The 100 million middle class in Tik Tok!

This article analyzes the operational strategy of Douyin's mainstay in an easy-to-understand manner, allowing people to have a more three-dimensional understanding of the Douyin economy. It is recommended for everyone who is interested in Douyin's e-commerce to read.

There is a meme on TikTok recently, called "The gears of fate start to turn", which means that the decision made at a certain moment of fate affects the trajectory of one's life.

In fact, on Douyin, there are 100 million "mainstays" who have created business myths in recent years. Many ordinary people have sold goods through live streaming, and the gears of destiny have started to turn since then.

Among these 100 million people, some small teams have achieved a "small business" of 100 million yuan a year on Douyin; some people have achieved the "small happiness" of earning one hundred thousand or one million yuan a month on Douyin.

You might say that the survivor bias we see and the live commentary on TikTok are definitely more exaggerated in appearance than fixed advertising materials. This is a peripheral path pointing to impulse consumption.

But there are quite a number of people and teams that have achieved growth on Douyin, and it is undeniable that they have also cultivated consumers' awareness and loyalty to the products they sell.

In the ecosystem of 100 million middle-streamers, they do not have the bargaining power of top anchors, and price is not the key word in their live broadcast rooms. There are not many traffic-generating tools, and high investment does not exist. But they may have things produced and sold at home, or they may have a model of front factory and back store, or they may even have been a member of a small circle, but now the circle has been expanded by Douyin, so everyone has become the mainstay of Douyin's basic market.

1. Jewelry, jade, antiques and collectibles, moving from offline to online

From gold jewelry, jade to wooden toys, the luxury jewelry industry has drawn a perfect "leap curve" from offline to online on Douyin.

Let’s talk about gold jewelry first. Before Douyin, this market was firmly controlled by the leading brands. Although many brands purchase goods in Shuibei, the brand added value is not small.

After everyone knows Shuibei, Shuibei anchors with tens of thousands of fans on Douyin can sell more than 10 million yuan of goods by broadcasting about 10 live shows a month, and it is easy to achieve a small business goal in a year. After all, Shuibei’s counters have all the popular gold jewelry styles on Xiaohongshu and Douyin. In the past, you were in the west of the motherland and Shuibei was in the east of the motherland; now, you are on this side of the screen and Shuibei’s gold goods are on the other side of the screen.

Some people say that hoarding gold is like hoarding food and medicine. It has become everyone's instinctive reaction to danger in recent years. Let's take a look at jade.

When it comes to jade on TikTok, you may think of the bracelets of Liu Siyi, the top female star. As early as 2020, Liu Siyi was still a stall girl in the market, but she also gained a lot of support from fans with her beautiful appearance and neat explanation. Although Liu Siyi has been more or less controversial later, I will put the transaction volume of her four accounts here. You can calculate it yourself. It is not a small goal that can be covered in one year.

As for antiques, you may only think of Panjiayuan and Chenghuang Temple in the past. Later, Tiantian Jianbao and Weipaitong created a trend of online treasure appraisal on Douyin, which made the antique industry a little shallower. Later, Weipaitong sought to go public, and Tiantian Jianbao ran away due to bankruptcy. Although the two leaders went their separate ways, several treasure appraisers of Tiantian Jianbao set up their own businesses.

A team of 10-20 people can also earn a "small goal" in jade and cultural relics in a year. For example, the two accounts of "Group Chairman" Haidong have an average live broadcast sales of more than six figures on Douyin, with nearly a hundred live broadcasts per month. It is not a problem to achieve a small goal in annual sales. People used to joke that he was the "chairman" of a fake cultural relics production group, but now he has really become the chairman.

2. Niche categories such as fishing have found a breakthrough on Douyin

Recently, there is a girl named "One Smile Allures the City" on Douyin. She has received a lot of rewards for every live broadcast. People say that your uncle is always your uncle, so she can really hide her private money and pension. In fact, in addition to watching anchors, there is another track on Douyin that has become a tool for your uncle, or even younger "uncles", to plant grass, and that is fishing.

On Douyin, being a fishing gear account does not mean you can fish. In the niche track, we must get rid of a misunderstanding. Those who sell goods and make profits are not necessarily industry leaders, ordinary industry players can also do it.

For example, I observed a fishing gear account Huohuo Fishing Gear Selection on Douyin with an amazing conversion rate. Its editing technology is only at the level of editing, the dubbing is also machine-generated, and the live broadcast room has double-digit online users all year round. However, its window has sold millions of items, and has sold millions of items in the past six months. You should know that its average customer unit price is only 5 yuan.

If you want to know why she succeeded, it is because the basic market of fishing on Douyin has become larger. Data shows that the scale of Douyin's fishing market in 2022 is about 4.6 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 189%. In the first half of 2023, sales have exceeded 3 billion yuan. Male consumers are dominant, and the age range is mainly 24-30 and 31-40, which tends to be younger. In the first half of 2023, except for lead and hook binders, the sales of all subcategories on Douyin are growing. Fishing rods and fishing gear sets have a large market share. 100-300 yuan is the mainstream price range, and cost performance is a rigid demand. The main selling points are ultra-light, ultra-hard (functional), and carbon (technological materials).

It is easy for big brothers to buy something worth one or two hundred yuan. They just buy it on Douyin and go fishing with their brothers on the weekend. Moreover, competitive fishing is also a direction of rapid development in the future. Tianyuan Deng Gang, Liu Zhiqiang and others are the top fishing stars on Douyin, and men, women, old and young love to watch it. This indicates that the niche circle is developing in the direction of mass, professional and high customer unit price.

3. Ordinary people with direct supply chains can also succeed

Those who have their own supply chain of agricultural and sideline products, fruits from their own orchards, and tea supply chain, are former tea city owners; their own businesses used to be front-store-back-factory models, and they used to sell locally, but now they sell nationwide. This type of people is the easiest to succeed among the "middle class" of Douyin, because they control the cost themselves.

There is a pet expert named "Labulajin". At the beginning, the girl only shared the sensible moments of her big dog Maomao, such as picking up people with a flashlight and delivering medicine to relatives.

But the young lady's family is also a grower of Lunwan oranges. The sensible dog gradually began to help pick oranges, and consumers also began to buy "Maomaoguo", which are oranges picked by the dog. In the first two months of this year, the young lady sold more than 5 million oranges.

You may ask, what if I don’t have a dog but have an orchard at home? Many growers, tea shop owners, and toy factory owners also use the “front shop and back factory” model and have found business on Douyin. In fact, their logic is very simple. They film the way they used to sell goods into videos and quietly redo the “small and beautiful” business in the era of short videos.

4. Large-size and special-size clothes and shoes

It is easy to understand why this category has become the "mainstream" in Douyin. We can buy it offline or in traditional e-commerce, but the choice is limited and the product display is not real. There was no circle that could gather people with special dressing needs before, and the arrival of Douyin has given everyone a gathering place.

For example, there are already several Douyin brands selling large-size underwear for women, and some slimming clothes for slightly plump girls are more intuitively displayed in videos and live broadcasts. Horizontal evaluation by fashion bloggers can also bring in long-tail traffic. For example, the top reviewer for slightly plump girls, Ishihara Nimi, once set a record of selling 2,000 pairs of pants in 20 minutes. For a while, Douyin was full of slightly plump girls evaluating again whether the pants I bought from Ishihara Nimi would fail.

Even on the overseas version of TikTok, such video content is very easy to monetize, and shein, an overseas clothing e-commerce company, has gained a lot of users from it. Now, these categories have expanded to large and small sizes of men's and women's shoes, comfortable high heels, etc.

5. Decoration design, decorative painting, gardening, and vegetable growing

You may have seen videos of home improvement, such as making a small house bigger, a two-bedroom house three-bedroom house, etc. Designer A Shuang is known as the "home furnishing queen" on Douyin. The categories of goods she promotes range from high-frequency daily necessities to low-frequency home building materials.

As we all know, the home improvement market has always been in a state of "big industry, small business" because of the long industrial chain, many service roles involved, long construction period and geographical restrictions. After the Internet intervened, "copying homework" became easier. Many home improvement design companies have started from reviewing past cases and turned Douyin into the main channel for acquiring customers. At the same time, it has also driven the vigorous development of upstream and downstream on Douyin, such as decorative paintings, gardening, and even green plants and vegetable planting on the balcony. As early as January-September 2021, the Douyin platform had 360 million users interested in home content.

Especially in the home decoration process, the business is easier to do in the last soft decoration link, because the average customer spending is low and the index of immediate happiness is high. For example, a decorative painting boss with 100,000 fans can achieve monthly sales of over one million.

I even have a reasonable suspicion that ByteDance created the Zhu Xiaobang App not only because of the traffic from Douyin and Toutiao within the ByteDance system, but also because of the entrepreneurial success of home furnishing experts on Douyin. Currently, there are more than 20,000 home furnishing companies and brands, more than 3,000 designers settled in Zhu Xiaobang, and more than 130,000 experts and 3 million creators produce content on Zhu Xiaobang, directly moving the decoration industry to the Internet.

6. Low-cost customer acquisition opportunities in the used car and used luxury goods industries

This industry is not something that ordinary people or small teams can get involved in. After all, buying cars and second-hand luxury goods requires financial strength, but Douyin has given them a low-cost development opportunity.

In the era of print media, used car brokers needed to find an entire introduction page in the newspaper; after the radio became a life companion, used car owners had to arrange for people to go to the radio station to make connections; after television entered thousands of households, they had to seize the golden 10 minutes of local satellite TV to advertise; when portal websites grew from their infancy, they had to post on the portal websites; until the arrival of TikTok, they could start broadcasting at any time; they could record helping fans choose cars; if they didn’t have any material, they could do some car source explanations, car purchase and sale records, and car condition inspections.

The same is true for the second-hand luxury industry. In the past, second-hand luxury stores might have been opened in Sanlitun or Huaihai Road. I once talked to the owner of a second-hand store in Shanghai. She has been in this industry for 13 years and can be said to be one of the first second-hand luxury owners in China. At least before 2017, the customers of her store were basically middle-aged wealthy ladies, but now there are more and more young people, and many young people found her store through the bag selection videos on Douyin.

7. It is true that personal businesses can earn over 10,000 yuan a month

Although it is unlikely to achieve a small goal in a year for a personal business, it is possible to make tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands in a month.

There were many handcraft experts on Douyin before. Like carpet cleaning and donkey hoof repair, they became a bedtime companion for everyone. They were glue dripping, cream glue, handmade works, etc. Although people often felt that the aesthetic level of the experts was worrying under the videos, who was buying it? But it really didn't stop them from selling 10,000 yuan worth of goods in a live broadcast.

In addition, there are also various skilled people who have gained something on Douyin. A friend once recommended a trend on Douyin, which teaches adults to read and count. Previously, a blogger shot a series of "How to do for young people" and it became popular on the Internet. In fact, Douyin's adult literacy is "How to do for middle-aged and elderly people". The seventh national census shows that our literacy rate has exceeded 95%, but because of the large population base, there are still more than 37 million people who cannot read.

Moreover, experts can earn a lot from teaching adults to read. For example, Teacher Tiantian, who teaches adults to read and type pinyin, had sales of hundreds of thousands of yuan in the past six months. Industry insiders said that experts can earn at least 40% commission.

8. Conclusion: Commonalities among 100 million middle-class users of Douyin

The representative Douyin "mainstays" mentioned above are only a small part of the Douyin market. Among the 100 million middle-stream users, there are many tracks that we usually don't pay attention to, but they are necessary to use.

Videos and live broadcasts have transformed their products from pictures into concrete objects; from regional to national, from niche to breaking the circle, from matching demand to creating demand. Compared with text and pictures, Douyin's short videos and live broadcasts allow information to be displayed in more dimensions. The real-time and interactive nature of live broadcasts allows users to get the fastest and most effective answers when they have questions.

A short video author with a persuasive identity can directly convey information to thousands of online viewers and interact in real time, building a business environment of mutual trust. Therefore, many niche circles and high-priced circles are gradually breaking through the circle and moving from offline to online.

With the continuous penetration of TikTok's 100 million middle-class users, no matter whether it is mass or niche, generalized or vertical, every small business owner is not only the "mainstay" of TikTok, but even the high income brought by the time playing TikTok will become the "mainstay" of life.

At the very least, we all want to be the “middle class 100 million” of our family.

Author: Huanhuan

Source: WeChat public account "Party A Finance (ID: jiafangcaijing2019)"