On April 17, a public opinion incident about online celebrity Zhang Dayi caused the market value of his online celebrity Ruhan Holdings to plummet, losing about $22 million (about 150 million yuan) overnight and a 6.36% drop in share price.

The essence of the decline is not gossip, but that different types of anchors are sharing the dividends of "first-generation online celebrities with goods".

Although the former "queen of Taobao" Zhang Dayi set a record of online store sales of over 100 million in 28 minutes, she sprang up in the era of Weibo Corp. After the rise of e-commerce live streaming, there is even the argument that "Li Jiaqi and Weiya are popular and Zhang Dayi is forgotten."

Li Jiaqi and Weiya are top-rate online celebrity anchors who mature with e-commerce live streaming and grow up with guided live streaming. It can be said that they are the symbol of the rise and maturity of Taobao live streaming mode. E-commerce live broadcast gave birth to Li Jiaqi and Weiya. They start from the plain people with 0 fans, and have no fans to bless them, but they have created the miracle of "top class". Now, this kind of miracle is very difficult to emerge from the game of capital and flow.

Recently, "the first generation of Internet celebrities" Luo Yonghao also changed careers to become an e-commerce anchor, accumulating 48.92 million viewers for the first live broadcast, with sales reaching 110 million yuan, which is a very successful beginning. However, the lack of cargo capacity prompted its second and third live data to plummet, and the carnival gradually calmed down. Enter the venue with traffic and attention, and the "flow contestants" who switch to e-commerce anchors may not be smooth.

Another atypical group of anchors is stars. Under the general trend of "celebrity celebrity" and the cold winter in the film and television industry, more and more stars want to add an "anchor" identity to themselves. However, the frequent occurrence of "rollover accidents" and the lack of moving goods also prove that even if there are a large number of loyal fans and star aura, the business of live streaming with goods is still "like a mountain apart."

These four groups are special atypical cases in the popular online celebrity e-commerce live broadcast ecology. They either bet heavily in the e-commerce live broadcast ecology, or are dissatisfied with it, or see e-commerce live streaming as a delaying solution to some kind of crisis.

But is the bowl of hot rice in e-commerce live broadcast a panacea for traffic and revenue?

Zhang Dayi: there is no home court except Weibo Corp.

Behind every success, you need to hit the pulse of the times. As Lei Jun said, standing on the tuyere, pigs can fly.

The success of Zhang Dayi is closely related to Weibo Corp. In 2014, the performance of "Libelin" (Ruhan's predecessor, Amoy brand e-commerce) founded by Feng Min (such as Chairman Han) declined significantly. With the mentality of giving it a try, Feng Min joined the model in the store, that is, Zhang Dayi, who then had nearly 300000 followers on Sina Weibo Corp. Opened a Taobao online store.

With the dividends of Weibo Corp's picture and text era, coupled with the fact that online celebrities are still a wasteland with goods, Zhang Dayi rose rapidly in 2015 and 2016. Zhang Dayi once created a miracle that new products were "seconds out" by customers within 2 seconds and sold nearly 20 million of sales in 2 hours.

The IP value brought by the celebrity invigorated Feng Min's company, and he tried to copy the model in bulk. In 2015, the transformed "Libelin" changed its name to Hangzhou Ruhan holding Co., Ltd., and the company's business model changed from "online celebrity + supply chain" to "online celebrity + online celebrity incubation + supply chain".

Feng Min is looking forward to building Ruhan into a two-wheel drive company, the front end is the mining, building and operation of network celebrities, and the back end is foundry and supply chain. If you want to achieve both ends, and rely on the front end to drive the back end.

But the cruelty of the reality is that the big online celebrities who can call their names on the market generally have MCN institutions behind them, and they basically won't sign up for other companies. Therefore, most of the people who sign the contract are plain people, and after signing the contract, they will be hot through marketing means.

Zhang Dayi benefited from the Weibo Corp picture and text bonus period, but now the bonus period has passed, and the mode of carrying goods has gradually transitioned from the original picture and text era to short videos and live broadcasts, while the main position of hot people such as Han is still stagnant in Weibo Corp. At present, such as Han's online celebrities have accumulated 220 million fans, the vast majority of which come from Weibo Corp.

Zhang Dayi has 11.73 million fans on Weibo Corp, but only about 270000 on Douyin. Xiao Hongshu is basically silent.

More importantly, the huge team of online celebrities did not bring considerable income, only relying on Zhang Dayi to prop up half of the income.

The number of signed online celebrities under Ruhan Holdings has reached 159. in 2018, Ruhan paid 150 million yuan in marketing fees. In fiscal year 2017, fiscal year 2018 and the first three quarters of fiscal year 2019, sales of Hanyi e-commerce (jointly founded by Zhang Dayi and Ruhan Holdings) accounted for 49.6%, 51.0% and 44.9% of Ruhan GMV respectively, and accounted for 50.8%, 52.4% and 53.5% of Ruhan's revenue, respectively.

In the weak state of the front end, the back end of Ruhan is also faced with many challenges.

Unlike Li Jiaqi and Weiya's shopping guide model, Ruhan's supply chain is almost entirely self-owned: design, integrate the supply chain, and sell it on Weibo Corp.

This is not only the advantage but also the weakness of Ruhan.

Within the company, if there is a supply chain base, the base can produce sample clothes at any time, and then the anchor will broadcast it and feedback it to the back-end factory according to the order quantity. At the same time, Ruhan also developed an ERP, OA and other functions of the system-layer cake (layer cake), to support the whole "fashion celebrity-supply chain-store-finance" system, to achieve the purpose of fine, digital operation.

The building of this flexible supply chain is in line with the general trend of "small batch, personalized, rapid response" pursued by e-commerce, and its essence is to delay the time of making volume decisions, improve the accuracy of prediction, and reduce inventory backlog.

Ruhan is also looking forward to building a fast reverse supply chain similar to Zara to reduce losses caused by inventory overstocking. But at present, there is a huge gap between Ruhan and Zara, with inventory turnover days of about 103 days in the first half of 2016, compared with 0.6 days in the annual report in the first half of 2017, which translates to 608 days of survival turnover days, while Zara may only take 30,40 days.

Front-end self-made sample clothes, back-end back-push supply chain, the brand needs to have a strong voice, reflected in the clothing field, this discourse right is a large order, at present, Ruhan still needs to further improve its volume.

How to seize the next tipping point and find the next home has become a common dilemma for the first generation of online celebrities.

Li Jiaqi and Weiya: do not sleep, try to "get out of the circle"

Compared with star artists, online celebrity bloggers and corporate CEO who bring their own fans, traffic and attention, Li Jiaqi and Weiya can be regarded as grassroots. Relying on live streaming to bring goods, they accumulate fans day by day, ranging from 0 to 10 million.

In fact, at present, Li Jiaqi and Weiya are no less famous than many stars. through live streaming of e-commerce, they have turned themselves into star-level e-commerce anchors and veritable "top class". Even the dogs broadcast live with Li Jiaqi have their own IP to endorse make-up products.

Stars have become guests in their studio, Han Hong, Carina Lau, Jolin Tsai and Yang Zi. The list of cooperation is also growing day by day. Even, some movies and TV dramas have begun to make use of e-commerce live rooms.

To some extent, Li Jiaqi and Weiya are the key players in detonating the e-commerce live broadcast ecology.

In 2016, Taobao officially launched live streaming on Taobao, changing the show model, which relies on reward as the main income, and taking the volume of goods as the core index to measure income.

Li Jiaqi and Weiya have become "experimenters" and "practitioners" of this model. At that time, live streaming was an early attempt, and the relationship between e-commerce transactions and live streaming was not as close as it is today.

Li Jiaqi has the experience of working as a Maybelline teller in Nanchang. At the beginning, L'Or é al and ONE selected and sent 200 makeup artists in an attempt to train e-commerce anchors. Li Jiaqi got on the bus to become an anchor. Weiya, on the other hand, had the experience of opening a physical clothing store, and after having the money, she turned into an e-commerce business, lost two apartments and almost ran out of savings.

They are the first batch of experienced people who know how to communicate with the audience in front of the mobile phone screen, arouse empathy and stimulate consumption.

When the time comes for "Singles' Day" in 2018, Li Jiaqi and Jack Ma compete online. Li Jiaqi set a record of selling 15000 lipsticks in five minutes, becoming the "number one lipstick". It was also the "Singles Day holiday" of that year, and Weiya's live broadcast sales reached 267 million yuan in two hours.

But Taobao live broadcast is only based on Taobao ecology, out of the circle is the direction.

At the end of 2018, Li Jiaqi had a period of fan growth, and the number was stuck at 1.9 million nodes. Obviously, just as an e-commerce anchor, it is easy to touch the ceiling of industry traffic.

Li Jiaqi needs traffic and attention outside of Taobao.

So there is a lipstick color test for short video content on Douyin within a minute. With intensive information output and unique language memory, a short video of a color test of MAC lipstick went viral, bringing 1 million followers to Li Jiaqi's Douyin account on the same day. Following the model of this popular style, Li Jiaqi gradually stepped out of the circle, and when it comes to e-commerce live streaming, he is bound to be unable to get around him.

This mode of content production is also used by many e-commerce anchors and cosmetics bloggers, creating the spread of new fields. When "Oh My God", "all the girls" and "Viya's women", the words commonly used by Li Jiaqi and Weiya in live streaming, traffic and resources are also poured in, e-commerce anchors have become one of the synonyms of consumerism.

Because of this, Li Jiaqi and Weiya have the strength and position to bargain with the brand at a preferential price rarely seen in the market. And it is through countless times to build a preferential and practical bridge between the audience and the brand, and in the opposite direction to promote them to get more traffic and popularity.

Li Jiaqi and Weiya, as "experimenters" and "practitioners" of the mode of e-commerce live broadcast, have won the dividend of e-commerce live broadcast.

Today, Li Jiaqi and Weiya represent the "wealth-making myth" of the live broadcasting industry. by commenting on one commodity after another, they have built themselves into "online celebrities" in this field, and gradually break the circle and cross the border through their accumulated influence.

On the other hand, none of them dare to stop. Li Jiaqi is afraid that once he has a rest, fans will be attracted to other anchors. Viya also said, "if you dare not rest all day, you will be nervous when you take a rest." "

E-commerce live streaming clip traffic brings concrete and visible benefits. After the explosion in 2019, e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo and SUNING, short video platforms such as Kuaishou Technology and Douyin, and even Baidu, Inc. tried to get a piece of the e-commerce live streaming. Star artists also take the initiative to participate in it.

Today, it is hard to find a case in which, like Li Jiaqi and Weiya, a vegan began to accumulate from zero fans to head anchors in 2016. After all, all kinds of platforms, brands and MCN have entered one after another, such as stars, CEO, online celebrity bloggers and people of various identities, and the cake of e-commerce live broadcast has been filled with knives and forks of contenders.

Luo Yonghao: "Big V" with goods, sad three rounds

In 2019, with the emergence of streaming online celebrities such as Li Jiaqi, Weiya and Brother Sanda, the online celebrity economy has become a tuyere for platform organizations to pursue profits.

According to the 2019 White Paper on the Ecological Development of online Celebrity E-commerce, the purchase conversion rate of top online celebrity e-commerce can reach 20%.

The LVB platform depends on the popularity of the head big V, and the head big V needs a suitable platform to realize the traffic.

According to the Soochow Securities "re-discussion of online celebrity e-commerce" research report shows that Douyin's commercial realization is mainly in advertising marketing and e-commerce. Advertising marketing is mainly for brand owners, MCN institutions and stars / talent to provide double-end services. E-commerce mainly focuses on providing brands with a large number of head KOL resources to accelerate the exposure of the brand.

Unlike Zhang Dayi, who has become an online celebrity from live streaming, many online celebrities have joined the ranks of online celebrities after e-commerce live streaming has become the mainstream marketing method of brands.

Luo Yonghao, who announced his foray into the field of e-commerce live broadcasting to sell goods and pay off debts, reached an exclusive cooperation with Douyin, according to an exclusive report by TechStar. In addition to the signing fee, Douyin will also give support for open-screen advertising, Feed streaming, popular recommendations and so on. After the official announcement of both sides, Luo Yonghao began his "life with goods".

After a week of intense hype, Luo Yonghao started his live debut on time at 8pm on April 1. Although the first live broadcast, Lao Luo and Zhu Xiaomu unskillfully carrying goods were complained by netizens, but this did not affect the traffic dividend brought by Luo Yonghao's long-term accumulated popularity.

Whether admiring it or making fun of it, Luo Yonghao's first live broadcast on Douyin is still eye-catching, with a cumulative total of 48.92 million viewers, with the highest number of online viewers of 2.9 million, with a fan increase of 2.15 million per game and sales of 110 million yuan.

When the lively fans dispersed, Luo Yonghao's second live broadcast data fell off the cliff. The second live broadcast was nearly an hour faster than the first one, but overall sales reached nearly 34.226 million yuan, down 69.7 percent from the same period last year. The number of viewers was 11.427 million, down 76.2 percent from the first show.

On April 16, Luo Yonghao broadcast the third live broadcast. Luo Yonghao, who is becoming more and more skilled, has only been on the air for two hours, which has been reduced by half compared with the last time, and the sales volume has increased by 60.9% year-on-year to 55.242 million yuan. However, the sound wave of the third reward only gained 640000 yuan, a decrease of 80.2%.

With the ups and downs, the popularity of Luo Yonghao's live studio has dropped sharply, and the number of paid reward users is decreasing. Many hammer fans said, "after watching the first game, I felt disappointed. At that time, Lao Luo, who was full of heaven and earth, was now forced by life and bowed his head." "

Judging from Luo Yonghao's live broadcast results, not every "big V" is suitable for "carrying goods."

In addition to Luo Yonghao, who has made great strides into e-commerce live streaming Douyin, it has also introduced the CEO of some well-known companies, such as Trip.com founder Liang Jianzhang's debut with goods.

The premise for "Big V" to bring goods is that Douyin e-commerce live streaming wants to create its own signature anchor. It is undoubtedly a shortcut to choose a large V with ultra-high flow.

Taobao live broadcast Li Jiaqi, Weiya platform, Kuaishou Technology has Sanda brother, Simba help. Compared with Taobao and Kuaishou Technology, Douyin has a relatively weak base of carrying goods. Although the characteristics of algorithm recommendation and centralized traffic distribution bring a large amount of advertising revenue, it is difficult to establish private domain traffic, so it is difficult to rely on the natural incubation of the community to form e-commerce head anchors.

Therefore, Douyin is eager to borrow big V traffic from its head to support its e-commerce live streaming business.

In the hot year of live streaming with goods in 2019, Douyin successively opened shopping carts and merchandise windows, and launched Douyin stores, releasing live streaming rights for internal tests by the end of the year. Douyin chose to magnify the advantage of huge traffic and continue to increase the absorption of online celebrities on the head.

But it is not so easy to make the transition from short video to e-commerce live streaming and build your own closed-loop ecology.

As Douyin's own e-commerce supply system is not perfect, the supply of goods, as well as logistics, after-sales can not compete with Taobao, most of the goods are still jumping to Taobao link. Judging from the changes in the commodity links of Luo Yonghao's three live broadcasts, the goods linked to Douyin stores are almost equivalent to those linked to Taobao.

In addition, although the introduced network big V has a strong IP attribute, it lacks the experience of selling goods. Zhao Yuanyuan, a former head of e-commerce's Taobao live broadcast operation, once revealed, "more than 90% of the live broadcasts on Taobao platform are self-broadcast by merchants, not live broadcasts by talented people, which is completely different from the outside show (live broadcast)." "

The logical focus of e-commerce live streaming is to sell goods, and whether the anchor has the ability to carry goods is the key. Judging from the current three live broadcast data of Luo Yonghao, the practice of betting on Luo Yonghao on Douyin does not seem to achieve the desired results.

Stars enter the arena: there is no play to shoot, bend over to enter the game

Gao Xiaosong risked everything. He pouted his lips, closed his eyes, and put his face close to Li Jiaqi. Li Jiaqi left and right bow, one hand to hold Gao Xiaosong chin, the other hand to Gao Xiaosong lipstick.

On December 12, 2019, Li Jiaqi and Gao Xiaosong started a live broadcast to help poor counties carry agricultural products. During the live broadcast that night, 400000 jin of Zhalai special rice in Inner Mongolia and 50 cans of Jinzhai pecans in Anhui were sold out within 5 seconds, and 120000 bags of Kangbao oat noodles were sold out in 7 seconds, which is expected to increase the income of 1114 poor households by 4.39 million.

It is common for celebrities to log on to the live broadcast platform to sell goods. Zhu Yilong, Zhou Zhennan, Liu Tao and many other stars have come to Li Jiaqi's studio to bring goods with them as guests.

Many stars have seen the traffic and revenue of e-commerce live broadcast, which has already developed from the beginning of assisting network celebrities to start e-commerce live broadcast in person.

On April 22, 2019, Li Xiang took the initiative to start live e-commerce, becoming the first star to bring goods. Since then, she has started broadcasting at least once a week, including beauty makeup, home appliances, toiletries and fresh snacks.

The entrance of Li Xiang also sounded the bugle of the star to do live e-commerce. After Taobao announced the launch of the "Kai Star Project" in March last year, at the launch of the project in July, Yu Feng, general manager of Taobao's content e-commerce division, announced that more than 100 stars had joined Taobao live streaming.

The entry of stars with goods is related to the fact that the film and television industry has not lived up to expectations in recent years.

A total of 646 TV dramas were filmed and produced nationwide in the first three quarters of 2019, a decrease of 27 percent compared with 886 in the same period last year, and the number of episodes decreased by 30 percent, according to Tianyan survey data.

At the end of last year, Hengdian Film and Television City also announced that all its studios would be opened free of charge to films and contemporary and science fiction studios, while other theme dramas could also enjoy corresponding preferential policies.

There is no film crew in the film and television city, so the stars naturally have nothing to shoot.

In August last year, when Dili Reba took part in a variety show, she said that she had not made a film for eight months. Mingdao was also addicted to acting in a variety show. Hu GE even promoted herself as "cheap and easy to use" at a certain event.

In this case, stars need to keep hot on the one hand, and consider survival on the other. E-commerce live broadcast has become the best entry point at the moment.

Unlike ordinary anchors who need to sell goods before they can gradually create a sound volume, stars who enter the venue to do live streaming e-commerce already have considerable sound volume, but the sound volume brought by stars can not guarantee live broadcast sales.

Li Xiang started the live broadcast as usual on October 27 last year, and this time she sold an expensive mink coat. Although statistics showed that 1.62 million viewers were in the studio that night, Li Xianglian did not sell a single mink coat. Only 77 cans of goat milk powder were sold that night.

It is not as easy as expected for stars to bring goods. To this end, many stars choose to cooperate with mature MCN institutions to bring goods together.

Weiya's parent company Qianxun signed stars such as Lin Yilun, Li Xiang and Gao Lu to provide it with a complete operation system and supply chain system.

At present, Qianxun has also built a super supply chain base, which centralizes the supply chain accumulated by Weiya to form an offline selection base, which is gradually opened to more anchors. According to Tech Planet, Qianxun's anchors have shared supply chain resources, that is to say, Weiya live room goods, Qianxun's anchors can buy the same money.

In this game of carrying goods, the contest between stars and online celebrities may have just begun.