Will small and medium-sized businesses no longer be "voiceless" during this 618?

The 618 shopping festival, which is known as the most exciting shopping festival in history, has come to an end. In this 618 shopping festival, all major e-commerce platforms have used their own tricks. This year's special 618, the Internet population dividend has gradually receded, and the e-commerce industry has gradually said goodbye to high growth. Will small and medium-sized businesses no longer "lose their voice" in this 618 shopping festival?

An interesting "selling" story has been circulating in the 618 battlefield this year.

Recently, the "hand-holding incident" has sparked heated discussions across the Internet. According to Taobao platform data, on the afternoon of the day the incident fermented, the sales volume of the same dress as the heroine in the video reached more than 800 pieces.

This dress is an original Taobao store SIBLEU, launched in 2021, and is a mixture of Chinese and French elements. With the hot discussion of the "Hand-Hand Gate" incident, the SIBLEU Taobao store has received a huge influx of traffic in a short period of time, which has flattered the two post-90s Taobao store owners.

Taobao data shows that June 8 was SIBLEU’s first live broadcast, with more than 500,000 viewers and store sales exceeding 4.5 million yuan. The store’s fans increased by nearly 20,000 in 7 days, and more than 3,000 skirts of the same style were sold in 24 hours.

Taobao screenshot

It is worth mentioning that some self-media people once said that the female protagonist of the "hand-holding incident" was wearing a foreign luxury high-end dress worth 90,000 yuan, but it was actually an original work of a domestic niche Taobao store. The Chinese silk fabrics, jacquard and splicing elements combined with French tailoring are all surprises brought by domestic originals.

For a long time, tracking traffic events and generating explosive sales of single products have always been the "good opportunities" that small and medium-sized businesses have longed for. After all, in today's e-commerce world, especially at the key points of big promotions, "low-price marketing" seems to have become politically correct. However, for small and medium-sized businesses, if they simply rely on subsidies to reduce the prices of goods, it will only gradually compress their development space.

Looking back at the entire history of e-commerce development, whether it is Taobao, which has been around for 20 years, or the up-and-coming Pinduoduo and Douyin e-commerce, their road to success is inseparable from thousands of small and medium-sized businesses.

However, with the entry of brand merchants, the drama of the strong getting stronger is constantly being played out in the e-commerce field - larger brand merchants are gradually gaining more attention, while the large number of small and medium-sized merchants are gradually "losing their voice".

This is even more obvious during the big promotion period. Some platforms have realized that relying solely on big brand bonuses to make money will only worsen the living environment of small and medium-sized businesses and may lead to the collapse of the entire ecosystem - when the small fish are eaten up, no more big fish will appear in an ecosystem.

This is also a topic that cannot be avoided behind this special 618.

Especially when the Internet demographic dividend gradually disappears, the e-commerce industry gradually bids farewell to high growth. At this special moment, the survival of small and medium-sized businesses and the resulting e-commerce ecological problems may need to be put on the table again. For the platform, what is urgently needed is how to find a way to make small and medium-sized businesses survive better.

This is not just a question of attitude. Only when more small fish emerge can more big fish emerge. When the entire industry faces growth anxiety, reshaping the ecosystem may be a good solution.

1. New faces on stage

Looking at the entire e-commerce ecosystem, the small and medium-sized businesses that can survive include the cost-conscious ones who sacrifice quality for low prices by increasing volume, the front-line observers who are good at converting public sentiment into consumer hotspots, and the diligent ones who "work overtime" to do live broadcasts and seriously develop private domains.

At a time when consumer demand is becoming increasingly diversified, another advantage of small and medium-sized businesses over branded businesses is also becoming more prominent.

Yao Jing, a girl born after 1995, runs an IP peripheral store. Although the store has only 7,206 fans, the monthly sales of the best-selling product have exceeded 600. She is good at conveying rich information and emotions through highly recognizable IP peripheral images, gradually attracting a group of loyal fans. This advantage has also become a bargaining chip for her to avoid being involved in the "low price war".

Some consumers are willing to pay for IP peripherals with personal characteristics, rather than just looking for bargains at low prices. This year is the first time that Yao Jing's store participated in Taobao 618, and its opening sales increased by 170% year-on-year, which is a good result for a Taobao store that has just been open for half a year.

Xiao Xu from Guangdong is a college student majoring in e-commerce. In order to complete the homework assigned by his teacher, he opened a shop on Taobao to sell virtual mosquitoes: after the buyer placed an order, the seller played the role of a mosquito through social software and sent texts such as "buzz buzz buzz" to the buyer's designated friends.

Unexpectedly, this cyber mosquito that meets the social and emotional needs of young people has become popular this summer. In the month before 618 this year, Xiao Xu sold a total of 600 "mosquitoes", earning enough money for a cup of milk tea almost every day. Another merchant who sells "pure wild mosquitoes" on Taobao has even achieved monthly sales of more than 1 million...

It may be difficult for the standard configuration of large brands to provide comprehensive services to cater to the hobbies of people from multiple circles and meet the increasingly segmented consumption preferences of different groups of people. However, small and medium-sized businesses are more suitable for responding to niche and personalized needs because of their more flexible service methods.

Image source: Internet

This is the "difference" of small and medium-sized businesses, but they need to be seen and reach users, and their pain points urgently need to be "healed" by the platform.

Therefore, this is also one of the key changes made by many e-commerce platforms this year, namely to increase the attention paid to small and medium-sized businesses, and the biggest "groundbreaking" in this regard is Taobao Tmall.

On the eve of 618 this year, the center position of Taobao’s homepage has become a new channel “Taobao Good Prices”, and below it is the “Taobao Good Prices Festival” following the 618 promotion.

In the new channel of "Taobao Good Price", there are not only 9.9 yuan general merchandise sold directly by factories, limited-time flash sales with discounts of up to 50%, but also a variety of categories such as clothing, shoes and bags, beauty and skin care, and fresh food. In terms of the size of merchants, a large part of them are small and medium-sized merchants.

At the same time, during the 618 period, Taobao's "Guess You Like" further tilted towards short videos and live broadcasts, allowing small and medium-sized businesses that are good at content to come out in time; the "Treasure Popular Store List" starting in May also allowed businesses that have made some achievements in private domain reputation and customized services to obtain more traffic; Taobao Tmall even directly gave 2 billion advertising subsidies and launched a "star-making" plan.

Top 3 of the “Treasure Popularity Store List” in May

It can be seen that behind a series of actions during the 618 period, Taobao hopes to set up different "batons" through operational means to allow different types of small and medium-sized businesses to stand out and make money.

For small and medium-sized businesses, being invisible has always been the biggest pain point. Although many platforms have been offering subsidies for a long time, only by making changes to the mechanism can the problem of small and medium-sized businesses’ upward channels be systematically solved.

In addition, this year's Tmall 618 was not only quietly renamed "Taobao Tmall 618", but small and medium-sized businesses also appeared in the first day report of 618 for the first time. On June 1, Taobao released a special "battle report". Unlike the previous report cards filled with all kinds of "strong growth" of big brands, this report records the "trivialities" of small and medium-sized businesses. The report shows that more than 2 million small and medium-sized businesses have sold their first orders for the first time participating in 618.

Small and medium-sized businesses had a better sense of participation during the 618 period, which obviously laid the foundation for this reform of Taobao.

2. No longer a “second-class citizen”?

However, even if the platform releases better signals, looking at the development history of small and medium-sized businesses over the years, they may still be a long way from the real "spring".

When Taobao was founded 20 years ago, the initial backbone was small and medium-sized businesses, mainly C stores. They were the main body of the phrase "making it easy to do business anywhere".

Although this group is huge and small, and easy to turn around, brand image is a difficult problem they need to face as they continue to grow.

In the early days, small and medium-sized merchants on Taobao had not yet formed brand awareness, and basically adopted a wholesale model, which failed to establish brand awareness in the minds of consumers. This also led to the disadvantage of small and medium-sized merchants in C stores in the subsequent competition with B-end brand merchants. In 2012, Taobao Mall was renamed Tmall, and brand merchants began to enter the e-commerce field on a large scale, and the Matthew effect began to appear.

In the past decade, although the GMV of the e-commerce industry has been soaring, it must be admitted that brands have played a great role in this. Although the large-scale small and medium-sized businesses have always supported the most extensive demand base of consumers, they have gradually lost their voice in the public opinion field.

2022 E-commerce Development Analysis Report

After Alibaba announced the "integration" of Taobao and Tmall in January 2022, small and medium-sized merchants and brand merchants entered the same trench. This operational idea has also pulled small and medium-sized merchants back from the edge of the table to a certain extent.

But it was not until Alibaba split its business into six and established Taobao Group that things may have really taken a turn for the better. On the eve of 618, Taobao and Tmall established a parallel SME development center while establishing the brand business development center. The two centers are interconnected, with the aim of opening up a path for small and medium-sized businesses to move up.

This may also provide a new idea for the next stage of development of the e-commerce industry.

Whether it is supporting small and medium-sized businesses or consolidating the base of brand businesses, the essence is to enrich the ecology of the entire e-commerce platform, rather than one increasing at the expense of the other. In this ecology, brand businesses need to exert economies of scale, and small and medium-sized businesses need to explore personalized business opportunities to meet more user needs.

However, the disadvantages of this measure are also obvious: the platform must sacrifice short-term interests to support small and medium-sized businesses. After all, the contribution of small and medium-sized businesses to the platform's GMV, revenue and profits is still far behind that of brand owners.

Even if more "small fish" can stand out from the Taobao ecosystem and become "big fish" in the future, it will take some time. Can Taobao really wait?

All of this is still full of uncertainty. While Taobao is at the forefront of reform, changes have already begun to take place, but it may not be the day to draw a conclusion on where the fate of small and medium-sized businesses will eventually lead.