What inspiration does the more than ten years of TV shopping have for the current booming live streaming sales? How can internet celebrities avoid taking the same old path of TV shopping when selling goods on live streaming?
text | Zhang Jilong
Source | All-weather technology (ID: iawtmt)
"Our company has loopholes in management, which has caused certain misleading to consumers. We deeply apologize for this."
On November 13, Li Jiaqi Studio admitted its mistake and apologized in a public statement.
Previously, Li Jiaqi, the top e-commerce live streaming star, mistakenly regarded a hairy crab as the hairy crab of Yangcheng Lake in the live stream, which aroused public doubts. Some netizens directly pointed out on social media that it was suspected of selling counterfeits.
In fact, this is not the first time Li Jiaqi has failed. Not long ago, the "non-stick pot" incident had already pushed him into the forefront of public opinion.
false propaganda or fake sales have become a weakness of the current hot live e-commerce. This looks familiar to TV shopping more than 10 years ago.
As early as more than ten years ago, another form of video sales - TV shopping was once popular in China. In 2005, the annual income level of urban residents in China was 10,468 yuan and 3,258 yuan in rural areas. At the income level at that time, a learning machine product was promoted through TV shopping, and its annual turnover could reach 2.5 billion yuan. The annual turnover of several top TV shopping companies on the market, such as Acorn International , Qixing Shopping, MoNeng International, Happy Shopping , etc., has also reached tens of billions of yuan, and has been successfully listed.
However, TV shopping has since been criticized for frequent fakes. From "fume-free non-stick pans" that not only stick to the pan but also contain toxic substances, to ordinary foods acting as breast enhancement and health products, actors pretending to be mobile phone experts to promote mobile phones, etc., false propaganda emerges in TV shopping. These problems eventually led to the "cold" end of TV shopping. Many years later, the once popular TV shopping companies have disappeared from people's vision.
From prosperity to decline, what inspires TV shopping for more than ten years has it been to the current booming live streaming sales? How can internet celebrities avoid taking the same old path of TV shopping when selling goods on live streaming?
TV shopping has been ups and downs for twenty years
The interesting thing about history is that there are many coincidences. For example, Li Jiaqi was born in , Yueyang , Hunan, in 1992, TV shopping was born in mainland China and Taiwan. Guangdong Zhuhai TV Station launched a program called "Midea Boutique TV Special Offer Store". This year, the wireless fast buying company was also established in Taiwan and was a pioneer in the local TV shopping channel market.
However, the real rise of TV shopping will take until 1996. This year, the first generation of Chinese local TV direct sales tycoon represented by Shu Yikang, Diweis, and Bestsid appeared. Beijing TV (BTV) also opened the first TV direct sales center in China. The emergence of platforms such as
has driven the first wave of TV shopping in China. 1997, the sales of BTV TV direct sales center reached 120 million yuan, equivalent to the sales of a medium-sized shopping mall at that time; 1998, Diweis achieved sales revenue of 223 million yuan, and a brand promoted on the TV shopping platform recovered 11800,000 yuan in one day.
saw the business opportunities of TV shopping. In 1998, hundreds of TV stations across the country launched TV shopping programs, with a market size of RMB 2.6 billion, and at that time, more than 1,000 companies were engaged.
However, just as TV shopping reached the climax of , the "OK Mirror Incident" almost brought a catastrophe to the TV shopping industry.
OK lens is a lens that was claimed to have the function of correcting vision by Oak on the TV shopping channel at that time. "Not limited by age, the indications are 100% effective. Within 1 to 2 weeks, people with myopia under 600 degrees can restore their natural vision, and consolidate and stabilize after 3 months." Although the price is as high as thousands of yuan, under the bombardment of advertising, about 20,000 people pay for it every year.
However, this product eventually caused a "social tragedy". Data shows that 16% to 69% of the " OK mirror " wearers have cornea damage, 14% to 51% of the wearers have seen heavy shadows, and some people even have almost blind eyes.
After the "OK Mirror" incident, the TV direct sales reputation crisis broke out and the industry was reshuffled. From 1998 to 2000, the number of TV shopping companies dropped sharply from more than 1,000 to about 300, and the industry revenue shrank from 20 billion yuan to 4 billion yuan.
This drastic change not only made industry giants such as Divis unable to recover, but also pushed some smaller companies to the brink of bankruptcy, such as Acorn International. Acorn International was founded by Yang Dongjie, a graduate of Peking University’s 86th law major. In 108, Yang Dongjie, who served as deputy director of the Beijing Office of the Utah government in the United States, discovered the business opportunities of TV shopping and introduced a $2 million investment to establish Acorn International.
At the moment when the company is facing a crisis, Yang Dongjie took out half of his shares to recruit "veterans" from Diweis and Haci Group to turn the tide. In terms of products, Acorn International has led the company's performance to soar rapidly by discovering popular products such as Haojixing and Beibeijia. In 2005, the sales of Haojixing product alone exceeded 2.5 billion yuan. The rise of
Acorn International led the second revival of the TV shopping industry. A number of TV shopping companies such as Qixing Shopping and MoN International have been established and seized the market. TV stations in the radio and television system have also established TV shopping channels: Guangdong TV station cooperated with South Korea Hyundai Group to launch the "Modern Family Shopping Channel", Shanghai Culture and Radio and Television and Korean CJ jointly invested in the establishment of the "Oriental CJ Shopping Channel"; Hunan Radio and Television founded the "Happy Shopping Channel", and CCTV also launched the "CCTV Zhongshi Shopping".
As an industry leader, Acorn International has also been favored by venture capitalists. In 2005, Acorn International received a US$43 million venture capital from SoftBank Asia Fund Phase II. Yang Dongjie once revealed that SoftBank made the decision in just one month, almost setting a new record for the speed of SoftBank's injecting venture capital at that time.
In May 2007, Acorn International was listed on New York Stock Exchange , but this year also became the turning point in the TV shopping industry.
Because of the previous year, the "black five" TV shopping programs such as breast augmentation, weight loss, height increase, medicines, and medical devices were banned by the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. A large number of direct TV companies have almost no products to do since then. In addition, several false advertising incidents of TV shopping were exposed. By the end of 2007, 80% of domestic companies engaged in TV shopping were in losses.
In the second half of 2007, Qixing Shopping began to fall into losses, with a loss of HK$380 million in 2008; during the same period, Acorn International also ushered in its first loss in 10 years of its establishment. The 2008 financial report showed that Acorn International's net profit was 175 million yuan, and its stock also fell below the issue price.
This time, TV shopping has no hope of revival. In 2015, Acorn International stopped its TV channels, and its company introduced it to become a "formerly leading TV advertising company". The company's business expanded from TV shopping to cosmetics, mobile phones, health products, fitness products and even automotive lubricants, but its performance was no longer as good as it was in the past.
Qixing Shopping has also begun to transform from TV shopping to online video shopping, but the final results are not great and continue the loss situation. As of the first half of 2011, Qixing Shopping's cumulative pre-tax loss of nearly HK$1 billion in four and a half years of listing. Starting from 2013, Qixing Shopping was renamed Qixing Holdings and completely gave up TV shopping. In 2015, it was acquired by China Minsheng Investment and renamed it as China Minsheng Financial Holdings, and it has fully transformed its financial business, with a share price of less than HK$0.1.
, which was once at the peak of its popularity on TV due to the sales of mobile phones, has not escaped the industry reshuffle. As the losses continue, MoNin International chose to enter the micro-business field in 2015. But unfortunately, two years later, he was eventually investigated and punished for suspected pyramid schemes. Happy Shopping, which successfully listed on the GEM in 2015, was also renamed Mango Super Media last year, and its main business has changed from TV shopping to Internet video, operator business and content operation business.
Pictures are from the official Weibo of People's Daily
As of 2017, there were only 34 units left in the country that obtained TV shopping business licenses, and the TV shopping era has finally become a thing of the past.
The promoters of the TV shopping era
Just like Viya and Li Jiaqi are now iconic figures in live streaming sales, in the ups and downs of TV shopping, some people have symbolic significance for the development of this industry and play an important role in the ups and downs of the industry.
One of the important figures is that in 2000, Yang Dongjie was invited by Acorn International to join Hu Yujun . From the 11 years since joining Acorn International in 2000 and serving as CEO to leaving the company in 2011, Hu Yujun has been a direct trader of Acorn International.
Before joining Acorn International, Hu Yujun worked in Lehua Electronics, Diweis and Haci, and was a veteran in the TV shopping industry. It is precisely because of this that he is familiar with the marketing operation process and methodology of the TV shopping industry.
In order to solve the common problems of consumer trust and offline delivery in the industry, Hu Yujun has created a model of direct TV sales + ground distribution for Acorn International. Using CCTV + satellite TV + local TV channels as advertising and direct sales channels, the products are gained popularity in the early stage promotion, and in the sales process, the offline distributor system is used to open up channels, and the two parties share the sales revenue brought by the ground channels.
In order to win over offline channel dealers, Hu Yujun attracted some direct TV companies to become shareholders of the company and expand their energy through interest bundling. This method allows Acorn International's business to quickly cover all prefecture-level and county-level cities across the country, with as many as 25,000 retail outlets.
In addition, in terms of sales model, unlike other TV shopping platforms that only serve as channels, Hu Yujun's Acorn International pursues stronger control and puts forward "exclusive" requirements for many products. Hu Yujun once said that Acorn International usually takes a buyout method when it comes to a product, and the manufacturer is only responsible for production, while Acorn International is responsible for packaging and marketing, and even the name of the product is determined by Acorn International. Sometimes, Acorn International feels that there is a market for any product, so it lets the manufacturer produce it as required. In terms of product layout, unlike other TV shopping companies focusing on health products, Acorn International has expanded its product categories to some novel digital electronic products, such as DV cameras, beauty pens, etc. Taking a low-end DV machine priced at 1980 yuan as an example, this product, which is laughed at as "toys" in the industry, Acorn International actually sold nearly 300,000 units, which was nearly twice the total sales of the two DV machines, Samsung and Sony, in China at that time.
In addition to Hu Yujun, there is also an important figure Du Guoying. Former Vice President of Meizu Technology, Li Nan, once commented that he "has almost no one can match the accuracy of consumer insights." This famous figure who later created 8848 titanium mobile phones and small can tea, and at that time, established a joint venture with Acorn International. With nearly perfect marketing methods and media resources, it created popular products such as Haojixing and Beibeijia, which were popular all over the country.
When Acorn International was glorious, two other people also saw the opportunity to shop on TV and quickly followed up. One is Zhao Lixin, chairman and president of Honglan International, and the other is Jiang Decai, one of the former suppliers of Acorn International. The two founded Qixing Shopping and Moen International respectively.
According to the public, the two have their own tricks when shopping in TV.
Qixing Shopping has also formed online video shopping, and promoted products to users through a shopping guide team formed by young women. This shopping guide method is better than TV shopping in terms of interactivity.
, and Jiang Decai is known as the master of "Mengpai" marketing. Mengpai marketing comes from the short and fast marketing techniques of Inner Mongolia health companies. Through advertising bombardment, it quickly ignited the market in a short period of time. Jiang Decai, who started his career in health products marketing, established MoNeng International in 2006 and quickly transitioned the company's sales from health products to mobile phones.
" Suning . Gome-style store sales model requires at least 1,000 stores across the country, and it will take at least 2 to 3 years to open, and it will cost huge amounts of money."Jiang Decai said that TV shopping advertising is equivalent to a store, "Once you decide to launch a certain product, it can cover all cooperative channels within 5 days. "
" small strategies look at opponents, and large strategies look at market capacity. "Jiang Decai believes that the market for no product is bigger than mobile phones, and he believes that MoNeng International will not be the same as Acorn International. "The problem with Acorn International is that it is fickle, sometimes selling mobile phones, sometimes selling health products, and sometimes selling cosmetics.
In the mobile phone market, MoNeng International chose to cooperate with domestic mobile phone brands because Jiang Decai keenly realized that compared with international brands, domestic mobile phones are unable to build traditional sales channels with wide coverage, and at the same time, domestic mobile phones have low prices but high gross profit margins.
through cooperation with Changhong, Haier and Konka mobile phones, MoNeng International has quickly increased its volume. In 2007, Motor Energy International's sales reached 700 million yuan, and rose to 2.9 billion yuan in 2008. Jiang Decai said that of the 10 million mobile phones sold through TV shopping channels in 2008, MoNeng International sold 2 million. Take Haier mobile phones as an example. Monet International's sales to Haier mobile phones account for more than 50% of the brand's total sales.
In terms of product selection, MoNeng International chose a short, flat and fast way to play. Generally speaking, MoNeng International will prepare a product with sales volume of about 3 days. After placing advertisements, you can know the effect. You will decide whether to continue using it within 3 days. You will invest money to complete the cycle once every 45 days.
In this way, MoNeng International's gross profit margin was as high as 40% to 60%, and in 2008, the sales exceeded Acorn International, becoming the "mobile phone shopping king" that year.
Fall in the Speed of Light
E-commerce live streaming is also accompanied by controversy, such as the non-stick pan incident, the Pechoin incident, the spokesperson incident, etc. Li Jiaqi and Weiya's frequent "car overturn" accidents have successively become popular on Weibo.
"OMG, this is definitely a cheap and practical non-stick pan. Girls must not miss it." On October 23, Li Jiaqi was overturned while promoting the non-stick pan for Cooking Dahuang. When showing the non-stick pan, the eggs were firmly stuck to the bottom of the pan.
Although Li Jiaqi later explained that the accident was caused by his failure to follow the instructions, this incident caused the outside world to question the professionalism and false propaganda of Internet celebrities.
Interestingly, more than ten years ago, TV shopping also happened because of a "non-stick pan".
On March 26, 2007, the TV shopping product "Guanwang Master Hu " that once resounded across the country and occupied the prime time of various TV channels was exposed by CCTV. This smokeless non-stick pan claimed to be a manganese titanium alloy material was revealed to be just an ordinary aluminum alloy pan. Not only does it not achieve the effect of smoke-free and non-stick, but it contains highly toxic substances. In addition, the survey showed that the price of this pot was as high as 599 yuan in major shopping malls, but the actual cost was only about 50 yuan. After the
incident was exposed, Zhejiang Jinwei Industrial Co., Ltd., a manufacturer of "Master Hu" without fume pots, held a press conference in Beijing, admitting that the advertisement was "exaggerated", but insisting that the product was not problematic. Subsequently, the industrial and commercial department still investigated it on suspicion of false advertisements and seized all products. From then on, "Master Hu" disappeared from TV shopping.
Since the birth of TV shopping, the problem of false propaganda has always been with it, and it is also an important reason why TV shopping is abandoned by users. Whether it was the early "OK Mirror" or the later "Good Memories, Bebejia, and domestic mobile phones, they were quickly put on the cloak of "hot products" under the promotion of TV shopping. However, due to frequent quality problems, consumers quickly found that they were charged "IQ tax".
Take the Acorn International flagship product Haojixing, which has a market price of 998, as an example. Some media revealed that its cost is only more than 100 yuan, and another product called "Boribao" under its name is also exposed by the media that it is just an ordinary food.
In the CECT mobile TV commercial launched by Seven Star TV, a person known as the "global mobile phone expert" was also recognized by the audience as an actor in a certain TV series. In response, Qixing Shopping explained that although the actor is not an expert, he likes to play with his mobile phone.
In the analysis of consumer complaints released by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce in 2005 and 2006, direct television sales were both "hard-hit areas", with more than 2,000 complaints about direct television sales.
In September 2009, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Management of TV Shopping Short Film Advertising and Home Shopping Programs", setting entry thresholds for TV shopping companies that place shopping short film advertisements on TV stations in terms of registered capital, enterprise scale, after-sales service, industrial integrity, etc.
At the same time, TV shopping companies such as Acorn International and Qixing Shopping have also been impacted by the radio and television series TV shopping channels. Since 2006, with the launch of channels such as Happy Shopping and CTV Shopping, TV stations have paid more and more attention to TV shopping, and the media costs of TV shopping companies have increased year by year.
Takes the advertising fee of a provincial TV station as an example. With the competition among multiple TV shopping companies, its advertising price has increased by nearly ten times in a few years. Among them, the purchasing cost of Acorn International in the advertising era accounts for about 35% of sales revenue, and other marketing expenses and logistics costs have led to its comprehensive cost of up to more than 55%. While the advertising expenses are increasing, consumers do not pay. The "China Television Shopping Development Report 2008-2009" jointly released by the Shanghai TV Festival Organizing Committee and CSM Media Research shows that only 10.53% of the people who watch TV shopping have purchasing behavior when watching TV shopping.
Around 2008, online retail business entered an explosion and large-scale growth, and online shopping also had a significant impact on TV shopping. TV shopping platforms such as Happy Shopping and Oriental Shopping have also begun to integrate into e-commerce.
Mango Super Media (formerly Happy Shopping) said in its first half of 2019 financial report that the company's media retail business is actively transforming into media e-commerce, through star artist cooperation, discovering and cultivating Internet celebrities, it has entered Taobao Live, Douyin , Kuaishou, Mogujie and other traffic platforms to achieve sales of goods.
However, in terms of effect, the live broadcast of TV stations is not very interactive, so its popularity is lower than that of e-commerce live broadcasts.
When we are learning from e-commerce live streaming to live streaming, e-commerce live streaming is "repeated history" - the problem of false products of live streaming to live streaming is emerging.
Recently, a user exposed the drinks he brought in a live broadcast room of an internet celebrity on Weibo . The production date was actually later than the delivery date, and suspected that the product production date was fake.
"A large number of anchors are still following the old path of TV shopping." Recently, the People's Daily published an article that from Viya to Li Jiaqi, the live streaming sales are very deep, and they all have the taste of making quick money.
At the press conference of the Ministry of Commerce on November 14, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce said that online live promotion, as an emerging e-commerce marketing model, must comply with relevant laws and regulations and must protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. The Ministry of Commerce will work with relevant departments to promote the standardized development of e-commerce and effectively safeguard the order of the e-commerce market and the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.
