Are buyers a new opportunity for brands? Let’s talk about my view on Xiaohongshu e-commerce

This article first explains the concept of "buyers" proposed by Xiaohongshu, pointing out that Xiaohongshu and buyers complement each other. It also calls the trust of Xiaohongshu "milk powder trust", and finally points out that merchants and brands should come to Xiaohongshu. This article is suitable for merchants and buyers.

I said before that the consumer market has shifted from incremental to stock, but there are still many brands that come to me and say, “I want to grow!”

To see growth this year, to put it bluntly, it still depends on the platform dividend. If you ask what opportunities the platform has, there are actually not many this year, but Xiaohongshu is definitely one of them.

This time I am not talking about Xiaohongshu's brand marketing. Xiaohongshu's dividend lies in the e-commerce sector that many people have not paid attention to yet.

I now tell everyone I meet that you should start working on Xiaohongshu, and many people reply to me, "Let me take a look, and take a look again." I roll my eyes when I hear that, "If you keep looking, you will miss out on the benefits."

Why do you say that? An important signal some time ago was that Xiaohongshu integrated its e-commerce business with its live streaming business, and the newly formed transaction department became a first-level department. Last week, Xiaohongshu held its first e-commerce-themed event, the "E-commerce Partner Week."

Here, Xiaohongshu proposed the concept of "buyers", which made me feel like my eyes were brightening. I strongly felt that after so many twists and turns, Xiaohongshu finally started to do e-commerce seriously and finally found its own starting point.

For example, there are actually two phenomenal live broadcast rooms on Xiaohongshu recently, Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui. It is difficult to define what type they are, but when the word "buyer" comes out, it seems that everything is right.

Today I will talk to you about why I think buyers are a new opportunity for Xiaohongshu e-commerce?

1. Are the bonuses gone? No, taste is the new bonus

The first question is, what is a buyer? To see something, you need to see its original state. Back in the 1960s in Europe, the profession of buyer was born. They fly back and forth around the world, keep an eye on the latest fashions, constantly deal with suppliers, and bring new and tasteful things to the market.

Until now, many celebrities have their own stylist, which is also a kind of buyer. You don’t have time to go shopping, but you trust this person’s taste and believe that he can arrange everything.

The buyers that Xiaohongshu mentioned this time are those who understand products and user needs. They are distributed in all walks of life and can connect users and products.

So what is the difference between a buyer and an ordinary expert? The first impression I get from the word buyer is that this person has taste and knows how to pick things.

Xiaohongshu introduced me to several buyers on the platform. For example, “Yike KK”, a home blogger on Xiaohongshu, renovated her house from scratch in 2016 purely through online shopping. She picked every piece of furniture herself, and posted pictures of her home on Xiaohongshu after finishing the decoration. Some people even replicated her home 1:1 after seeing the pictures.

Therefore, buyers naturally give people the impression that you have extensive experience. Not only have you seen a lot of good things, but you also know how to match them. After reading your content, I don’t need to think about it, just copy it. Everything is easy, labor-saving and worry-free, but the result is very high-end.

Such people are very suitable for Xiaohongshu. If other platforms can cultivate influencers, then Xiaohongshu can cultivate buyers.

This is because Xiaohongshu is home to high-potential people such as emerging white-collar workers and sophisticated mothers. When they look at things, the first thing they look at is taste rather than price.

Let me give you an example from my own experience: I posted a five-minute video on brand marketing on Xiaohongshu, and the first three comments were:

"The clothes are so nice, what brand is it?"

"The earrings are so pretty, what brand are they?"

"The aromatherapy on the table is so cute, what brand is it?"

I didn't really do anything, I simply let my good taste run wild.

Professional buyers can do more. They can use scenario-based content to discover users’ purchasing needs.

Just like what Xiaohongshu COO Conan said at the e-commerce partner week, becoming a buyer is a path from passion to profession to career. Buyers know very well what their users want to see and hear, so they can accurately understand the taste needs of users and show the value behind the product in the way they like.

This not only gives brands more space to showcase themselves, but from the user's perspective, they may not enter the buyer's live broadcast room with clear needs, but they will still be impressed by the brand's functions, aesthetics, style and other values ​​​​detailed by the buyer, thus prompting them to place an order.

Therefore, if you want to build a platform, you need to find the ecological dividends on this platform. Professionalism and taste are the dividends on Xiaohongshu. If you have a product with good taste and highlights today, you must not miss Xiaohongshu e-commerce this year.

2. There is a kind of "milk powder trust" on Xiaohongshu

The reason why buyers are so good is that they are not only a sales link, but also a more important role in endorsement. I don’t know if you feel the same way, but I have already used Xiaohongshu as a search engine. For example, if I am going to go hiking now, and I know that I want to buy a pair of hiking shoes, but I don’t know which pair to buy, then I will definitely go to Xiaohongshu to see what everyone recommends.

I went in with a search mentality, looking for a sense of trust. A blogger clearly listed ten pairs of shoes for me, each pair of appearance, function, price, cost performance, after reading one article, I immediately went through the process of shopping around, and after confirming, I placed an order directly.

Of course, every platform is talking about trust now, but everyone’s level of trust is different.

For example, Kuaishou is engaged in trust e-commerce, but its trust is more like the trust between neighbors. We have been neighbors for ten years and see each other every day. You won’t lie to me, right? Therefore, on Kuaishou, the family-style shouting is very popular.

Douyin also emphasizes trust, but the best sellers on Douyin are big-brand flagship stores. I believe in the quality control of big brands and the channels of flagship stores. If it is Dabo and short videos, with this kind of short, flat and fast content logic, you are willing to spend about 30 yuan to trust it, buy some fast-moving consumer goods and currency, the cost is not high, and you don’t feel bad if you buy the wrong one.

The trust provided by Xiaohongshu is different. It provides a kind of "milk powder trust".

The biggest feature of Xiaohongshu's content is that it comes from sharing real life. Since 2019, Xiaohongshu has actually been building its own community content. The original intention of everyone going to Xiaohongshu is to share their lives, not to make money or grab traffic.

These large numbers of people willing to share gathered together and gradually formed a very unique circle culture on the Xiaohongshu platform.

When we talked about circles before, they might be relatively coarse-grained circles such as the food circle, skin care circle, and animation circle. Now circles have become extremely vertical. A food circle can be subdivided into salad circle, coffee circle, baking circle, junk food circle, etc. The more vertical your content is, the easier it is to be seen. The more detailed your content is, the more professional you will be considered.

This "authenticity + professionalism" can give users a great sense of security. With this sense of security, I am willing to make some relatively heavy decisions on Xiaohongshu, such as spending 3,000 yuan at a time, or buying products such as milk powder for my children.

Now many platforms are talking about planting grass, but what exactly is being planted? What do you want to keep, "Oh, this thing is actually like this", or "So many people say this thing is good, so I feel relieved".

The type you can leave on Xiaohongshu is definitely the second type. That's why I say, what is planted on Xiaohongshu is not grass, but milk powder.

3. All good brands with strong product power should come to Xiaohongshu

This year, I have observed that the individual economy is actually emerging. A group of sophisticated people around me are all exploring a decent way to make money. I think buyers are quite suitable for them. They have taste and trust, which is simply a breath of fresh air in the e-commerce circle.

Based on the underlying logic of the buyer model, two types of brands can see obvious opportunities: one is the crowd brand whose entry point is very vertical; the other is the brand with strong product power but low recognition.

Crowd brands are easy to understand. Buyers are representatives of circle culture and circle aesthetics, so brands that focus on circle culture and lifestyle brands with aesthetics can find a good living space on Xiaohongshu.

For the second type of brands, it is really difficult for them to surpass the big brands on other platforms. Not only do they have to pay high slot fees, but they often have to face the soul-searching questions of influencers: Who are you? What can you bring to me?

But it is different on Xiaohongshu. On the one hand, Xiaohongshu’s buyers are willing to grow with new brands, so new brands will have more opportunities to access top buyer resources. On the other hand, buyers can better explore the value points of such brands, and they will also use these brands and products to label themselves with differentiation.

Last week, I talked with Iris, the e-commerce manager of Grado Home Furnishing, about the brand's layout on Xiaohongshu. Grado Home Furnishing fits the profile of the second type of brand. Although it has been established for ten years, it is not well known by the public; its products carry many stories, which need time to explain; and it is heavily designed, and the price is not cheap, with a sofa selling for 6,000 yuan.

Starting this year, Gedu Home Furnishing has invested heavily in Xiaohongshu e-commerce, and has achieved very good results, especially through good cooperation with buyers, turning a slow-selling sofa into a hot-selling product on Xiaohongshu.

Iris and I reviewed the reasons why this product sold so well, and the core reason is that we chose the right platform and the right people.

The visual of this sofa is modern, and the product can be folded into different shapes. There is not enough space to explain it in pictures and short videos, so Iris found Miss Ye Shizi on Xiaohongshu. She is a "matching blogger" who is very vertical in the home furnishing track. Her fans like French modern style, which is highly consistent with the product style of Gedu. And most importantly, she has her own private domain group.

After offering a 618 price guarantee mechanism, the two parties reached a cooperation agreement. Ye Shizi explained the features of this sofa in detail during the live broadcast and also demonstrated the scene. In fact, the process of selecting buyers is the process of discovering and matching needs. It is precisely because this sofa accurately meets the needs of Miss Ye Shizi's fans that it will sell like hot cakes.

After the hot product appeared, Gedu Home Furnishing immediately invested in all the anchors it could invest in, and immediately followed up with store broadcasts to stabilize its business. At present, they have formed a special team for Xiaohongshu. In terms of budget allocation, 70% is used for atmosphere content planting, and 30% is used for sales-oriented live broadcasts. By July, the sales volume on the Xiaohongshu platform has exceeded that of other platforms.

At last week’s conference, Xiaohongshu officially announced that it would launch a “Buyer Center” to lower the threshold for each user to become a buyer; it would also provide 50 billion traffic to support buyers, which shows that it is very determined.

Users are willing to participate, and the platform is willing to support it, so this must be a market that has not yet taken off but is rising. As I said at the beginning, wait and wait, the dividends will be gone.

IV. Conclusion

E-commerce, to put it simply, is about people, goods, and places. All parties are trying to find new growth points by stacking buffs on these three elements. Xiaohongshu has been a community and e-commerce company for many years. Its biggest advantage is the "people" on the platform. After it proposed to focus on "buyers" this time, I think it has finally closed the loop.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Xiaohongshu. In early August, Xiaohongshu CEO gave an internal sharing session, the core of which was to explore "what is the significance of Xiaohongshu in this era". Xiaohongshu started out ten years ago by asking users to write overseas shopping guides, and ten years later, it turned users into buyers, spiraling upward.

This year is also my fourth year of entrepreneurship. During this period, I have experienced many major events in my life, and the company's business has increased and decreased. Recently, when I make decisions, I find that a very direct and effective way is to ask myself, what is my biggest differentiating advantage in this matter? I can immediately figure out whether it is suitable for me.

I like this way of thinking. Whether it is a person or a platform, everyone is in the process of self-consistency to find the most suitable one for themselves.

Author: Daojie Doris WeChat public account: Daojie Doris