How can something so ugly that it hurts the eyes become a trend?

Recently, the results of Taobao's Ugly Things Contest were announced. Why can the annual Ugly Things Contest survive and continue in the market? Ugly things have become a subculture, leading the fashion trend of young people, and related derivatives have gradually formed a business. Will it be able to form a larger market scale in the future? Let's take a look.

Beautiful things are always the same, but ugly things are rare. I don't know when ugly things gradually got rid of the audience's aesthetic blind spot and have a tendency to become mainstream. Recently, the third Taobao Ugly Things Award Ceremony just came to an end. This year's "Top Five Ugly Works of the Year" once again refreshed the audience's perception of "ugliness", which also made the audience realize that there seems to be no ceiling for ugly things.

From the appearance, the award-winning ugly things have both a weird and funny contrast in design and strong practicality. Take the brain flower hat as an example. When words like love brain and brain fog became popular, wearing a brain flower hat to work is equivalent to "wearing your brain" to work. This ugly thing not only caters to the self-mockery of young people, but is also enough to dispel the pain after trauma. This is also the traffic code for ugly things to be favored by young people.

Nowadays, ugly things are becoming a subculture and leading the fashion trend of young people. Related derivatives have gradually formed a business. As time goes by, how big will the market size of the ugly things business be?

1. Who is helping to make ugly things popular?

In 2020, the Douban Ugly Things Protection Association and Taobao jointly organized the "2020 Ugly Things Selection Competition". At that time, ugly things had just emerged, and the organizers received entries from tens of thousands of netizens in half a month. These bizarre designs were trying to lead a new aesthetic trend and subvert the audience's perception of beauty.

The person in charge of the Ugly Things Project of Taobao publicly stated: "The original intention of holding the Ugly Things Awards is not to select 'ugly' things that are 'sensational', but to use this opportunity to allow more unique and creative products to emerge on Taobao." At the first Ugly Things Awards Ceremony, the green-headed fish headgear, tiger climbing pantyhose, long-legged kite, wool felt in the hands of buyers, and crazy alien dolls were awarded the "Five Ugly Things of the Year" awards.

Among them, the green-headed fish headgear won the "Uglier Than One" award. This headgear looks very eye-catching, weird and funny, suitable for bloggers to edit funny short videos. The long-legged kite has a 3D sense. When flying this kite outdoors, it looks like two legs are floating in the sky. However, since these ugly things are not exposed enough and are niche products, they have not occupied too much of the user's mind. During the live broadcast of the ceremony, only a few hundred people watched it online.

However, driven by social media such as Weibo, Douban, and Xiaohongshu, ugly things are accelerating their pace of going viral. Relevant data shows that in 2021, more than 600,000 people watched the live broadcast of Taobao's second Ugly Things Awards Ceremony online, and this year, more than one million netizens watched the live broadcast of the third Ugly Things Awards Ceremony.

In addition, the video of each Taobao Ugly Things Award Ceremony has been played three to four million times on Bilibili, the Douban Ugly Things Protection Association group has expanded from less than 100,000 people to more than 240,000 people, and there are more than 200,000 notes about ugly things on Xiaohongshu, with everyone sharing who they think is the ugly thing champion.

From being little known to being popular among the whole nation, ugly things have finally ushered in their own spring. If you dig deeper into the traffic code of ugly things, you will find that the popularity of ugly things is not only due to the blessing of design elements, but also closely related to the changes in the overall environment. During the epidemic, with the increasing pressure from the outside world, more and more people gradually fell into mental exhaustion. At this time, the strange and ugly things suddenly appeared, which immediately gave the audience a bright feeling.

In 2021, the human face leather mask won the "Ugly Taste Award". When talking about the design concept, the winner said bluntly: "Under the epidemic, unchanging expressions have gradually become fixed on our faces. The emergence of simulated human face masks hopes to remind ourselves under the blue and white masks to smile more." Similar works can not only bring spiritual encouragement and enlightenment to people, but also contain social wisdom.

In the mainstream aesthetic, users often have too singular a definition of beauty, but ugly things boldly break the inherent framework, are unconstrained and unconventional. Symbolically speaking, ugly things represent a new aesthetic style of Generation Z and the ACG community. They can use ugly things as a carrier to laugh at themselves and dispel the serious atmosphere of the outside world. This is also a deconstruction and reconstruction of subculture.

Under the combined effect of practicality and design, ugly things are capturing more and more young people. For young people, browsing and buying ugly things not only helps them relieve the pressure of life, but also provides them with a sense of companionship invisibly.

2. How can ugly things develop into a business?

As the design concept of ugly things is gradually accepted by mainstream aesthetics, the corresponding ugly things products have also developed into a business driven by the Taobao Awards Ceremony. After three ugly things ceremonies, hundreds of ugly things have been created. Bloggers on Bilibili and Xiaohongshu have uploaded corresponding ugly things evaluation videos, and the Douban Ugly Things Protection Association has also posted various posts. With the promotion of many KOLs and KOCs, more and more users are buying ugly things.

Ugly Things also has a certain space for commercial development due to its advantages such as low production cost, high profit and popular products. On the road to commercialization of Ugly Things, how Ugly Things can establish a complete supply and marketing industry chain and continue to output fresh content for consumers is a challenge faced by merchants and creators.

In June 2022, the Gansu Museum launched a "Horse Stepping on Flying Swallow" doll. This doll is designed in imitation of the bronze ware "Horse Stepping on Flying Swallow". From the appearance, the doll version of the cultural relic is more like a grinning green horse stepping on an angry bird, which is cute and funny. At the beginning of the launch, this doll was not popular until some netizens posted it on social media, which caused widespread discussion. Some netizens commented: "This horse doesn't look very smart" and "It feels very funny"...

At that time, I think many people had "received a yellow code". In this case, who wouldn't want to have a green horse to travel smoothly? Consumers also shouted the slogan: "Everyone has a horse, and everyone should use them." What's more, the horse stepping on flying swallow also has a homophonic pun of "green code stepping on pneumonia", which carries the beautiful meaning of everyone's desire to travel.

Relevant data shows that on June 27, more than 7,000 green horse dolls were sold. It took only five days for the "Horse Stepping on Flying Swallow" to go from popular to sold out, and the pre-sale was as high as 10,000 pieces. The commercial potential of ugly things is evident, but not all ugly things can create miraculous sales.

Logically speaking, after the third Taobao Ugly Things Awards Ceremony, the ugly things that won the "Five Ugliest Things of the Year" should have seen a surge in sales, but in fact this was not the case. Crowley observed that among the five ugliest things of the year, only the brain flower hat had a high sales volume, with monthly sales of more than 500. However, it was also influenced by the celebrity effect. In the variety show "Hello, Saturday", Wu Lei gave Zhou Yutong a brain flower hat, and netizens asked for the same one.

In comparison, the sales of ugly clay human face cases and frog puppet costumes are only in the dozens, which is really too bleak. From a commercial perspective, some ugly things are priced too high, which has also discouraged some consumers. For example, a frog puppet costume costs about 258 yuan, and the price of an ugly clay human face case is between 59.9 yuan and 99.9 yuan. The product pricing may take design elements into consideration, but considering the price and practicality, consumers may not choose to buy ugly things with low cost performance. There are also some ugly things whose quality is not up to standard. Many consumers complain that the green-headed fish head cover is not breathable and has a strong plastic smell. Therefore, merchants need to find a balance when pricing ugly things, and designers also need to improve the quality and practicality of their products.

At present, ugly things are more about making people laugh, not enough to attract large-scale users to pay for them, and there is no complete industrial chain. In the long run, if ugly things cannot achieve large-scale commercial realization, it will be difficult to support creators to continue to output content. After all, no business can be generated entirely for love.

When Taobao's award-winning merchants gave their remarks, they said: "We are letting more people see that ugly things can also take the center stage, and ugly things can also be accepted by elegant places." Although ugly things are emerging in an endless stream, they are still far from taking the center stage. If the business principles of ugly things can be successful, perhaps a new blue ocean economy will be formed.

3. The hidden worries of ugly things

As the opposite of beauty, it is not easy to design and produce ugly things. Ugliness does not mean sensationalism or eye-catching, but to show fashion and personality. Judging from the development of Taobao's three ugly things, some of the products that won the "Five Ugly of the Year" have both funny characteristics and strong practicality, such as human face leather masks, cute panda shower heads, princess down jackets, dreamy pink butterfly boots, etc., but some works are more funny and less practical, such as frog puppet costumes and unbreakable mirrors. But overall, the shortlisted ugly things have been constantly innovating in design, and the degree of funnyness is also increasing day by day, and they have not fallen into the situation of homogenization. After all, due to the rapid changes in young people's aesthetics, the track of ugly things also needs to be continuously supplemented with fresh content.

However, ugly things also face the problem of losing popularity. For consumers, many ugly things appear at the right time and have a short-term healing effect. But once the popularity is over, ugly things will still be ignored. For example, the "Horse Stepping on Flying Swallow" doll sold thousands of pieces a day during its peak period, but now only sells dozens of pieces a month. However, the green-headed fish head cover, the first champion of Taobao's ugly things, still maintains a monthly sales of more than 1,000. How can ugly things meet the audience's aesthetic taste and not be forgotten by the audience? This is always a test for creators.

In addition to these relatively cheap ugly things, luxury goods have also been involved in the ugly track. In 2022, Paris Fashion Week can be called the "Annual Luxury Ugly Things Competition". LOEWE's pink "Minnie-style high heels", GUCCI's pink plastic sandals and waterproof platform slippers that increase the height by six centimeters became popular all of a sudden, which made a group of consumers sigh: "Fashion is really a reincarnation." The earthy outfits of the past may also lead the fashion trend today. On Douban, the group of earthy outfit practitioners has also gathered 130,000 people.

In fact, whether it is ugly things or tacky outfits, they essentially represent the diversified development trend of aesthetics. When the definition of beauty is no longer single, ugly things also have a unique beauty.

Nowadays, the beauty-related economic field has long become a red ocean zone and is becoming increasingly saturated. In contrast, the ugly things economy is still a blue ocean zone with great potential. As users' aesthetics develop towards diversification, we can expect ugly things to write their own business strategies soon.

Author: Rain and Smoke; Editor: Ji Nan

Source: TopKlout (ID: TopKlout), a self-media ecological observation account that combines good-looking and informative content