GMV exceeds 80 million. Is Xiaohongshu going to enter the field of e-commerce live streaming?

Xiaohongshu’s current status in the live streaming field, its attitude and actions towards the e-commerce live streaming field, and its development prospects in this field.

Has Xiaohongshu’s “No. 1 Salesperson” appeared?

Recently, Dong Jie has become famous for her gentle style of live streaming and her GMV of over 80 million in two live streaming sales on Xiaohongshu. This is also the first popular IP of Xiaohongshu in the field of live streaming e-commerce.

In fact, Xiaohongshu was not late in entering the live e-commerce market. As early as 2019, it was reported that it was testing the live broadcast function, but there has been no benchmark case to show. Many institutions and businesses still regard Xiaohongshu as a "grass planting" platform.

Now, does the emergence of "Yijie" mean that Xiaohongshu's live streaming e-commerce has begun to accelerate? Is Xiaohongshu really suitable for live streaming sales?

1. The “No. 1 Salesperson” of Xiaohongshu has emerged?

The public has long been accustomed to celebrities selling goods on live broadcasts, but unlike most live broadcasts that use "acting shows", "paying for the goods", and "sensationalism", Dong Jie's live broadcast style of selling goods is "gentle".
How gentle is it?

In a recent live broadcast, she appeared in the live broadcast room wearing a brown and white sweater and a low bun. Before the live broadcast officially started, Dong Jie just sat quietly in front of the camera and talked with her assistant.

"Hello, hello everyone. Today is another weekend. I meet you all in the live broadcast room." After the live broadcast started, Dong Jie greeted the camera gently.

When explaining the products, she was not in a hurry and her mood was calm. Some netizens said that Dong Jie's live broadcast room did not shout "123 to link", and she also wanted to share her clothing matching with everyone, which made her look fresh and refined in the noisy live broadcast rooms.

In addition, the layout of Dong Jie's live broadcast room is also eye-catching, with large white walls, wooden floors, leather sofas, and various decorations. Without exaggerated scenery, the entire live broadcast room looks warm and natural, down-to-earth while retaining an elegant and noble temperament.

On that day, Dong Jie's live broadcast room had 65 products on sale, mainly including clothing, shoes, hats, beauty and skin care, jewelry, etc. However, the average customer price of the products in Dong Jie's live broadcast room was relatively high, with prices almost all above 299 yuan, and some well-known brand clothing prices as high as more than 2,000 yuan. Only a small number of fast-moving consumer goods such as snacks were priced lower.

As a live streaming novice, Dong Jie has only held two live broadcasts to sell goods so far. The first one was on January 13, and the second one was on February 24. On average, there is one live broadcast per month, which is not a high frequency.

But judging from the results, Dong Jie's performance in bringing goods is very impressive - according to the data released by Xiaohongshu Mall,

The GMV of Dong Jie's two live broadcasts on January 13 and February 24 reached over 50 million and over 30 million respectively. The average viewing time per person was about 6 minutes, and she once topped the Xiaohongshu sales list.

After the live broadcast, Dong Jie's Xiaohongshu account gained more than 500,000 followers. The current total number of followers on the account is 1.45 million, making her a "big V" on Xiaohongshu.

Dong Jie's rise to fame quickly sparked discussion within the industry.

First of all, it is because of her live broadcast style. In the background of the noisy and eye-catching live broadcasts of celebrities who are "showing off their acting skills", "paying for others' love", "sentimental", etc., Dong Jie's live broadcast is undoubtedly "a breath of fresh air". Some netizens said that this is the most quiet and comfortable live broadcast of celebrities they have seen so far, and she is also the first celebrity who makes everyone feel that live broadcasting does not "lower the price".

On the other hand, Dong Jie’s live streaming platform is Xiaohongshu, which is a platform that did not seem to have much influence in the live streaming e-commerce field. Therefore, her results are also surprising: Xiaohongshu has also created a “top live streaming website”?

2. Secretly develop live e-commerce

"In fact, Xiaohongshu has been quietly working on live streaming, it just happened to be a relatively popular case."

Regarding Dong Jie's emergence from the circle, L, an industry insider who has been paying close attention to Xiaohongshu, said he was not particularly surprised.

"Li Jiaqi's former assistant Fu Peng also did a live broadcast on Xiaohongshu, which actually caused some discussion at the time." He added that the trend of live streaming e-commerce on Xiaohongshu has actually been around for quite a while.

On October 21, 2020, after announcing his "solo career", Fu Peng started his first live broadcast on the Xiaohongshu platform as a fashion and beauty anchor. The live broadcast lasted nearly 5 hours, with a cumulative popularity of 220 million, a total of about 740,000 viewers, and a peak of over 170,000 viewers, and continued to rank first on the Xiaohongshu live broadcast room popularity list and sales list during the same period. At that time, the topic #Fupeng直播 also topped the hot search on Weibo.

Xinbochang also learned that in addition to Dong Jie, Xiaohongshu has also invited female stars such as Zhang Li and Li Chun to start broadcasting on the platform.

Moreover, judging from the product selection in the live broadcast rooms, the product categories promoted by Dong Jie, Zhang Li and others are very similar, all focusing on fashion areas such as clothing and beauty, with mostly big brands and high average order value.

In addition, Zhang Dada, who has recently become popular, also quietly launched a one-hour live broadcast on Xiaohongshu on March 2. Although he did not carry out live broadcasting to sell goods, Zhang Dada said in the live broadcast that if users need it, he would consider doing live broadcasts on Xiaohongshu to share good things without carrying goods.

In addition to inviting more and more celebrities to join the live streaming sales, many users and influencers have also felt the change in Xiaohongshu's attitude towards live streaming and e-commerce.

Xiao C, a senior user of Xiaohongshu, has found that the frequency of live broadcasts on the homepage is increasing. "Sometimes it's game live broadcasts, sometimes it's accessories, and I've also seen food live broadcasts."

Some short video experts have found that Xiaohongshu has lowered the threshold for opening a store. Now, as long as the merchant is certified, he or she can open a store with zero threshold, without paying a deposit or requiring a certain number of fans.

This was totally unbelievable before. The short video expert said that he had a video that went viral before, but the threshold for opening a store was too high and he couldn’t list any products, resulting in him not making a penny.

Xinbochang also discovered that on March 6, Xiaohongshu held the "E-commerce Live Streaming Fashion Partner Conference" in Shanghai, announcing the launch of the "Fashion Spark Plan", which provides support policies such as product selection, marketing tools, and platform services to fashion merchants and anchors with tens of billions of traffic support, helping the growth of Xiaohongshu's high-quality fashion anchors.

At the meeting, Xiaohongshu also released a set of platform data: In 2022, the number of Xiaohongshu e-commerce live broadcast hosts increased by 337% year-on-year, and the number of live broadcasts increased by 214% year-on-year.

Fashion content is undoubtedly one of the tracks that is closest to the content atmosphere of Xiaohongshu. From Dong Jie's case, to supporting more and more celebrity anchors, to launching support plans to provide traffic and policies, Xiaohongshu has finally stopped hiding its ambitions for live e-commerce.

3. Can we overtake on the curve?

In fact, Xiaohongshu’s determination to develop e-commerce live streaming has never disappeared.

As early as June 2019, Xiaohongshu had already started testing the live streaming function, launched the sales portal, and specifically invited some influencers to participate in the experience. However, at that time, Xiaohongshu was still relatively cautious about live streaming e-commerce and was not in a hurry to realize commercialization, but insisted on focusing on social sharing.

For this reason, more than three years later, apart from the fact that Fu Peng briefly created a splash for Xiaohongshu in the field of live streaming e-commerce, Xiaohongshu has never truly created its own live streaming e-commerce IP.

This is also related to the platform ecology of Xiaohongshu. Xiaohongshu has a large number of mid-level influencers, but there are relatively few top influencers with a certain degree of influence. Moreover, most influencers only use it as a platform for sharing content and recommending products, while "pulling grass" is either on Taobao or Douyin Kuaishou.

What Xiaohongshu wants to do is to create a native IP like Dong Jie. They share content on Xiaohongshu and also complete the weeding on the platform.

But despite this, to this day, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce live streaming is still not favored by many people in the industry, and some even bluntly say that "Pinduoduo's short videos have more prospects than Xiaohongshu."

Factors such as Xiaohongshu's platform positioning, user groups, and community atmosphere mean that it is destined to be difficult for it to follow the same path as platforms such as Taobao, Douyin, and Kuaishou.

So, can Dong Jie’s “slow live broadcast” and sharing-oriented live broadcast lifestyle of selling goods be replicated on Xiaohongshu?

It’s hard to say what will happen in the long run, but from the current perspective, Xiaohongshu has indeed found a style that suits itself in the red ocean of live streaming e-commerce.

We can also see that the competition between platforms is becoming increasingly fierce. Taobao poached anchors from Douyin, Douyin and Kuaishou accelerated the construction of shelf e-commerce, and JD.com and Pinduoduo both supported content to snatch anchors.

The speed of anchor replacement in the entire industry is also accelerating, and it is time for platforms to truly compete in their ecosystems.

Author: Xiaolongguo

Source: WeChat public account "New Broadcasting Field (ID: New_bc)"