Can Oriental Selection freely jump between Douyin and Taobao?

This article analyzes the multi-platform operation strategies of Dongfang Zhenxuan and Jiaoge Pengyou, two online celebrity e-commerce companies that started out through Douyin live streaming. It has guiding significance for understanding the development laws of current online celebrity e-commerce and has a high reading reference value. 

At 5:30 pm, Yu Minhong, who called himself the executive chef, wore a chef's uniform and wanted to compete with Dongfang Xiaosun in cooking skills. However, this live broadcast was not on Douyin or the Dongfang Selection APP, but on Taobao Live.

The first show of Taobao Live was already spread all over the Internet a few days ago. The most famous Dong Yuhui did not appear. This is the first time that Oriental Selection has been live-broadcasted on other platforms since it became popular in July last year. The delicate relationship between Oriental Selection and Douyin is no longer a secret.

The live show started at 8 a.m., and the cumulative number of viewers of Oriental Selection in Taobao live broadcast room exceeded 10 million, with nearly 160,000 people online. After Yu Minhong introduced five products, there was a cheer in the live broadcast room, and the sales volume exceeded 100 million yuan.

In fact, Yu Minhong came to Taobao Live on October 31 last year, but he was in the name of "New Oriental Xuncheng Education Store" to share college students' learning growth and planning.

Seeking multi-platform development has become an unspoken agreement among top influencers. Dongfang Selection has the most obvious intention and the most thorough action.

Regarding the entry into Taobao, Dongfang Zhenxuan CEO Sun Dongxu said without hesitation that Taobao has many domestic and international brands, strong supply chain resources, and the ability to expand the market in all categories. Whether it is Douyin, Taobao or other platforms, the user groups, user portraits and advantages of each platform are quite different. Dongfang Zhenxuan will always maintain an open attitude, learn from others, and insist on multi-platform development.

A month ago, Dongfang Zhenxuan’s store and live broadcast room on Douyin were blocked for three days for displaying its own APP QR code, violating the platform rules, causing an uproar.

That night, the Oriental Selection APP announced that all its self-operated products would be on sale at a 15% discount. The promotion lasted for three consecutive days, and the total sales exceeded 80 million.

Three days later, Yu Minhong responded in another Douyin live broadcast room, "When Oriental Selection first started, it already had its own APP. As an independent listed company, it must have an independent platform in the future."

Similar to the path and fate of Oriental Selection is Luo Yonghao's "Make Friends" live broadcast room. Douyin and Taobao have become two platforms for them to jump freely.

They cannot do without the massive traffic pool of the platform, but are unwilling to be bound by either party. They seek to maximize their interests by taking advantage of the competitive relationship between the two super platforms.

1. The first step to independence: multiple channels and multiple accounts

On August 25, Oriental Selection announced its 2023 fiscal year results, which is also the first fiscal year results after Oriental Selection changed its name.

The financial report shows that Dongfang Zhenxuan's GMV reached 10 billion yuan in fiscal year 2023. The total revenue of continuing operations was 4.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 651.0%. This is mainly due to the self-operated products and live e-commerce business, which had a total revenue of 3.9 billion yuan.

Although Yu Minhong has mentioned many times that Oriental Selection and Douyin are mutually beneficial, when the rules of the game are only in the hands of one party, the other party will become passive and vulnerable.

The Douyin data list shows that the "Dongfang Zhenxuan" live broadcast room has not been ranked No. 1 on the Douyin sales list for three consecutive months (May-July). In the past July, the "Jiao Ge Pengyou" live broadcast room has fallen out of the top ten sales list.

A reality that the anchors all take for granted is that Douyin holds the switch of traffic distribution firmly in its own hands. There is even a rumor that "super internet celebrities will only be popular for three months."

However, as listed companies, Dongfang Zhenxuan and Jiaogepengyou cannot allow risks to be exposed without any response. Currently, the market value of Dongfang Zhenxuan is 40 billion yuan, and Jiaogepengyou is 2.55 billion yuan.

From the very beginning, Oriental Selection had no intention of relying on any platform, but directly adopted a multi-channel, all-round layout:

WeChat has mini-programs such as "Oriental Selection Member" and "Oriental Selection Plus", and operates two video accounts, "Oriental Selection Official Account" and "Oriental Selection Member"; it operates an Oriental Selection account on Xiaohongshu; and has opened official Oriental Selection flagship stores on JD.com and Tmall.

In April last year, Oriental Selection became the first leading live streaming player to launch its own APP, and started live streaming during the Gansu special live streaming event in July this year.

The recent "live broadcast room closure incident" is a microcosm of Oriental Selection's eager pursuit of independent layout. It is not difficult to understand why it landed on Taobao again in less than a month.

Luo Yonghao's "Make Friends" did not deviate from a similar track. As early as October last year and May this year, "Make Friends" entered the live broadcast rooms of Taobao and JD.com respectively. Luo Yonghao personally attended the event to build momentum for the full-area live broadcast of "Make Friends".

In addition to seeking independence across platforms, live broadcast rooms are also seeking a certain degree of independence. For example, Luo Yonghao retreated to the second line, and Dong Yuhui made room for more anchors.

In addition to the fact that the top anchors are too deeply bound to their accounts, touching the sensitive nerves of the live broadcast room, it has basically become a consensus to build an anchor matrix and an account matrix and then evolve into a channel IP.

After all, compared to a "super salesperson", a "super channel" that consumers trust and are satisfied with in terms of product selection and pricing seems to be more mature and stable.

Besides Dong Yuhui, many anchors of Oriental Selection have become popular and have opened 6 Douyin live broadcast accounts. While Luo Yonghao withdrew, 15 live broadcast rooms of Jiao Ge Pengyou were already formed.

Even Li Jiaqi is not going to fight alone. After last year's Double Eleven, Meiwan opened two new live broadcast rooms, "All Girls" and "All Girls' Wardrobes". In his own live broadcast room, Li Jiaqi also gave more time and camera time to more new anchors.

At the same time, top anchors focus more on content supply rather than personal IP image.

From the beginning, Dongfang Zhenxuan has been promoting products with knowledge. Whether it is cultural tourism live broadcast or agricultural product tracing in the fields, it has been deliberately emphasizing content output. At present, Dongfang Zhenxuan's cultural tourism live broadcast has been to Yunnan, Shanxi and other places.

Li Jiaqi also spared no effort and directly created a popular variety show "All Girls" series. In the live broadcast room, Li Jiaqi also took up the time to bring goods and invited the famous makeup artist Mao Geping to teach makeup.

But on July 22 this year, the account of "Jiao Ge Peng You" for snacks and convenience foods also moved the live broadcast room to the origin of the products and held a two-day Shenchi Agricultural Assistance Special.

2. Not content with being just an internet celebrity anchor

After all, a small live broadcast room is fragile. To support the size of a listed company, Dongfang Zhenxuan and Jiao Ge Pengyou are still looking for possibilities beyond the live broadcast room.

The path chosen by Oriental Selection is to abandon the light asset model of advertising and develop self-operation. In June last year, Yu Minhong said in a live broadcast that he would build his own product system at a relatively fast speed, similar to NetEase Yanxuan.

At present, most of the hot-selling products with sales exceeding 10,000 on the Oriental Selection APP are self-operated products. The 2023 fiscal year results show that the total revenue of Oriental Selection's self-operated products exceeded 2.6 billion yuan, accounting for more than two-thirds of its self-operated products and live e-commerce business. Affected by the increase in the proportion of self-operated products, the company's gross profit margin also reached 38.2%.

Li Jiaqi's second growth curve may be to develop his own brand. Although there is no clear action, it is speculated that Li Jiaqi's three newly established companies may follow Wei Ya's current path and create their own brands and investment layout.

Viya, who does not need to appear in person but stays behind the scenes, has already successfully IPOed two companies she invested in, Juzi Bio and Deerma. In addition, Viya co-founded the fast food brand "Chef Nic Pie" with Nicholas Tse, created the clothing brand Viya Niya, and incubated the food brand "Bai Suzhen under the Qingcheng Mountain". The former live broadcast queen has transformed into an investment king, and has reaped a lot of rewards.

Although Jiaogepengyou has not yet invested in self-operation, it has developed a SaaS system suitable for Douyin e-commerce live streaming based on the supply chain, transforming itself into a technology service provider.

The main functions of this system are qualification review, recommendation based on the characteristics of anchors, product compilation, and even helping new anchors to start broadcasting with one click. In addition, it can also help brands prepare stocks intelligently through sales data.

Huang He, the founder of Jiaogepengyou, once revealed that the ultimate goal of Jiaogepengyou is to become a platform-based Internet company and a bridge between brands, celebrities and consumers on emerging traffic platforms. It is worth mentioning that Dongfangzhenxuan and Crazy Xiaoyangge have used this SaaS supply chain system.

Following the platform route, Jiaogepengyou also tried to expand its business overseas.

At the end of last year, two major departments of Jiaogepengyou, the Overseas Business Department and Jiaogepengyou Overseas E-commerce Academy, were unveiled. The former is responsible for brand overseas marketing, influencer distribution and live broadcast agency operations, while the latter focuses on TikTok e-commerce training.

The businesses of the two departments have basically realized a full-link closed loop of merchant services. Hao Xijie, head of the overseas business department of Jiaogepengyou, said, "We hope to build a global marketing matchmaking platform."

The road from an influencer on a platform to a group of influencers, and then to an independent company not affiliated with any platform is long and difficult.

Author: Zhang Ruibai

Source: New-Daybreak (ID: new-daybreak)