, the anchors in the live broadcast room of middle-aged and elderly women's clothing not only sell goods, but also help customers provide dressing solutions. The image of the anchors is also closer to that of dressing consultants.

In the video account, live broadcast rooms focusing on middle-aged women such as "LANCY" and "ALICE" have repeatedly become benchmark cases recommended by WeChat officials. From the perspective of product styles, the designs of the hot-selling models in the live broadcast rooms of middle-aged and elderly women's clothing have similarities, and the brand design style is not very distinct.

"It is a common practice in the clothing industry to create a single hit product. Usually, once a product becomes a hit, other companies will imitate it. Some companies even directly track down suppliers from the same source, pay the factory to add an additional production line, and finally put their own labels on it," Yu Ming explained. In his opinion, most middle-aged and elderly female customers buy clothes based on their appearance. The first clothing that is pushed to their mobile phone screen is more likely to be ordered. They don't pay much attention to which brand designed the original style first.

02 The labels of middle-aged and elderly people that always follow us

Since the debut of the video account, the label of middle-aged and elderly has always been with it.

When young people are still not familiar with video accounts, their parents not only like and forward video accounts, but also start shooting short videos.

The leading MCN agency for the elderly, "Fashion Grandma Group", once told "China Entrepreneur" that in the early days, the proportion of users of the video account over 45 years old exceeded 70%.

Backed by WeChat's huge user trust base, middle-aged and elderly people like, forward and share with each other in their friend circles. This is not only the natural advantage of video accounts, but also provides more businesses and brands with the opportunity to seize the silver dividend.

Image source: Growth Black Box

Yiyuguancha recently found that many middle-aged and elderly KOLs who were once active on Douyin and Kuaishou have gradually moved their main operations to video accounts, thereby locking in core fan groups. Thanks to WeChat's unique strong social stickiness and the volume of middle-aged and elderly users, video accounts have become a powerful weapon for middle-aged and elderly brands to leverage online consumption among the silver-haired population, and women's clothing is one of them. In addition, high-priced products such as jewelry, jade, and cultural and artistic tea are also popular among the middle-aged and elderly groups on video accounts.

Although middle-aged and elderly people have money and more free time, they are inevitably not flexible enough when dealing with after-sales issues of online shopping.

Yu Ming said that some customers could not find the page to apply for a return, so they would keep asking in the live broadcast room, or directly send the clothes back without going through the platform's return process. There were many such problems, and Yu Ming could only appease the customer service team again and again and patiently reply, and even took the initiative to teach the e-commerce company how to return the goods. At the same time, he also asked the anchors not to deliberately create a lively atmosphere in the live broadcast room by shouting at the top of their lungs, but to focus on explaining a product clearly so that users can understand the value of the product.

In addition to broadcasting on brand accounts, Yu Ming also tried to cooperate with influencers to live-stream and sell goods, directing consumers to the video account store and ultimately completing the transaction. "Currently, the quotes of video account influencers are generally lower than those of Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and the dimension of measuring influencers is not just the number of fans, but also the activity of private communities. These are the real purchasing power."

Video Account Expert Plaza

Moreover, the product selection logic of video account influencers is different from that of other platforms . Since middle-aged and elderly users pay more attention to quality rather than simply consider price, high-priced heavy-duty clothing can be added to increase the average order value of the entire live broadcast.

On the other hand, there are gradually being publicly reported cases of influencers bringing goods to the platform. For example, the lifestyle blogger "Guo Yiyi" had a GMV of over 50 million yuan in September.

However, the proportion of middle-aged and elderly people shopping through emerging channels such as short videos and live broadcasts is relatively limited. The "Short Video User Value Research Report 2022" shows that in the first half of 2022, short video users aged 60 and above rose to 11.7%, close to the 12% of elderly users in the Internet user structure, but still lower than the proportion of the national elderly population.

Although the middle-aged and elderly groups provide a driving force for video account e-commerce, they have certain limitations. In addition to finding a breakthrough in the population, how to further penetrate and find more people to come and take a look are problems that video accounts need to solve.

03 Is Video Account Underestimated?

There has been discussion in the industry about whether the potential of video account e-commerce has been underestimated.

Judging from the user scale, Video Account can be regarded as an invisible giant.

QuestMobile data shows that as of June 2022, the monthly active users of Video Accounts have reached 800 million, while Douyin will reach 730 million in 2023. On the e-commerce side, the GMV of Video Accounts e-commerce in 2023 will be around 100 billion yuan. Although there is still a certain gap compared with the 2 trillion yuan GMV of Douyin e-commerce and the 1 trillion yuan GMV of Kuaishou e-commerce, Video Accounts e-commerce has shown potential in terms of scale growth and conversion efficiency.

Image source: QuestMobile

At Tencent’s annual meeting earlier this year, Ma Huateng publicly stated: “After more than a year of development, Video Account has lived up to expectations and has given us many surprises during its growth. It has given us a solid foothold again after the failure of short videos in the past.” He also made it clear that live streaming e-commerce will be the direction that WeChat Video Account will focus on this year.

The hourly sales ranking of video accounts, which was launched in mid-February this year, is generally seen by the industry as a manifestation of video accounts accelerating the pace of live e-commerce. It allows the outside world to have a data-based understanding of the development of video account e-commerce, and also provides merchants with a public domain traffic entrance, thereby gaining more exposure opportunities.

In Yu Ming's opinion, the current video account e-commerce is still generally in the stage of self-circulation. Although there are gradually some official cases of bringing goods, it is still relatively simple in terms of commercial investment, brand richness, and customer group diversity.

At the same time, he also admitted that the bonus period of each platform is often only one or two years, and you can continue to do it if you seize it. Women's clothing for middle-aged and elderly people is one of them. As more and more peer merchants enter the market, the competition for traffic is becoming more and more fierce, and long-term operation in the future is a big challenge.

Video account screenshot

In this context, instead of discussing whether the video account is underestimated, it is more important to find the next anchor point like "middle-aged and elderly women's clothing".

Or, you can firmly grasp the "middle-aged and elderly" group and welcome the upcoming wave of the silver economy . It is also a good option to create samples one by one on Video Account and focus on promoting these samples to break out of the circle and take up the banner of "the first front of China's silver economy."

*Yu Ming in this article is anonymous.

Author: Houma; WeChat public account: Yiyuguancha