reporter | Chen Qirui
editor | Lou Qinqin
Not all beauty brands rely on top anchors.
On July 13, local beauty brand Proya stated at an investor exchange meeting that in 2021, the proportion of products promoted by leading anchors in the total sales of product live broadcasts will be small single digits. On Douyin, nearly 60% of Proya’s live broadcasts are self-broadcast by the brand. At present, Proya mainly conducts live broadcasts on Tmall, Douyin and Jingdong .
During the "6.18" period in 2022, Proya ranked fifth in Tmall's beauty sales ranking; its makeup brand Caitang ranked ninth in Tmall's makeup sales list. In the future, Proya will continue to increase the number of live broadcasts. This year, it will open a second official account on Douyin, mainly promoting popular items such as anti-double essence.
According to reports from the beauty industry information media Qingyan, Lin Qingxuan will account for 60% of self-broadcasts during the "6.18" period in 2022, and 40% of master anchors. Shanghai Jahwa Group, which owns brands such as Herborist and Yuze , launched the construction of a live broadcast center in December 2021. It said that 70% of self-broadcast content in 2021 will be completed by internal teams, and store self-broadcast GMV will increase by more than 300 year-on-year. %.
According to the research report of CITIC Securities , Li Jiaqi and Viya will account for approximately 10% of Proya’s live broadcast sales in 2021. Li Jiaqi and Weiya's contribution to Shanghai Jahwa's live broadcast sales accounts for about 25%, mainly in Yuze and Herborist. According to the report, most A-share cosmetics listed companies are not highly dependent on head anchors.
With the rise of anchors such as Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, live broadcast has become an important channel for beauty brands to drive online sales growth.
In this process, top anchors have promoted the sales growth of high-end overseas brands such as Lancôme and Estee Lauder , and have also allowed new domestic brands such as Perfect Diary and Hua Xizi to get out of the circle, while Proya and Yuze have already Local brands that have been established for many years have also used live broadcasts to rejuvenate themselves.
However, the problem of some brands’ over-reliance on top anchors also quickly emerged. Head anchors have a stronger voice and more expensive slot fees. Beauty brands entering the live broadcast rooms of top anchors sometimes lose money and gain traffic. The previous dispute between Li Jiaqi and L'Oreal also showed that the price requirements of leading anchors risk disrupting the brand price order.
After the recent suspension of anchors such as Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, some brands have also realized that over-reliance on top anchors will increase the uncertainty of development. During the "6.18" period in 2022, Li Jiaqi suddenly stopped broadcasting, which once caused a large inventory backlog of brands.
In fact, some beauty brands have already begun to reduce their investment in top anchors, mainly by increasing the number of self-broadcasts in their stores. As early as the early days of the epidemic in 2020, some beauty brands such as Lancôme had begun to gradually increase their investment in self-broadcasting in order to reduce losses caused by store closures.
With the rise of short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, beauty brands have gradually extended their self-broadcasting channels from Taobao. In addition to beauty brands, the practice of self-broadcasting is also used by shopping malls such as , Intime, , etc. The counter clerks can broadcast live in the mall after being trained. Yintai has established its own system for self-broadcasting in shopping malls.
As the previously popular top anchors have gradually faded out, whether they like it or not, it has become an inevitable trend for beauty brands to reduce their reliance on top anchors. But not all brands can achieve sales growth through self-streaming.
Currently, beauty brands that are more successful in self-broadcasting have usually been in the market for a long time and have a large number of sales points through offline channels. They have considerable budgets to build live broadcast bases. They can not only conduct live broadcasts on , Tmall, and Douyin through their own teams, but also gain exposure in live broadcasts in comprehensive shopping malls such as Intime.
For those start-up brands, it is usually difficult to gain traffic attention by choosing self-broadcasting. Entering the live broadcast room of a leading anchor is often a key step for them to enter the mass market. The 2022 "6.18" Tmall beauty and makeup sales list also shows that without the support of head anchors, the number of start-up local brands on the list has been significantly reduced, and overseas brands that were once suppressed once again dominate the list.
The excessive concentration of resources by top anchors has resulted in the inequality of voice between anchors and brands, but also because of the concentration of resources, top anchors can bring rare traffic to small brands that lack exposure. In the current period when the field of top anchors is still in a slump, start-up brands and small brands may face more challenges.
