Text | Spiral Lab, author丨Kwai Yong, editor丨Nuts
The online Hanfu store is almost out of business.
On the eve of 618, Taobao Hardware Crown Store "Girl Kayla" ran away with nearly 35 million yuan in arrears; halfway through 618, the 5 million fan shop "Lola Password" that started from Douyin was in tears Live broadcast, official announcement of store closure; on the same day that "Lola Code" closed its store, another Taobao Golden Crown store with millions of fans, "Retro Explosion" also announced the termination of operations.
According to public reports, many leading e-commerce Hanfu stores have closed and cleared their stores since this year.
These Hanfu stores have affordable prices, more than one million fans, and monthly sales of more than 4 or 5 digits. Without exception, they all took advantage of Taobao's early traffic bonus or Douyin's live broadcast trend to quickly gain momentum, and then retreated after the site's traffic peaked.
When it comes to the reasons for store closures, most of them attribute it to the "gradually deteriorating e-commerce environment." "The more affordable Hanfu is sold, the more money is lost." Due to the soaring return rate, expensive shipping fees, and forced price reductions, many Hanfu merchants who have been in business for almost 10 years are gradually overwhelmed and are preparing to clear their stocks and leave.
Excited return rateSince the day Hanfu moved to online sales, the return rate has been higher than the average. Last year, a Hanfu merchant revealed that the average return rate of Taobao Hanfu Live Broadcast was as high as 60%. Since June 18 this year, some sellers have posted their return rates of 70%, 80%, or even 90% on social platforms, saying bluntly that they “can’t do it anymore.”
When asked about the reason, some merchants believed that the price comparison function of the platform "has pushed the return rate to the top." In the first half of last year, after Taobao proposed "price power", it began to launch a "price comparison" function on the site. After Douyin adjusted "price power" as a priority this year, it also launched a "price comparison system" in March.
Many e-commerce merchants complained that after the "price comparison system" was launched, the natural flow of stores dropped sharply. "If you click on a mobile phone case priced at 5 yuan, you will see similar recommendations for 3 yuan. If you click on the 3 yuan mobile phone case, it will give you recommendations. If you click on the two-dollar product, there will always be a product with a lower price than yours. All the paid traffic will be given to competitors.”
In Pinduoduo, we rely on low prices.After the rapid development of price strategies, other e-commerce platforms have also given more weight to price in their algorithms. If merchants do not reduce prices or follow prices, there will be no traffic. For merchants and factories with already high return rates, if they want to maintain profits, they have to cut corners on production details such as materials and tailoring.
In addition, many dropshipping sellers look at goods online or get goods from online wholesale stalls. The photos displayed in the store are all photos provided by factories or stalls, and they have never seen the actual products. . Incorrect goods and quality problems are becoming more and more common.
Merchants are troubled by the high inventory caused by returns, and consumers are also full of resentment about the clothes they receive. Some "victims" summarized the current situation of purchasing Hanfu as, "Pre-sale for half a month, waiting for a tattered one, and never able to buy the one worn by the anchor." The waist tightening has become a waist release, and the spaghetti straps have become Wide strips of fabric, mid-length styles have become short styles.
This year, many consumers bought Hanfu during the 520 and 618 shopping malls and finally chose to return them all. Many people on Xiaohongshu expressed their helplessness, “This year’s returns are worth the sum of the previous years. Everyone already knows me.”
In addition, the long pre-sale period is also one of the reasons for the high return rate of Hanfu. In order to reduce the cost of returns, many sellers will conduct pre-sales in batches. The returns of the first batch of pre-sales will be sent to the second batch of consumers, and the returns of the second batch will be sent to the third batch. The pre-sale time is getting longer and longer. long.
Live streaming is already prone to impulsive consumption, and the cooling-off period left for buyers is too sufficient, making the already high return rate even worse.
From the perspective of consumers, a large number of returns are also due to the fact that the cost of returns is getting lower and lower. This year, some e-commerce platforms have begun to force some merchants to provide freight insurance. Alibaba 88VIP returns are free of charge and even allows door-to-door pickup. The cost of returning goods is close to zero. Some orders have more freight insurance compensation, and consumers can still make some profit from the difference. Some Woolies have even started a "shipping freight insurance" business.
Mandatory freight insurance has resulted in a large number of invalid orders. Recently, Taobao and Pinduoduo have even seen Hanfu orders that have been applied for return and refund for more than a year. In response, the founder of Inman's parent company issued an article "Calling on relevant departments to intervene to crack down on "compulsory freight insurance."
Sell 10 pieces and get 8 pieces back, plus the short sales cycle of Hanfu itself is less than one month., it is easy for new products to accumulate inventory. Some sellers are even worried about selling hot products. “As soon as I finished replenishing the goods, I found that other stores had made imitation versions with lower prices. The traffic was cut in half, and the replenishment turned into inventory in a matter of seconds.”
“Destocking” has been going on for a long time. It is a life and death disaster for the retail industry. For Hanfu sellers who rely on online services, public domain traffic is becoming more and more expensive and it is increasingly difficult to leverage ROI. Private domain has become an important channel for digesting inventory.
Celebrity Hanfu stores such as COCO ZONE and Liberin Sisy, which have maintained high growth in the past two years, have accumulated many loyal users by relying on their accounts and communities. A senior e-commerce practitioner @风中的director mentioned that because of accumulated trust, there are fewer impulsive purchases in the private sector, strong purchase intention, and lower return rates.
However, most small and medium-sized businesses do not have the investment and personnel required for private domain construction, and can only survive between high inventory and low conversion.
The life of white brands is not easy eitherIt is not easy to establish barriers in the Hanfu industry. On the one hand, the exclusive layout is easy to copy, and on the other hand, the source of goods is highly similar.
Many old Hanfu stores that started online, after becoming large-scale, still get goods from wholesale stalls, or slightly modify the existing styles at the stalls and then place customized orders, but they have never established themselves. We have our own design team, and new products are all developed at stalls or factories.
For example, "Girl Kayla" who ran away due to debts had been ordering goods on credit from Shahe Clothing Market in Guangzhou. According to Blue Whale News, "Girl Kayla" has the right to speak by relying on large orders. She does not sign contracts, takes goods verbally, and lengthens the payment period. After the thunderstorm, the payment owed involves more than 300 suppliers.
There are many buyers like "Girl Kayla" who buy goods at the stalls in Shahe Clothing Market. It's just that most small and medium-sized customers are not like "Girl Kayla" who can delay payment and need to pay in cash. From the perspective of Spiral Labs, these businesses are also the most severely affected by the low-price war.
Nowadays, stalls and factories upstream of the supply chain have also begun to self-broadcast and build their own brands with the support of the platform. Douyin, JD.com, and Taobao are all competing for factory owners and small and medium-sized businesses at the source of the industrial belt. Taobao separately classifies industrial live broadcasting as one of the four major businesses of content e-commerce, with cash subsidies of more than 1 billion yuan within a year; Douyin launched a 50% GMV cash back incentive for some industrial belt merchants in April this year.
Currently, clothing wholesale markets such as Hangzhou Sijiqing and Guangzhou Shahe, which focus on low-priced clothing, and Shenzhen Nanyou, which prefers high-end Hanfu, have generated million-level live broadcast rooms. In addition to the self-built live broadcast rooms at the stalls, there are also many full-time buyers who focus on scanning goods at designated wholesale markets. They are also popular on Xiaohongshu and Douyin.
When primary sources of goods with more price advantages begin to face consumers directly, those stores that play the role of dealers are bound to be squeezed, especially affordable Hanfu with a unit price of less than 200 yuan. The low price doesn’t leave much room for price reduction.
In the past two years, Hanfu, once popular cheap shopping brands such as Handu Yishe, Yinman, and Ribo, have all faced the dilemma of drying up traffic and declining performance. LoramieThe closure of Ma's store may also mean that the once popular Hanfu brand Dou is about to begin to decline.
Is the content e-commerce community a new hope?Compared with traditional e-commerce platforms, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Video Account, three content e-commerce communities that have begun to develop in the past year, currently have a return rate of Hanfu that is lower than the industry average.
According to public reports and relevant person-in-charge, the return rate of Hanfu at Bilibili and video accounts is around 30% to 40%, while the rate at Xiaohongshu is even lower. Many fashion bloggers who have transformed into buyers It can even be controlled within 20%.
The most important thing is that these content e-commerce communities do not engage in price wars. No low prices, no mandatory freight insurance.
According to Nielsen IQ monitoring data, in China's fast-moving consumer goods retail market online channels in 2023, sales of content e-commerce increased by 55.9% year-on-year, while comprehensive e-commerce sales fell by 5.8%.
The return rate is low, the repurchase rate is high, and the platform will not force merchants to blindly compare prices and reduce prices. If Hanfu, a white brand that cannot be listed on Dou Tao, turns to a content platform that still has growth advantages, will there be a way out?
For white brand Hanfu, compared to the momentum of Dabo, self-broadcasting is a more cost-effective way to connect with consumers. At present, except for Bilibili, which still insists on open-loop e-commerce, Video Account and Xiaohongshu are encouraging merchants to enter in-store broadcasting.
In the early stages of the development of video accounts, in-store broadcasting was the main focus. Since the size of merchants was still in the stage of staking out land, the degree of white-label competition was relatively weak. Xiaohongshu merged its buyer operations and merchant operations last month and is preparing to vigorously support store broadcasting. Many merchants and service providers have reported that although Xiaohongshu’s total sales are not as good as other platforms, it is better because of its high quality of users, and impressive conversions and repurchases.
Another thing these two platforms have in common is that the unit price per customer is relatively high. This year’s top 10 Hanfu seller @王王王大头 on the 618 video account list, one of the best-selling products in his store is an 899 yuan vest skirt.
On video accounts and Xiaohongshu, users are more willing to place orders for a sense of trust than for price, and hawking-style low-price promotions are not popular. Merchants need to spend more time on character creation and daily life. On the establishment of content style.
Some practitioners believe that content e-commerce is more suitable for those with certain products.High-end white brands with quality and originality, as well as niche brands that are less well-known than big brands. For mid-to-low-end Hanfu sellers who only have price advantages, it is not a very friendly choice.
There are many white brands that have taken advantage of the new platform and achieved excess sales, just like the Lola Codes who started on Douyin. However, as the scale of the new platform expands, the return rate and degree of homogeneity will also increase.
At that time, merchants in the industry will have price advantages, and white brands that are good at content will have a loyal customer base, while a large number of small and medium-sized merchants who prefer the role of dealers will once again face being shuffled out and find new positions. dilemma.
Perhaps for small and medium-sized Hanfu sellers, instead of looking for new platform dividends, what is more important is how to seize the time to grow up and have a more solid source of goods in the supply chain before the dividends fade. and higher bargaining power.
