Two years ago, Tang Ying, a fabric professional, published the first grass-growing notes on Xiaohongshu using expressions that now seem a bit "professional and obscure". At that time, she was just a content sharer, and the concept of buyer had not yet "broken ground" on the platform.
Xiaohongshu is not reconciled to the formula that was once popular in the industry - "5,000 articles on Xiaohongshu to plant grass + 2,000 articles on Zhihu Q&A + Li Jiaqi bringing goods = a new brand of domestic products." As the e-commerce game gradually enters the second half, it finally announced in 2023 that "the era of buyers has come". Based on the platform's emphasis on the value of "people", it opened up e-commerce transaction links and officially clarified the difference in buyer models. Transform the road to e-commerce. In the past two years,
has had many users with auras like Zhang Xiaohui and Dong Jie, who have risen to the top with their unique styles. When analyzing the composition of buyers, it is not difficult to find that ordinary talents with different professional backgrounds and experiences form the basis of the platform and carry the banner of buyers.
has a high fan base, so it is not uncommon to achieve high GMV (gross merchandise transaction volume). What is striking about Xiaohongshu is that a large number of buyers with low fan base can also achieve outstanding sales results. Tang Ying is one of them. Her account "Tina Fabric Review" just exceeded 10,000 followers and she won one million GMVs in a single live broadcast. What is the password to break the
circle?
Building trust
Traditional buyers may sound a bit mysterious. Now, this concept has been transferred online and has become Xiaohongshu’s “darling” to develop the e-commerce economy. Gintoki, the person in charge of the live broadcast business of the
platform, once made buyer portraits: one type is the vertical professional type, who explains details unknown to ordinary people based on his authority and expertise; the other type is the extreme experience type, who uses his own extensive experience The experience of purchasing and using it helps everyone make recommendations and share it.
Tang Ying belongs to the former. Before becoming a buyer on the platform, she and her husband started a business and established two mid-to-high-end fashion fabric factories, supplying many domestic and foreign affordable luxury brands, including well-known partners such as Coach and Alexander Wang.
A few years ago, when she was 40 years old, she temporarily put down the fabric factory and accompanied her daughter to go to school in another city. “When I have nothing to do, I will browse Xiaohongshu and see many posts from my colleagues. I feel competitive and decide to post to ‘compete’.”
On the Xiaohongshu platform, Tang Ying obtained a “second career” as a buyer.
has been working with fabrics for half a lifetime, so content output is naturally no problem. With just a wool vest, Tang Ying can talk about its past, present and future.
mentioned that the fiber fineness of a certain vest wool was 12.9 microns. She described the significance of this value to users as "unbelievable", "What does 12.9 microns mean? The minimum fineness of cashmere with currently known test data is It is 13 microns, which means that its comfort has exceeded that of cashmere..."
Just being professional is not enough to get out of the industry, especially in industries with high thresholds. The output of a large amount of knowledge is prohibitive. The demands of users are clear – seeking pragmatic and valuable information.
looked through the early posts of "Tina Fabric Review" and found that they were usually technical analysis posts of hundreds or thousands of words, which seemed a bit "dry".
"What ordinary consumers care about is actually two points - is the clothes they spend a lot of money on worth buying? Is it good?" Tang Ying began to try to combine pictures and texts and video visual presentations, and at the same time went beyond the simple introduction of fabrics and combined them with specific brand products, providing more intuitive fabric impressions and consumption suggestions.
Tang Ying breaks away from pure technical analysis posts to provide fans with more intuitive fabric impressions and consumption suggestions.
"The greatest value as a buyer is to help fans form a 'strong balance in their hearts.'" In the process of "decoding" knowledge, she gradually gained a group of sticky fans in the vertical field of mid-to-high-end fabrics. Among them, there are working women from finance, Internet and other industries, as well as housewives who pursue quality.
Seeking quality-price ratio
In terms of fan base, Tang Ying was not very high in the early days. What is a bit surprising is that when her fans just exceeded the 10,000 mark, she set a GMV of about 1.6 million in a live broadcast. .Although it is not like the tens of millions of goods that celebrities can bring with them, the GMV of 1 million in a single game is already above the average level for ordinary experts in Xiaohongshu. What does
do right? On the one hand, it is the high customer unit price of the product. From the perspective of the Xiaohongshu platform itself, unlike promotional sales with rolled prices, its use of the buyer concept emphasizes the differentiation of the platform. Gintoki said that through the buyer’s personal aesthetics and product selection ability, the value of the product is conveyed to the user. This model also leads to the platform focusing on non-standard products with high unit prices.
Video posted on Tang Ying’s homepage.
On the other hand, with the trend of rational consumption, more people are spending their money and pursuing good quality. However, due to blind spots in professional knowledge, it is sometimes difficult to find products that suit your needs, and sometimes you even get stuck. At this time, people in the industry need to take action to select products with high quality-price ratio. A cashmere coat that is a hot seller in the
live broadcast room has the characteristics of both. "Cashmere has been a big trend in the industry in the past two years, and many people who have money may not be able to buy good cashmere."
, an emerging online store brand based on an old woolen mill, sent Tang Ying an evaluation invitation. She sent the physical object to an international certification agency for testing. The results showed that the fiber fineness of this cashmere coat reached 14.7 microns, and the quality exceeded her imagination. "The average fineness of cashmere fiber of domestic high-end brands is 15-15.5 microns, and can be sold for more than 30,000 yuan. This price is more affordable, and you can get it for more than 4,000 yuan."
This does not mean blindly admiring new brands. Tang Yinghui repeatedly emphasized to fans that brand power involves dimensions such as fabric, design, pattern, craftsmanship, after-sales, and quality control, which together constitute the price of a piece of clothing. "The fabrics of this emerging online store are of good quality, but the design, pattern, craftsmanship, after-sales and quality control are not as good as those of mature brands. You can't 'have both', but you have to decide which dimension you value more." Similar to
Emerging brands in the "deep alleys", driven by buyers, have more channels to be seen. Tang Ying now likes to dig for "treasures" on the platform, exploring and studying their styles, aesthetics and fabrics. If she likes the products, she will take the initiative to contact them to expand the path of brand promotion.
"Many brands will spend money on very details. Someone needs to explain their craftsmanship and fabrics to provide more consumption options for consumers who recognize the value of design." She said.
The balance between content and business
has shifted from a pure content sharing platform blogger to a commercial buyer. Many people do not do this intentionally, but are "pushed along".
buyer "一一KK" was previously engaged in the media industry that was completely unrelated to the e-commerce field. He first shared his furniture products on Xiaohongshu, and later gradually became a buyer under the urging of users. The same is true for Tang Ying. Fans were not satisfied with sharing the content and asked how to buy it and how to match it. This was how she started her "second career".
From the buyer's perspective, sharing content must be both professional and aesthetic, sharing useful information and chatting about daily life like friends. As we enter the rhythm of bringing goods, how to achieve a balance between content production and commercialization? This problem will inevitably arise.
"In the past, a live broadcast would explain three or four products in two hours, and explain them clearly to everyone. Now there are dozens of products, and we have to publish a product preview before the broadcast, and the live broadcast explanation time is also limited." Tang Ying felt, With more product content, the mentality of some new fans will change. "Some people will think that because they want to sell this product, they say it is a good product." The balance between
and
was also the reason why Xiaohongshu did not vigorously promote commercialization earlier. But the situation waits for no one, and competition in the domestic e-commerce industry has entered deep water. The platform finally made up its mind and sent a clear signal last year: it must accelerate on the track.
's "China KOL Marketing Trend Insight Report 2023" shows that Xiaohongshu has the largest number of tail experts with less than 100,000 fans (92.3%), accounts with more than 1 million account for about 0.3%, and accounts with more than 5 million do not to 0.1%.
In other words, experts with less than 100,000 fans form the backbone of the platform and are also the targets of vigorous support.Last year, Xiaohongshu launched the "Million Buyer Plan", which simultaneously launched operational docking, product selection and connection building, and traffic exposure on the brand and merchant sides to help creators achieve a new career as "buyers". After
built up the mentality of e-commerce and live streaming through buyers, Xiaohongshu gradually enriched the supply of store broadcasting and promoted the parallel development of buyer live broadcasting and store live broadcasting. Data show that as of June 10, the number of Xiaohongshu e-commerce 618 orders was three times that of the same period last year, the order volume in the live broadcast room was 5.4 times that of the same period last year, and the number of buyers who exceeded one million in a single game was three times that of the same period last year.
All signs indicate that the commercialization speed of the platform is accelerating, and those merchants at the waist and tail are being placed with higher expectations. In the coexistence of value and confusion, can they open up a new world of content e-commerce? It remains to be seen.
