Economic Observation
"Double 11": a phenomenon-level outbreak of new brands
Approaching "Double 11", the SF Express Haikou Meilan transfer site in Haikou is busy.
With the help of sorting equipment, the staff seized the time to sort and pack express delivery to ensure the normal flow of express delivery during the peak period of "Double 11" logistics.
Xinhua News Agency reporter Pu Xiaoxu/photo
This year's "Double 11" set up two waves of sales nodes.
Some people welcome and think it can better promote consumption, but others have suggested that this approach may obscure consumers' concept of "Double 11". "After all, the sense of ritual for placing orders on "Double 11" is still very important".
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This year's "Double 11" came earlier than ever.
At the end of October, many people became "payers", only to wait for November 1st, click the payment button, and then wait for the express delivery.
"Double 11" enters its 12th year, with more new changes.
The most obvious is the lengthening of the "front", bringing the day-to-day shopping spree on the day of "Double 11" to early November.
Different from previous years, under the epidemic situation, the arrival of "Double 11" has not only pressed the acceleration button of consumption, but has also become a long-awaited "war of blood" for many companies.
New brand "phenomenal explosion"
Behind "Double 11" is the expectation of countless businesses.
The outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic abroad has accelerated Guangzhou Bopai Leather Clothing Co., Ltd.'s determination to further cultivate the mainland market.
This company has been established for more than ten years. In the past, it mainly exported mid-to-high-end men's business leather bags.
Five years ago, the company began to deploy in the domestic market.
During the epidemic, the company's foreign orders were impacted, and the company began to make further efforts to domestic e-commerce platforms.
The arrival of "Double 11" is not only an excellent time for testing, but also a training session.
Unlike previous years where there was only one department single-handedly fighting on the battlefield, this year's "Double 11", the company increased its efforts on the e-commerce platform.
After learning that "Double 11" was ahead of schedule in September, I started preparing for the war.
Zhou Xianpeng, the head of the company's e-commerce sales, believes that the first task is to improve the video introduction on each product page. They spent more than 20 days to improve the product video display of the company's online store.
The results of the first wave of "Double 11" sales did not disappoint him. By November 3, sales had reached 300,000 yuan, an increase from last year.
The sales volume of explosive products is comparable to that of well-known international brands.
After deploying the domestic e-commerce platform, Zhou Xianpeng found that the domestic "play" is obviously different from that of foreign countries. The domestic "price war" is the main focus. How to price and how to create cost-effective and explosive models has become the company's primary issue for entering the domestic market.
On the first day of the first wave of "Double 11" sales, a number of popular items have appeared in some domestic small and medium-sized merchant shops.
A thin diaper from a flagship store in Quanzhou, Fujian’s baby products industry sold 3.2 million pieces; a milk from a merchant in the Guangxi food industry belt sold 310,000 boxes; a bath from a merchant in the Guangdong beauty industry belt 62,000 bottles of lotion sold...
In order to help small and medium businesses to speed up the "recovery", this year's Tmall "Double 11" increased support for "factory goods".
In the first wave of sales from November 1st to 3rd, the platform not only launched exclusive traffic support for industry belts and over 100 million yuan of origin subsidies, but also jointly issued targeted consumer coupons with local governments.
At Juhuasuan's "Short Sale Action, Let's Support You Together" Industrial Belt Special, 7 industrial belts from Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian and other places will enter the "Billion Yuan Club" within one hour.
"Double 11" is no longer a "show field" for traditional big brands.
Statistics show that during the first wave of sales on Tmall’s “Double 11” this year, more than 1,800 new brands’ sales on November 1 surpassed that of last year’s “Double 11”, and 94 new brands increased by more than 1000%.
Wu Feng, the head of Tmall’s new brand business, found that this year’s new brand is a “phenomenal explosion”, and the growth rate of the new brand from 0 to 1 is getting faster and faster. “Behind this is consumers’ recognition of the new brand, especially It’s the recognition of the lifestyle represented by the new brand."
"Double 11" is the best display period for the brand.
Guangdong Xinbao Electric Co., Ltd. is a company operating cutting-edge brands such as Mofei and Dongling. Its president, Zeng Zhanhui, said that this year's "Double 11", they only took 4 days to complete 80% of the "Double 11" target.
Among them, the sales volume of several Mofei products has risen to the first place in the platform category.
The company started from OEM, but it has always had a brand dream.
Later, the company created its own brand Dongling and represented the overseas brand Mofei. Today, these brands of breakfast machines, cookware and other products have become the Internet celebrity home appliances sweeping platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu.
The emergence of new forces is not accidental.
These small and medium-sized brands know that they must take a differentiated route if they want to make a big hit, instead of being the longboard of traditional brands, and looking for product innovation gaps under consumption upgrades.
Not more than half of "Double 11", an essential oil foot ball of the emerging domestic brand Rever sold more than 50,000 orders.
Rever is a body care brand created by Poly Wally Technology (Wuhan) Co., Ltd. established in 2016.
Li Yadan, the company's e-commerce director, told reporters that contemporary young people pay attention to health preservation. Soaking feet is a traditional thing, but the company has been studying how to make foot soaking interesting and how to attract young people.
"Because young people now respect individuality and advocate differentiation, this provides opportunities for new brands to stand out."
"The next 10 years are the 10 years for the Internet to create new brands." Jiang Fan, president of Taobao Tmall, believes that the next 5-10 years will be a period of the rise of new consumer brands.
Live streaming becomes standard
On October 21, 10 minutes after the start of the "Double 11" pre-sale, the trading volume guided by Taobao live broadcast exceeded that of last year's "Double 11".
In the live broadcast of Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, the night of October 20th was as lively as the Chinese New Year.
Out of the celebrity live broadcast room, into the brand shops, live broadcast is everywhere.
For this class of consumers, last year they followed the celebrities and talent anchors to "buy, buy, buy", and this year, they can rush to buy with the anchors without leaving the store.
At 7 o'clock in the morning, the live broadcast host of the Rever brand started in the live broadcast room. As of 2 o'clock in the morning the next day, during the nearly 20 hours of live broadcast, five or six anchors took turns to play.
Last year, the brand did not set up a dedicated live broadcast team, but only four or five people broadcast live for a few hours on a small scale. This year, the newly established live broadcast team started planning and training in early October.
After the "Double 11" warm-up started, Huang Lifang, the self-broadcasting manager of the Rever brand, led the team and started the live broadcast for nearly a month.
In Huang Lifang’s view, online store live broadcasts are the best opportunity for new and cutting-edge brands to sprint. In the hourly list of beauty rookies, Rever’s ranking is constantly updated, "We broadcast when other people broadcast, and we broadcast when others are not. "During the "Double 11" period, even if it is the time for the broadcast, as long as there are viewers watching, the host is still live broadcast.
After the first wave of live broadcast, the live broadcast team found that consumers usually pay more attention to which product they need and how to choose.
During the "Double 11" period, consumers are more concerned about preferential activities and how to buy more cost-effectively.
Like many live broadcasts, Huang Lifang feels that she has spent the past half month in tension and excitement. When the promotion period approaches, everyone is very excited, and it is very nervous to watch sales data the next day after each broadcast.
According to Mo Daiqing, director of the Online Retail Department of the E-commerce Research Center of the Net Economics, live broadcasting has become a "standard configuration" for e-commerce, brands, and merchants, and the penetration rate of live broadcasting is rapidly increasing.
As the founder of the veteran live broadcast organization Mosquito Club, Wu Mosquito uses the "first year" to position the development of store live broadcast this year.
She found that although some live broadcast agencies had fallen this year, the wave of self-broadcasting by the online store has come up again.
During the "Double 11" period, consumers searched for the store name on the e-commerce platform and clicked in. Some stores jumped directly to the live broadcast page, and the sales conversion rate in the live broadcast room of some stores was as high as 40%.
In addition to cultivating live broadcast hosts, Wu Mosimi’s live broadcast organization has also undertaken live broadcast activities of many well-known brands at home and abroad.
In Wu Mosquito's opinion, live broadcast will slowly evolve from a shopping method into a lifestyle. "Maybe there will be fewer product pictures and texts on the e-commerce platform in the future, and more will be to learn about products through short videos and live broadcasts. "Businesses can edit live videos, convert them twice, and put them on short video platforms or other media platforms to further expand their communication power.
In Li Yadan's view, in the future, celebrity live broadcasts and self-operated live broadcasts can coexist together, because the consumer groups of the two channels are different, and there is no substitute for the other.
The live broadcast of celebrities and talents uses price advantages and celebrity halo effects to become a window for consumers to quickly get to know a new brand. Without harming the price system, sales and users will increase in an instant.
Store self-broadcasting will become a fixed model for maintaining consumers and expanding brand influence, "they are an interdependent relationship."
In Li Yadan's vision, future store live broadcasts may be more scene-oriented, rather than just sitting in front of a simple background wall.
"For example, put a bathtub in the live broadcast room, and put our products directly in the bathtub, so that consumers have a more intuitive experience."
"Live broadcasting needs more refined operations." Wu Mosquito believes that in the past, the live broadcast room was more expensive than a spike, and the price was not attractive. In the future, it is more about how to make the live broadcast room fun.
The change of the scene is one direction. Wu Mosimi told reporters that his organization already has a decoration team, and it is necessary to modify and adjust the environment of the live broadcast room on a regular basis.
Two waves of sales periods can reduce "trial and error costs"
Regarding this year’s “Double 11” split into two waves, some consumers are holding a wait-and-see attitude, expecting the lowest price on “Double 11” day.
However, some merchants said that the second wave of discounts will not be much larger than the first wave. “If the second wave is too high, the consumers of the first wave will feel unbalanced, so the merchant will not have any price. Obvious ups and downs."
For new and cutting-edge brands, it is a good thing that "Double 11" has two peaks, which can reduce the "trial and error cost" of some new brands.
Zhou Xianpeng believes that "Double 11" in previous years was the final word. Sales in November were all bet on the 11th. Now the sales node is ahead of schedule. For merchants, they can adjust the shortcomings in sales in time and make another wave on the day of "Double 11". .
After the first wave of sales, Zhou Xianpeng found that there was still a small bug in the marketing design of the store. This year’s Tmall’s "Double 11" 300 minus 40 campaign, colleagues updated the main picture on the product page, in the discount price written below , The price of 40 yuan is also included.
But in fact, 300 minus 40 has a threshold, and not every product participates. Some consumers find that the price is not as low as the one described on the product page when checking out, so they find customer service to ask.
The shop assistants immediately discovered the problem and corrected it.
Zhou Xianpeng believes that the problems caused by this lack of experience can be solved before the second wave, which is a guarantee for the subsequent promotional activities and brand reputation.
In Zhou Xianpeng's view, "Double 11" is a time when major businesses "show their homes". At this time, they are not only fighting for price, but for design, art, photography, operation, and service.
How to make the "Double 11" sales rules simple and easy to understand on the limited screen pages is very important. He found that some mature big brands are very experienced in this regard.
In response to the characteristics of this year’s “Double 11”, Li Yadan’s company adjusted the sales target of “Double 11” into two stages. She told reporters that the reason for this division is that most consumers will continue to spend for many years. Habit, focus on the "Double 11" day to buy.
Li Yadan found that two waves of sales peaks can indeed form a secondary stimulus to consumption, but companies will also encounter a problem.
Some brand users have already placed orders in the first wave, and the second wave of sales nodes is unlikely to buy twice.
Therefore, how to tap the second wave of potential consumers has become a matter for merchants to bother thinking about.
Behind the two sales cycles, the company also needs to re-plan the budget allocation.
"In the past, the budget for'Double 11' only required one wave of sales cycles, and now the two waves of sales nodes must consider how to place advertisements." Li Yadan said that in the past, in order to meet a sales peak, it only needed to be on "Double 11". Advertisements started a few days ago, but now there are two sales nodes, and the number of advertisements will undoubtedly increase.
Some merchants are also worried that the two waves of sales nodes may promote consumption, but in the long run, they may obscure the concept of "Double 11". "After all, the sense of ritual for placing orders on the day of "Double 11" is still very important".
China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily reporter Ning Di Source: China Youth Daily