In the Double 11 melee among the top anchors, who is the biggest winner?

This year's Double Eleven officially came to an end. Who is the biggest winner in the competition among the top anchors? Let's take a look~

The 15th Double 11 has officially come to an end. Like last year, platforms such as Alibaba and JD.com no longer officially announce the final sales volume. Instead, the battle report announces the user scale, the number of brands with transaction volumes exceeding 10 million and 100 million, etc.

In addition to the platform data, another thing worth noting is the e-commerce live broadcast room. Compared with the low-price melee and headline news on the first day of the Double 11 pre-sale, which was a bit high at the beginning and low at the end, the top anchors/live broadcast rooms such as Li Jiaqi, Qianxun, Simba, Make Friends, Dongfang Zhenxuan, and Crazy Xiao Yangge seem to have started high and ended low.

The myth of continued high growth of super-head anchors has come to an end. According to Tech Planet, among the top anchors/live broadcast rooms, Li Jiaqi's Double 11 GMV is still the first by a large margin, but the "number one" Li Jiaqi's live broadcast GMV on the first day of pre-sale this year is more than half less than last year's 21.5 billion. On the first day of pre-sale for "Double 11" this year, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room had a total of about 400 products on the shelves. According to preliminary statistics based on the selling price and sales data of each product page, the GMV of this live broadcast was 9.5 billion yuan. In comparison, his sales data in 2021 was 10.1 billion.

Without Wei Ya leading the charge, Qianxun's pre-sale GMV has shrunk by nearly half. Industry insiders close to Qianxun revealed to Tech Planet that the pre-sale GMV of Qianxun's two live broadcast rooms this year is close to 4.5 billion. On the first day of pre-sale in 2021, public data showed that the cumulative transaction volume of Wei Ya's live broadcast room was 8.533 billion yuan. Although for Qianxun, it is good to achieve such results on Double 11 without the soul figure, but compared with the past glory, it may still be a bit lonely.

The GMV of top anchors has shrunk. What are the performances of other top anchors/live broadcast rooms like?

1. Li Jiaqi is still the "big brother", and the GMV of "Make Friends" is 2.48 billion

On Double 11, the top anchors/live broadcast rooms were still making the final effort to catch up on performance.

Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room focused on all categories, with a total of 10 million+ viewers and 500 product links on the shelves. Among them, most of the products are still Li Jiaqi's advantage category of beauty and personal care. It is worth mentioning that although Li Jiaqi's reputation still needs to be warmed up due to the Huaxizi eyebrow pencil incident, the popularity of his live broadcast room does not seem to be affected much. From the pre-sale countdown live broadcast on October 23 to November 11, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast has a total of 10 million+ viewers.

Mei ONE still relies heavily on Li Jiaqi. Among the many top anchors/live broadcast rooms, Li Jiaqi can be said to be the "model worker" with the most live broadcasts. He was present in every live broadcast of the "Beauty Festival", "Home Decoration Festival", "Snack Festival" and "Mother and Baby Festival" during the entire Double 11. Luo Yonghao, who faded out of the "Make Friends" live broadcast room, participated in about 10 live broadcasts during Double 11.

Luo Yonghao's last live broadcast on Double 11 was conducted on JD.com. After leaving Douyin last year, "Make Friends" has developed on multiple platforms such as Taobao, Tmall and JD.com. According to Tech Planet, on the closing night of Double 11, the number of viewers of the "Make Friends" JD.com live broadcast room was 4.39 million. In addition to 3C digital products, drinks and food, and home appliances, many product links in the live broadcast room are products of JD.com's own brand Huixun.

JD.com's "Make Friends" live broadcast room adopted a celebrity live broadcast strategy, inviting several celebrities to promote products during the Double 11 period. However, the popularity of celebrity live broadcasts is not very high. The views of Wang Zhi, Du Hua, and Yang Di's live broadcasts were between 2 million and 3.6 million. On the contrary, Luo Yonghao's live broadcast on October 31 was the most popular, with JD.com's live broadcast data showing that the views reached 9.249 million.

The popularity of the Taobao Tmall live broadcast of "Make Friends" was slightly higher than that of JD.com. Except for one time when the number of viewers was less than 3 million, the others were mostly concentrated between 3 million and 10 million. The Douyin live broadcast room, the original birthplace of "Make Friends", was the least popular. During the prime time of the closing night live broadcast, there were only more than 4,700 people online, and it did not even make it into the top ten of the Douyin best-selling list, ranking 31st during that time period.

However, the GMV of "Make Friends" on Double 11 is not low. An insider close to "Make Friends" revealed to Tech Planet that the transaction volume of the three platforms of "Make Friends" on Double 11 was close to 3 billion, of which Taobao's transaction volume was about 1 billion and JD's platform sales were about 800 million. "Make Friends" has a matrix of 15 categories of accounts on Douyin, and the overall GMV is about 1 billion. According to the latest official report of "Make Friends", the GMV of "Make Friends" on Double 11 this year exceeded 2.483 billion yuan.

The sales volume of Double 11 was 2.483 billion, which means that the GMV of "Make Friends" is expected to exceed 10 billion this year. Huang He, the founder of "Make Friends", once said in an interview with the media that the live broadcast business of "Make Friends" achieved a total sales volume of over 7 billion yuan in 2022, a significant increase from 5 billion in 2021.

Another popular head anchor, Simba, only broadcast two shows on Double 11 this year. Data showed that the live broadcast on October 31, the day of final payment, was watched by 33.656 million people. Compared with last year, Simba's pre-sale sales for Double 11 this year have increased. People familiar with the matter told Tech Planet that Simba's pre-sale GMV for Double 11 was 3.5 billion, and his apprentice Dandan's pre-sale GMV was 1 billion. The target sales of the entire Xinxuan for Double 11 this year is 10 billion. Last year, Simba's live broadcast on the first day of pre-sale was divided into two sessions. According to Xinkuai data statistics, a total of 91 products were put on the shelves in the two live broadcasts, with an average customer unit price of 328.85 yuan, an estimated sales volume of 8.5324 million pieces, and an estimated sales of 2.805 billion yuan.

2. Xiao Yangge's Double 11 GMV is about 350 million to 450 million, and Oriental Selection has achieved success in many areas

During this year's Double 11, three top anchors were actively or passively on the hot search in different ways. Li Jiaqi was caught in a whirlpool due to the low-price controversy; Simba's fight for price control with the same brand Fang Mousse caused a sensation, and then his Douyin live broadcast room was blocked; Crazy Xiao Yangge attracted a lot of attention by joining the melee, and was later criticized for being vulgar because of his apprentice's exaggerated style of selling high-end brand YSL on live broadcast.

Simba and Crazy Little Yang are in a very similar predicament, both facing challenges in their transition from the lower-tier market to the high-end market. Both De Rucci and YSL are representatives of high-priced products, and the road to the upper level is not easy. But they are different. Crazy Little Yang's live streaming sales scale is not as large as Simba's for Kuaishou. According to an insider, on the first day of the Double 11 pre-sale, the GMV of Kuaishou was 4.5 billion, and Simba alone achieved 3.5 billion.

Although Crazy Xiao Yangge is currently the undisputed "number one" in terms of the number of fans, with more than 120 million Douyin fans, he started live streaming late and has relatively few live broadcasts. This year's Double 11, Crazy Xiao Yangge's account only had 6 live broadcasts. On the day of the Double 11 final live broadcast, Crazy Xiao Yangge's live broadcast room initially ranked first on Douyin's Double 11 best-selling list, with more than 100,000 people online at the same time and more than 11 million likes received. But in the second half, the popularity of the live broadcast was overtaken by another unknown anchor and fell to second on the best-selling list.

In the closing live broadcast, many products in Crazy Brother Xiao Yang's live broadcast room were priced at 9.9 yuan per customer, and a large part of them were self-operated products from Xiao Yang's selection category, with relatively few high-end brand products. According to Chan Mama data, the total sales of Crazy Brother Xiao Yang's six live broadcasts on Double 11 were around 350 million to 450 million yuan. In terms of audience, three live broadcasts had more than 50 million viewers. The category with the most products on the shelves in the live broadcast room was beauty and skin care, but the category with the best sales was daily necessities.

Among the top anchors/live broadcast rooms, the one with the smallest volume of live broadcast sales on Double 11 belongs to Oriental Selection.

Judging from the arrangement of anchors' live broadcasts, Douyin seems to be the main battlefield that Oriental Selection attaches the most importance to. In the final live broadcast, Dong Yuhui, the "number one" in the live broadcast room of Oriental Selection, appeared in the Douyin live broadcast room.

According to Tech Planet, during this live broadcast, Oriental Selection ranked sixth on Douyin's Double 11 best-selling list. According to Chanmama data, the number of viewers of Oriental Selection's live broadcast on that day reached 8.318 million. During the entire Double 11 period, Oriental Selection's average sales were 7.5 million to 10 million, and with 24 live broadcasts, the GMV was roughly 180 million to 240 million.

However, it is worth mentioning that 180 million to 240 million is only the GMV of one account, Oriental Selection. Oriental Selection has at least 4 sub-accounts on Douyin, namely Oriental Selection Beautiful Life, Oriental Selection Books, Oriental Selection Self-owned Products, and Oriental Selection See the World.

In addition to Douyin, Dongfang Zhenxuan has different scales of revenue on Taobao Tmall and its own apps. According to observations, at the end of Double 11, the number of viewers of Dongfang Zhenxuan's Taobao live broadcast room reached more than 10 million. The popularity of its own app is slightly lower, with no viewers, only 86,000 likes, and only 337 people online in the same period.

3. Top anchors go left, brands go right

The performance growth of the top anchors can be said to be closely related to the brand. This year's Double 11, the low-price dispute between the top anchors and brands was a hot topic. In order to gain the lowest price in the minds of users, the anchors asked the brands to give the lowest price. The dispute between Simba and De Rucci is also a specific manifestation of the dispute between anchors and brands over price control. Simba mentioned the dispute with De Rucci in his live broadcast of paying the balance on October 31, saying that the normal price of a "Big Black Bull" soft bed product of the home brand De Rucci is 13,800 yuan. Simba's live broadcast room discussed a price of 6,800 yuan. After that, Kuaishou subsidized 820 yuan and Simba himself gave a discount of nearly 15% of the commission, which was close to 1,000 yuan. The final price for users was 4,980 yuan per set.

The discounted De Rucci bed not only created 1.6 billion in sales for Simba, but also opened the door to high-end home furnishing categories. However, this product did not bring Simba any actual commission income.

The low prices are the result of concessions and compromises by platforms, anchors and merchants. For brands, low-price competition is not a long-term solution. Sales volume and revenue growth at the cost of concessions may end up being a loss-making business.

Brands have become more and more cautious in cooperating with top anchors. An insider of the home appliance brand Galanz told Tech Planet that compared with last year, the number of sessions that Galanz has cooperated with top anchors this year has decreased a lot. The brand's consideration is that home appliance brand products are standard products, which are not big hits for top anchors, so it is difficult to sell them in large quantities. In addition, the top anchors have relatively low prices and high commission requirements, so the cost-effectiveness of the cooperation is not high. The insider said that for brands, cooperating with super-top anchors is basically a loss-making cooperation, which is not very beneficial to the long-term development of the brand. Therefore, this year's Double 11, Galanz did not have much expectations for super-top anchors, and instead focused on the self-broadcasting sector.

High return rate is one of the most difficult problems for brands to deal with when working with top anchors. An insider of Galanz said that top anchors are also fast in explaining products, but the description of product functions is not detailed enough, and the return rate is still very high. For stores, stabilizing the rating is a very important task. It often takes more than half a month for top anchors to adjust the store's product return rate rating after bringing a product.

The insider revealed that the overall conversion rate of this year's cooperation with top anchors has dropped a lot compared with last year. The products were sold, shipped and returned, and the merchants borne a large part of the losses in the after-sales part. "Our products are returned or exchanged at most 15% in our own stores, while the top anchors' sales are basically 50% (return or exchange)."

Galanz's choice is just a microcosm of the attitude of brands towards cooperating with top anchors. Nowadays, the growth rate of top anchors' live broadcasts has slowed down, and brand self-broadcasts and store broadcasts have risen. Taobao and Tmall's Double 11 report this year also indirectly confirmed the importance of brand self-broadcasts to merchants. Taobao data shows that this year is the first year of store broadcasts, with transactions exceeding 100 million yuan in 58 live broadcast rooms on the platform, of which 38 are brand store broadcasts.

The relationship between top anchors and brands is actually very subtle. If low prices are the core moat of live e-commerce transactions, then once the interests of the platform, anchors and brand merchants conflict, the brand may completely bypass the two and reduce prices on its own for promotion. In this way, top anchors are becoming more and more pipeline-like.

Therefore, high-gross-margin self-operated products have become the common choice of many top anchors/institutions. Many products in the Double 11 live broadcast room of Dongfang Zhenxuan are self-operated, and the sales volume of Simba’s self-operated products such as Cotton Code is also increasing. Crazy Xiao Yangge’s self-operated brand Xiao Yang Zhenxuan is also one of the products that appear frequently in his live broadcast room.

However, if the revenue and GMV growth of top anchors still need to rely on brand merchants, the competition for price control with brands may need to be handled more properly.

Author: Zhai Yuanyuan WeChat public account: Tech Planet