Exclusive broadcasting on APP, transformation into live e-commerce, and entry into cultural tourism: Let’s talk about the future development of Oriental Selection

Just yesterday, Dongfang Zhenxuan revealed that its Douyin store was closed, and announced a temporary 15% discount promotion on its own APP. This move, to some extent, echoed the previous independent live broadcast on its own APP. How to interpret it specifically? Let's take a look at the author's analysis.

"Oriental Selected's own product store was closed for three days"

Yesterday, Oriental Selection revealed that its Douyin store had been closed. CEO Sun Dongxu called it "very sudden" during a live broadcast. He said that after learning that the shared bikes were suddenly towed away in the afternoon, the company's self-operated products could not be sold for three consecutive days. In order not to affect the customer's consumption experience, the company temporarily decided to hold a 15% discount promotion on the APP. Users who purchased the products in the previous few days can contact customer service to make up the difference.

Regardless of whether Douyin took the initiative, Dongfang Zhenxuan's quick move to its own APP was very smooth, and the discount promotion even attracted a large number of Douyin channel fans to automatically convert and download the APP. As of 10:30 p.m. on the 27th, the single-day sales of the Dongfang Zhenxuan APP had reached 30 million.

Since Oriental Selection built its own APP two months after its debut last year, many people in the e-commerce industry have regarded this as a signal of "getting rid of Douyin".

During this period, Oriental Selection has been making frequent moves on its own APP, from simultaneous broadcasts on Douyin and the APP, to exclusive broadcasts on the APP, to listing differentiated products on the APP and making discount distinctions. "Getting rid of Douyin" is a step that will be taken sooner or later.

Some netizens used the words "escape" and "betrayal" to describe Oriental Selection, believing that it is an indisputable fact that it became famous on Douyin and that one should remember the people who dug the well. Some netizens also believed that there is nothing wrong with a multi-platform layout, weakening dependence on a single platform and reducing risks.

During the game, the owner of the chop also observed that Dongfang Zhenxuan has greater ambitions in cultural tourism. The newly established New Oriental Cultural Tourism has a registered capital of 1 billion yuan, and its legal representative and chairman are both Yu Minhong. This time, their target audience is middle-aged and elderly people. From July 5 to July 9, the matrix account "Dongfang Zhenxuan See the World", which focuses on cultural tourism, simultaneously launched a special live broadcast of "Gansu Trip" on Douyin and its own APP. The maximum number of people online at the same time on the APP live broadcast has reached tens of thousands.

1. Exclusive broadcasting on APP solves the growth problems of a single platform?

In June last year, Oriental Selection took advantage of Dong Yuhui to catch the bonus train of Douyin's "content-based live streaming", and saw the traffic boom of "more than 3 million fans increased in a week", "single-day sales of 15.343 million", and "sales increased 40 times", and directly escaped the haze brought by the closure of the K9 business.

Over the past year, Oriental Selection has rapidly expanded its presence on Douyin, increasing its accounts from 1 to 6 and expanding its product categories from single agricultural products to books, beauty products, clothing, wine, cultural and tourism products, etc., using the live broadcast matrix to continue its past popularity, with a total of more than 30 million Douyin fans.

But the cruelty of live streaming e-commerce is that no anchor or live streaming room can be popular for a long time. In addition, the dividends of live streaming e-commerce are dissipating, and the business model of Dongfang Zhenxuan, which is based on platform e-commerce, is extremely fragile. On the one hand, the deep binding of the big anchor Dong Yuhui makes Dongfang Zhenxuan unable to escape the dilemma of being a talent-led salesperson. Haitong Securities shows that in March this year, the average number of viewers of Dong Yuhui's live broadcasts was 9.5 million, a gain of 31.6%, and the average GMV was 17.45 million, a gain of 35.8%, which is significantly higher than the GMV on days when Dong Yuhui did not broadcast live.

Later, Oriental Selection gradually "de-Dong Yuhuiized". For example, the "Yuhui strongly recommended" label was removed from its book number, and the image of Dong Yuhui disappeared from the packaging of its own brand steak. Another example is that it actively cultivated new talents to weaken its excessive dependence on Dong Yuhui, but the results were minimal. Even rumors that Dong Yuhui was going solo directly affected New Oriental Online's operations and even its stock price.

On the other hand, the growth has slowed down noticeably. According to Haitong Securities data, from January to March this year, the average daily GMV of Oriental Selection fell by 20 million yuan, and the number of viewers fell by 10 million. In the second half of 2022, the average daily GMV of Oriental Selection basically remained above 20 million yuan, the number of viewers never fell below 10 million, and the peak could reach 25 million.

Regarding the view that traffic is gradually reaching its peak, Yu Minhong mentioned at the opening ceremony of the China Democratic League Rural Revitalization Development Forum held in March this year that "At present, Dongfang Zhenxuan is a platform for bringing goods, and this has a ceiling."

Therefore, as early as last year, two months after the Dongfang Zhenxuan Douyin live broadcast room became popular, the Dongfang Zhenxuan APP was launched on major application platforms, seeking and building a safer business model through self-operated products. At that time, the total number of APP downloads was close to 200,000, and some e-commerce professionals in the industry predicted that this was to lay the foundation for the "Douyin" campaign.

On July 5 this year, Oriental Selection launched simultaneous live broadcast on its own APP and Douyin e-commerce platform for the first time, which was interpreted by the outside world as preparation for "going viral on Douyin".

As the rumors intensified, Yu Minhong responded positively in a live broadcast on the evening of July 9: "Dongfangzhenxuan and Douyin platform have a mutually beneficial relationship. Creating its own platform is a normal and enterprising behavior of the company. I hope everyone will not over-interpret it."

A few days later, on July 12, the Oriental Selection APP launched its first independent live broadcast, with the highest number of people online at the same time exceeding 26,000. Yu Minhong responded in the live broadcast that this was just a trial performance and he wanted to see what the effect of the exclusive broadcast would be.

On July 13, the Oriental Selection APP was updated and multiple live broadcast rooms were launched. Two live broadcast rooms, "Oriental Selection Member Store" and "Oriental Selection Self-owned Products", have started simultaneous live broadcasts.

On July 17, the Heilongjiang special event was broadcasted outdoors for the first time. The APP live broadcast room had a maximum of 46,000 online users, and the Oriental Selection APP was downloaded more than Sam's Club that day, entering the top ten shopping apps on the Apple Store.

For Douyin, at this time last year, the content innovation of the "Oriental Selection" live broadcast scene to a certain extent promoted the platform's mixed "9.9 yuan" rap-style anchor sales ecosystem from bad money to good money.

But after Dong Yuhui, groups of experts and anchors wanted to reap the benefits of content. Although there were phenomenal anchors such as Zhang Lan and Dazui Mei, their sales and popularity were far less than that of Oriental Selection.

The development strategy and path of Oriental Selection are already very clear. It does not want to become a "Douyin brand" but a vertical e-commerce platform. Although the user mindset of "high-quality agricultural products sales platform" has been established, it still needs to rely heavily on Douyin's traffic advantage to help its private domain complete cold start and attract new users.

The two sides are in a game of chess.

2. How is the development of Oriental Selection APP?

Then focus your attention on the APP selected by Oriental.

Compared with the layout of Douyin, firstly, the way of displaying goods in the APP is similar to that of traditional shopping malls, which is different from the window design of Douyin; secondly, there are more special live broadcast rooms such as "Mountain and River Treasures", "Self-service Supermarket" and "Membership Store"; thirdly, "New Product Launch" and "Exclusive Goods" are launched for the first time, and some products are exclusive to the APP.

What is more worthy of attention is "who has the lowest price". According to the statistics of Yilan Business, 16 products were randomly selected. Among them, 7 of the 11 selected third-party brands had lower prices on the APP. The price difference of OMEDa's cookware combination set was even as high as nearly 1,000 yuan.

Previously, Oriental Selection's own brand maintained the same price on both platforms, but this was broken in this game. A 15% discount promotion was held directly on the APP. Users who purchased the product in the previous few days can also contact customer service to make up the difference.

According to Dongfang Zhenxuan, on the evening of July 26, Dongfang Xiaosun, anchor Pengpeng and Mingming broadcast live on the APP, recommending and explaining self-operated products to netizens. More than 26,000 people were online in the live broadcast room at the same time. Sales of self-operated products exceeded 10 million yuan, and sales of many self-operated products such as grilled sausages, white shrimps, chicken breasts, toast, pizza, peaches, eggs, etc. exceeded 10,000 orders.

Zooming in to the strategic level, in a live broadcast on July 19, Dongfang Zhenxuan CEO Sun Dongxu revealed the development direction of the APP: one is to be a platform for selecting good products; the second is to be a membership service system; and the third is to be a cultural content platform.

The first development direction is easy to understand. Following the product selection logic of the "Oriental Selection" Douyin live broadcast room, we choose high-quality, high-unit-price products. The important action is to continuously expand the number of self-operated products, and the sales share will gradually increase.

In the earnings call last August, Oriental Selection revealed that it had launched nearly 30 self-operated products at the time, and self-operated products accounted for about 15% of sales revenue. Now, a year later, Oriental Selection's self-operated category pool has nearly 80 SKUs, and its categories have expanded from food and beverages to daily necessities, covering an increasingly wide range of categories.

The second development direction is new actions in the future. Sun Dongxu mentioned in the live broadcast that the Oriental Selection APP will promote a paid membership system. The first is to pay directly and become a paid member. The second is to reach a certain amount of consumption and become a paid member. The third is to promote and attract a specified number of new members to become a paid member, and enjoy discounted member discounts, member-only products, etc.

In our impression, paid members of several major traditional e-commerce companies such as Taobao and JD.com all pay annual fees, and there is no other way to play. Members who want big discounts must also meet active conditions. Oriental Selection is similar to moving the warehouse membership store model online.

It is not difficult to see that Oriental Selection is anxious about traffic and attracting new customers, but in essence, making an APP is a difficult but correct thing to do. It increases the average order value and screens high-net-worth people. In the future, the membership system will be powerful and deep binding with users will be achieved directly, which also means the success of the APP. The number of people online in the live broadcast will not be that important.

We learned that Oriental Selection is expected to launch a new version of the points mall in August.

The third is the cultural platform, which is also the core advantage of Dongfang Zhenxuan's successful transformation into live e-commerce. At present, the live broadcast rooms such as "Guest Record" and "Mountain and River Treasures" use the video playback mode. The company also edits the previous special live broadcast content and plays recorded video content in some live broadcast rooms.

3. In addition to bringing goods: Targeting the middle-aged and elderly cultural tourism, zero shopping throughout the journey

It is worth noting that New Oriental’s goal is not just to sell products.

"After Oriental Selection, we started a business again, and New Oriental will officially explore the cultural tourism industry. This time, what New Oriental wants to do is to provide high-quality cultural tourism services for middle-aged and elderly people, which will give them a sense of cultural happiness, knowledge acquisition, and personal pursuit." On July 21, New Oriental officially announced its entry into culture and tourism on its official WeChat account, and emphasized that culture and tourism was given the same importance as education and sales.

In fact, Oriental Selection started its cultural tourism business much earlier. The most obvious example is that in November last year, Oriental Selection launched a sub-account called "Oriental Selection See the World". So far, the "Oriental Selection See the World" account has 2.88 million followers and has uploaded more than 10 outdoor live broadcasts, including "See the World in Hunan", "See the World in Sichuan", and "See the World in Guangzhou". The total number of views for "See the World in Xi'an" and "See the World in Yunnan" is over 90 million and 60 million respectively.

In the past two months, when the APP was planning independent live broadcasts, culture and tourism were also laid out as a key live broadcast room, led by Yu Minhong himself, and assisted by veteran team anchors such as Dong Yuhui and Yoyo.

The official Weibo account also revealed that New Oriental Culture and Tourism has currently established branches in Shaanxi, Gansu, Zhejiang, Xinjiang and other places, and has released travel routes.

Taking the first cultural and tourism live broadcast launched by Zhejiang New Oriental as an example, it was watched by more than 15,000 people. The live broadcast room launched a "light version" route of 4 days and 3 nights for 3,999 yuan and a "PLUS version" route of 6 days and 5 nights for 5,999 yuan. Each route has a specific cultural and historical theme, such as the journey to trace the origins of Su Dongpo's spirit and the journey to Tang poetry in eastern Zhejiang.

It is understood that in June this year, Zhejiang New Oriental took the lead in piloting the "Dongpo Origin Tracing Tour" based on regional customized needs, and sent out 15 groups in July, with more than 280 members. It is reported that each group is equipped with cultural and tourism lecturers and travel stewards, and the maximum number of people in a group is 16. In addition, the public of Zhejiang New Oriental Cultural Tourism also stated that 0 shopping is its product label, revealing its intention to build reputation and culture.

It is not difficult to see that New Oriental’s idea of ​​cultural tourism is similar to Oriental Selection’s live streaming sales, targeting mid- to high-end consumers and adhering to the cultural gene of in-depth travel.

At present, the domestic cultural and tourism market for middle-aged and elderly people has long been occupied by low-cost tours and shopping groups. These tour groups first attract elderly tourists with low prices, and then take the elderly to Sanya to buy latex pillows and pearl necklaces to make back the cost, so the reputation is seriously divided.

However, if you want to reach this type of base group of people and get them to pay, and make content-based short videos and live broadcasts for promotion, you need a large platform, and it will also be easier to achieve word-of-mouth. Douyin, Video Account, and Xiaohongshu will also be battlegrounds for New Oriental Culture and Tourism.

As a high-traffic IP that has grown up relying on Douyin, the dependence and reciprocity between Oriental Selection and Douyin are extremely deep. When the platform loses the low-price guarantee of the anchor, counterattack is also an inevitable part of the game process.

For Oriental Selection, whether it is using its own APP to accumulate private domain traffic, screen high-net-worth users, or undergoing a secondary transformation across cultural and tourism industries, these are all long-term tasks that can be accomplished overnight and not achieved overnight.

This also means that the importance of Douyin to it is still self-evident. The closure of Douyin stores this time may be a "warning" signal from the platform. For Dongfang Zhenxuan, how to balance the relationship with the platform in the game and evolution and maintain the stability of the basic position may be the topic it needs to focus on next.

Author: 24

Original title: Douyin live broadcast room was suspended for 3 days, will the final outcome of Oriental Selection be to become your own "Sam"?

Source: Doujiao TMT (ID: ylwanjia), the smell and temperature of new traffic, new technology, new gameplay, and new economy.