Source: Ran Ciyuan
Author: Feng Xiaoting
When Taobao was first launched, someone jokingly said, "Jack Ma can achieve what he does today because there is a woman behind the successful man. Behind Jack Ma are a group of women.”
Interestingly, when Jack Ma attended the Clinton Global Initiative Conference in 2014, he affirmed the importance of women to Alibaba, “I want to tell you today about Alibaba. Trade secrets, 70% of Alibaba’s buyers are women, and 55% of its sellers are women. This is our main resource. So, I want to thank women. Without you, Alibaba would not be listed in New York.”
Indeed, a group of women made Jack Ma and Alibaba successful.
Female consumers are a consumer group with great potential. There is even an old saying in the industry, "Seize women and you seize the market." Accenture data in 2019 shows that China has nearly 400 million female consumers aged 20-60, who control up to 10 trillion yuan in consumer spending every year.
The strong purchasing power of female consumers is particularly evident in the field of clothing retail. According to data from the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, the size of the Hanfu market exceeds that of men’s clothing and children’s clothing combined. In 2020, my country's Hanfu market reached 940.7 billion yuan, much higher than men's clothing 510.8 billion yuan and children's clothing 229.2 billion yuan.
"The profit lies in everything." Under the huge market temptation, in the field of e-commerce, the category of Hanfu, which has always been the core category of e-commerce platforms, has naturally become a must-have. land.
Taobao is the pioneer. Taobao, in the form of shelf e-commerce, meets the needs of many consumers. Relying on the successful holding of the Double 11 event and a large wave of "Taobao-style Hanfu" growing in the Taobao ecosystem, Taobao has a first-mover advantage in the field of Hanfu, and further relying on its own strength advantages, after years of accumulation, Taobao has Variety barriers have been established.
However, with the rise of live broadcast e-commerce, consumers’ purchasing methods have gradually shifted from “search” to “live broadcast room”. Correspondingly, Taobao’s status has been challenged.
In the past two years, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Douyin, and Kuaishou have rushed to launch their own investment policies and traffic support plans for the Hanfu category. Judging from the actual results achieved between the platforms, Douyin is currently the one with the best chance of knocking on the door of Taobao.
Judging from the settled Hanfu brands, most of the top brands on Taobao platform have also opened up their own live broadcast battlefield on Douyin. In addition, many small and medium-sized Hanfu e-commerce merchants have turned to Douyin live broadcast rooms, and they have also received good traffic during this period.
But beneath the rolling tide of traffic, there are also hidden reefs.
"The advantage of Douyin's traffic depression is fading, and many orders placed in the live broadcast room are due to temporary 'fever', and the consumer return rate is relatively high. From the perspective of platform brand building, now' Dou Brand' is not as influential as 'Tao Brand' back then.” said Li Jianqiang, an observer in the e-commerce industry.
As competition among Hanfu e-commerce becomes increasingly fierce, many domestic platforms have chosen to “go overseas” to find new opportunities, but Taobao, Douyin, Kuaishou, JD.com and Pinduoduo are still Still fighting. A new war is brewing on the old battlefield.
"Taobao Hanfu" has declined.
Although Taobao was launched in 2003, it did not hold its first session until 2009. After the "Double 11" event, Taobao rose rapidly in the true sense, becoming the leader of domestic e-commerce and maintaining its advantage to this day.
It is worth noting that the first Double 11 event. There are only 27 cooperative merchants, but the Hanfu brand accounts for nearly 30% of the seats. To this day, the transaction share of the "Hanfu/Ladies' Boutique" category still ranks first among all Taobao platforms.
" "Taobao Hanfu" has also ushered in its own golden age since the first Double 11 event became an instant hit.
In this golden age, Taobao has emerged such as Yinman and Han Duyi. Well-known Hanfu brands such as Sheshe, Libo, and Rongmei are undoubtedly the most dazzling ones, which were ranked first in Tmall’s Double 11 Hanfu sales rankings in both 2012 and 2013.
Of course, Yinman. Yinman’s highlight moment goes beyond this. In 2014, Yinman was included in Alibaba’s IPO prospectus as a “successful case of Taobao brands”. You may have never imagined how much money you could make by opening a Hanfu store on Taobao more than ten years ago. "The person who said this was none other than Cheng Lian, one of the first e-commerce merchants to catch up with Taobao's dividend era.
Cheng Lian told Ran Ciyuan that his first Hanfu Taobao store was opened in 2006 , but it only reached its peak period after 2012. “After 2012, the store’s annual turnover can easily reach several million yuan. ”
Cheng Lian said frankly that although the size of his Taobao store was far behind that of the leading Taobao brands at the time, the revenue had already exceeded imagination, “My positioning is for the mid- to low-end customer base. , the unit price per customer is basically within 50 yuan. The source of goods is very simple. At the beginning, I contacted the surrounding garment factories and they provided me with inventory. Therefore, in the early days of my store, I mainly relied on selling inventory from offline stores. Later, after I accumulated more fans, I sent orders to the factory for mass customization. Although the price per customer is not high, the sales volume is very good. "
"The speed of money coming in is beyond the imagination of current Taobao e-commerce merchants. "Cheng Lian said bluntly that he earned his first pot of gold from Taobao's dividends.
"When we were doing e-commerce at that time, the way of doing business was very simple and crude, which was to buy traffic. It’s not uncommon to see colleagues spending tens of thousands of yuan a day on through-train advertisements. Since I'm not as big as others, I don't invest that much, but roughly speaking, 30% of my turnover is invested in through-train advertising. But at that time, spending money to buy traffic really paid off, and the profits realized were huge. ”
But in 2015, Cheng Lian feltIn addition to the lack of store growth, “traffic has shrunk rapidly. In the past, more than 10,000 pairs of jeans for 40 yuan could be sold, but after 2015, the monthly sales of some categories were only single digits. This situation will definitely disappear. After getting better, the sales were getting worse year by year. I was considering changing my career in 2019, so I packed up and transferred all three stores under my name."
The performance of Cheng Lian's Taobao store is deteriorating. , is just a microcosm of Taobao brand development at that time.
The Tmall Double 11 Hanfu sales rankings are the vane of this change. As mentioned above, the founder of Inman, which was once unparalleled, Fang Jianhua, set a 2014 target for the company in 2013. The annual sales volume is 2 billion yuan. But in 2014, Yinman, who had won the Tmall Hanfu industry sales champion for two consecutive Double 11 occasions, dropped to fourth place. In 2015, it ranked ninth. Since 2016, Yinman has never returned to the rankings.
Source/Fang Jianhua Weibo Screenshot of Ranciyuan
It’s not just Yinman’s family who is left behind, but the entire Tao style Hanfu.
"I think 2015 is the watershed when the Hanfu Taobao brand status is gradually replaced by traditional brands." Li Jianqiang, an e-commerce industry observer, told Ranciyuan that there are two main reasons for this phenomenon.
“First of all, the rapid development of e-commerce has led to wider and wider coverage of e-commerce, which means that traditional Hanfu brands have higher consumer awareness than Taobao brands that started on Taobao. Secondly, , Tao brand also has shortcomings in the supply chain, and the asset-light model of cooperation with factories is not enough to support the larger size of the brand." Li Jianqiang emphasized that the downturn of Hanfu Tao brand is not representative. Regarding the development of Taobao's Hanfu field, "Taobao's position as the leader in the current e-commerce landscape is still unshakable. Although the Taobao brand lacks stamina, there are still many Hanfu shops on the Taobao platform for consumers to choose from. There are still many Consumers are accustomed to buying clothes on Taobao. ”
The original “Taobao Hanfu” has suffered from lack of traffic in recent years and is also operating on multiple platforms and even expanding offline. For example, in addition to opening flagship stores on JD.com and Pinduoduo, Yinman has also gone offline. A public account article published by Fang Jianhua in May this year showed that Inman already has more than 600 stores in more than 200 cities.
"Tao HanThe label "service" is not often mentioned.
"Whether it is a Hanfu brand or other brands, any brand that has developed to a certain scale now will choose multiple platforms in order to obtain more traffic. In the way of operation, there is no longer a 'taobao brand' in the past sense. " Li Jianqiang said.
"Barbarians" knocking on the door
Taobao, which grew up together with "Taobao Hanfu" in the early days, relied on a large group of loyal consumer groups who were accustomed to buying clothes on Taobao. , has naturally built its own moat in the field of Hanfu e-commerce.
But now, all e-commerce platforms other than Taobao are eyeing the big cake of "Hanfu".
Although another e-commerce giant, JD.com, mainly sells 3C products, Hanfu has always been out of reach of Liu Qiangdong. Before the anti-monopoly, JD.com was not allowed to show its strength.
Anti-monopoly background. Next, JD.com, which had escaped the "choose one", began to exert force. As soon as the Double 11 in 2021 ended, JD.com announced in a high-profile manner that "under the new investment policy and more than a hundred KA brands such as Bosideng, Victoria's Secret, Peacebird, and OTZ have settled in Under the influence, all categories of JD.com's apparel have seen an explosion of new merchants and new product launches, with new brands entering an average daily growth rate of more than 10 times compared with October. "
Pinduoduo is also gearing up to make efforts in the field of Hanfu. Tech Planet reported in September that Pinduoduo's homepage may launch a special functional area "Treasure Hanfu" specifically for Hanfu. Currently, this function is under internal testing. Open to some users who frequently browse or purchase Hanfu on Pinduoduo.
The live broadcast e-commerce platform has also launched an attack on the Hanfu category.
Kuaishou first launched it in February this year. During the month-long "Hanfu Super Anchor Day" event, Kuaishou announced the "Hanfu Rookie Plan" at the Kuaishou E-commerce 116 Merchant Conference and stated that in the future, the Kuaishou e-commerce Hanfu industry will support 100 GMVs. New anchors, 1,000 new anchors with one million GMV.
Douyin e-commerce’s efforts in the Hanfu category are even greater than those of Kuaishou e-commerce as early as 2021. At the Douyin E-commerce Clothing New Trend Summit, Douyin E-commerce released the “Trend-Leading Plan”, stating that in the future, it will create 200 commercial brand trends, 100 clothing Douyin brands, 200 clothing brands that exceed 100 million, and 10 10 A billion-level super brand.
The most critical point is that the Hanfu category is also a major category of Douyin. The "Douyin E-commerce Data Insights in April 2022" report shows that clothing. It is the largest category of Douyin e-commerce, of which Hanfu accounts for more than 60%.
According to Ranciyuan statistics, in the "618 Store Sales Ranking - Hanfu" released by Tmall in 2022, 20 were on the list. Among the Hanfu brands, except for Zara, which has only registered an account on Douyin and has not established a store or live-streamed goods, the other 19 brands have entered Douyin e-commerce and started a live-streaming journey, including Uniqlo.In September this year, Douyin just settled in.
In addition to well-known brands, there are also many white-brand merchants who have opened their stores on Douyin, attracting traffic through short videos and facilitating transactions in live broadcast rooms.
Luoshan, who owns an old Five Crown Hanfu store on Taobao, also entered Douyin last year.
“We specially hired a small team with experience in live streaming to be responsible for operating Douyin.” Luo Shan said that the account maintains a stable output of short video content on a daily basis, and the anchor hosts two live broadcasts a day. Judging from the transaction volume, the results are good. "Last year's growth was better. Although the growth rate this year is not as good as before, it is much better than the growth on Taobao."
And also on Douyin e-commerce Luoluo, who sells Hanfu products, had no experience in operating other e-commerce platforms before Douyin’s live broadcast. However, it also relied on content and nearly 10 hours of live broadcasts every day to achieve good results. “Now every time When the broadcast started, the average number of people online was basically around 100, and the cumulative transaction amount of a live broadcast could exceed 10,000 yuan. "
"My account was originally used to share clothing content, and it would be released when I posted the content. I deliberately focused on hot topics. As long as the video became popular, it would attract a small wave of attention. Later, I started to share live broadcasts of outfit tutorials and insert product links. Conversion is relatively easy.
Douyin e-commerce, which is still in its early stages of development, has become a new source of traffic. Hanfu brands flock to Douyin live broadcast rooms just to relieve traffic anxiety and find a new way out for brand development.
But as the saying goes, “it’s often not your competitors who kill you.” The competition between shelf e-commerce platforms is still reflected in traffic acquisition.
"At least for now, no matter how many Hanfu brands JD.com and Pinduoduo introduce, or how much support they provide, they do not have too much deterrence in front of Taobao." Li Jianqiang believes , from the perspective of the operating logic of the "people and goods field", the advantage of Taobao Hanfu lies in the full range of "goods", while its shortcoming lies in traffic. "Live streaming e-commerce relying on short video platforms is exactly the opposite."
Offensive and defensive The war has begun
For Taobao, Douyin must be the most powerful disruptor. In addition to the above-mentioned 19 of Tmall’s 20 top brands that have settled on Douyin, it is also a clear signal that more and more consumers are falling in love with shopping in live broadcast rooms.
The live broadcast room has also become a new channel for Hanfu e-commerce sales.
"When I buy clothes now, in addition to offline, the main online platform is Douyin live broadcast room." A second-year graduate student told Ran Ciyuan every day that the biggest reason for choosing to place orders in the live broadcast room is " "True." "I want to learn yoga this year, so I buy my own equipment, but I don't know what to buy. I will know clearly whether it is suitable for me by watching the host's demonstration in the live broadcast room."
A few years ago, Tiantian was still a loyal Taobao enthusiast. “Consumption has become a habit.I am used to it. I have collected several Taobao stores that I often visited before, and I also follow the corresponding Weibo and public accounts of the stores. As long as there are new products, I will go to Taobao to check them out, and I will place an order if there is something suitable. "But now, every day I find that several Hanfu stores I have collected are all on Douyin.
"I follow the brand's Douyin account and receive news from the brand every day. Compared with Taobao, which is rarely opened, Douyin is obviously opened more frequently, and over time, it has developed the habit of placing orders in the live broadcast room. "Tiantian added.
But Tiantian also found that the return rate of goods ordered in the live broadcast room is much higher when shopping on Taobao. "Maybe it is when shopping on Taobao, I will repeatedly look at the details and Evaluation, unlike in the live broadcast room where you often place orders with passion. The products I place orders in the live broadcast room now will confirm whether there is shipping insurance. After all, not every product is as satisfying as what you see at first sight. ”
Although there are various signs that Douyin e-commerce is encroaching on Taobao’s basic market. Taobao has naturally made a lot of efforts to defend its “kingdom”. Content, social networking and community have become The direction of Taobao’s innovation can be understood as being in line with traffic.
Luo Shan told Ranciyuan that Taobao now also provides training to merchants to deepen user experience from content and retention. “In fact, it is still an old topic. , which is to transform the content to attract users with content as the driving force. "
But in Luo Shan's view, it is difficult to say whether the effect has met expectations, "To be honest, although the platform provides incentive mechanisms to guide our merchants to produce content, our merchants also encourage consumers to produce content through reward mechanisms. , but judging from the operation of my store, the content created by our merchants is not attractive to consumers at all. It is no exaggeration to say that consumers will not click on it at all. ”
When surrounded by powerful enemies, as Luo Shan said, Taobao attaches great importance to “content.”
This is indeed the case. The exchange held in May 2022 At the event, Taobao and Tmall disclosed for the first time the core strategy of “moving from transaction to consumption” and “addition to content. The entire platform has moved forward from transactions to consumption, increasing investment in shopping, live streaming, and online shopping, and guiding merchants to produce more and higher-quality content through incentive mechanisms. ”
On September 1st, at the Taobao Live Ceremony, Taobao Live announced that it would enter the 2.0 era. The biggest change of Taobao Live 2.0 is that live broadcast connects all the consumption scenarios of the Taobao series. Taobao Live and Guess You Like, Browse, Search and other mobile Taobao fields and Diantao realize "big public domain connection" to explore greater incremental space and help merchants reach a wider range of consumer groups.
For the current e-commerce field, the "field" in the "people and goods field" of the traditional retail industry has become less important. "People" and "goods" have become the core elements. The next competition is to see. Whichever platform can combine the two most efficiently will stand out.
The "goods" belong to Taobao.Advantage. Even Douyin e-commerce, which has strong development momentum, also plans to develop shelf e-commerce. But “people” happen to be Taobao’s shortcoming. It can be understood that "people" are "traffic", and Taobao is facing a traffic problem. Therefore, Taobao focused its assessment indicators on improving user stickiness and activity, and accordingly launched a series of adjustments.
The offensive and defensive battle between Taobao and Douyin has begun quietly. From the current point of view, Douyin has a traffic advantage that Taobao does not have, and the long-tail effect of Taobao shelf e-commerce is also something Douyin cannot hope for.
In the future, with more and more entrants, Taobao’s Hanfu e-commerce category share will inevitably be diluted by other platforms. At the same time, whether other platforms such as Douyin can handle the new traffic , but also requires support from operations, after-sales and other aspects.
