Is the purchasing agent in your circle of friends still there?
Since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in early 2020, cross-border purchasing agents have had to "stop". An Yi (pseudonym), who has been doing "Han Dynasty" for 9 years, told Red Star Capital Bureau that after the epidemic, the purchasing agents are facing the dilemma of reduced income and customer loss, and their peers are also changing careers in large numbers.
Li Qing, who has been shopping for cosmetics for 4 years, said that the customers in the hands of the purchaser have gradually flowed to the live broadcast room, not only because the live broadcast room is cheap, but the experiential shopping is more attractive. Nowadays, Li Wen, whose purchasing business is blocked, has also begun to transform into live e-commerce. When interviewed by Red Star Capital Bureau, he was attending an e-commerce training class of an institution to learn how to live stream goods.
In addition to the live e-commerce boom, the domestic makeup brands that have sprung up like mushrooms are also snatching the market from the purchasing agent. An Yi told Red Star Capital Bureau that some peers have transformed into distributors of domestic brands. "Russian generation" Wang Nuan (pseudonym) also said that while doing purchasing, he also took two domestic small brands as agents. "In the eyes of brands, daigou is the same channel as the live broadcast room," Li qian said.
With factors such as tightening supervision, the arrival of the epidemic, the outlet of live broadcasting and the rise of domestic products, cross-border purchasing agents are slowly withdrawing from the historical stage.
Cross-border purchasing that can't go out
Revenue plummeted by 80%, and a large number of purchasing agents changed careers
In the 9th year of Anyi's daigou, he obviously felt some changes, "the income decreased, peers changed careers, and even customers were slowly lost." ”
An Yi, who lives in Beijing, entered the daigou industry from a trip to South Korea during his university years. "When I went to South Korea in 2013, my classmate's mother, who worked at Amore's brand Snowflake Show, gave me half a box of cosmetics, and I actually sold more than 2,000 yuan back to China, thinking it was quite profitable."
Since then, AnYi has frequently flown to Seoul and Jeju Island in South Korea, flying an average of 2 times a month, becoming a professional "Han Dynasty", running to the cosmetics counters of major duty-free shops in South Korea. He showed the Route Map in the mobile app to Red Star Capital Bureau, because the route from Beijing to Seoul and Jeju Island changed from blue to purple because of the many flights.
The route map in Anyi's mobile phone was provided by the interviewee
People like An yi who personally go abroad to buy on behalf of others are called "human flesh purchasing", and the profits come from the pricing differences of goods, exchange rate differences and rebates and discounts at local duty-free shops. The cost of a single purchase includes visa fees, air tickets, meals and hotel expenses, etc. 2016-2017 is the best time for Anyi's business, according to him, in addition to costs, it can earn about 600,000 yuan a year.
The turning point occurred in 2020, the new crown epidemic spread around the world, and Anyi's overseas purchasing business was forced to be suspended. The homepage of Anyi's circle of friends reads: "The epidemic has stopped flying, and now it can only be returned by international direct mail." ”
In the past two years when there is no way to go abroad to buy, An Yi has obviously felt the change, and the most important point is that the income has plummeted.
This can be seen from the number of couriers sent out every day. "Now I send 5 to 10 packages a day, and I used to send 100 a day every time I came back from abroad," An Yi said. The reduction in orders has led to an 80% drop in his income, and An Yi told Red Star Capital: "Now I make almost 100,000 yuan a year, which is far less than before." ”
In the past two years, the professional "Han Dynasty" around An Yi has changed careers. "Some people have gone to buy women's clothing, and some people have taken the public institution", An Yi counted, and now there are not many friends who still insist on purchasing on behalf of others.
Also feeling the change is Liu Si (pseudonym), who lives in Shenzhen, who is a full-time purchaser.
Before the epidemic, Liu Si's purchasing footprint spread across many countries and regions, from Seoul, South Korea, Tokyo, Japan, Bangkok, Thailand, to Dubai, Russia, etc., the frequency of purchasing abroad was 2-3 times a month, mainly purchasing cosmetics. After the epidemic, Liu Si, who could not go abroad, could only try international mail, but the order volume was far less than before. "Not only are there fewer orders, but the profit per piece is also decreasing," Liu said.
Wang Nuan, who has been a Russian cosmetics purchaser for 5 years, told the Red Star Capital Bureau that he could not go to Russia after the epidemic, so he used international mail to send back the goods, but the freight rate has increased continuously, and the mailing cycle is too long and other factors, which are affecting their own purchasing business. "International freight rates have risen more than 3 times, I try to stock goods when there is a discount in Russia, and then compress some profits to stabilize the price, replenish the goods when they are almost sold out, and occasionally wait for a longer time," Wang Nuan said.
Nowadays, Liu Si and Wang Nuan's purchasing business is also turning to China, such as Macau, Sanya Duty Free Shop and so on. However, due to the recurrence of the epidemic and the change of isolation policy, the purchasing business is becoming more and more difficult to do, and "there are fewer people who are still insisting on doing purchasing," Liu Si said. Business is difficult to do, purchasing is decreasing, and the customers accumulated by purchasing agents are gradually losing.
Customer churn, price advantage no more
Daigou began to learn to live stream with goods
Where have the lost customers of daigou gone? - "Live Room".
Li Qing, who has been shopping for cosmetics for 4 years, gave the answer to the Red Star Capital Bureau: "It's not all because of the epidemic, customers are now going to the live broadcast room to buy things, and experiential shopping is more tempting." ”
Four years ago, Li Wen, who works in Shenzhen, began to do purchasing. "At the beginning of a month on the income of one or two thousand yuan, the later slowly do the skilled income will be more, after the customer base becomes more, it is a career." Li Qian said that even if he only purchased once a week, Li Qian's purchase income exceeded the main business, and then he simply resigned to start a full-time purchasing agent.
But the epidemic has changed Li Wen's life. Because of the impact of the epidemic, Li Qian can no longer be like the previous "human flesh purchasing", if you choose the way of overseas direct mail, the freight cost is high and you have to bear certain risks, Li Qian feels that his purchasing career has reached a bottleneck period.
While Li Wen's purchasing business stagnated, another industry ushered in explosive growth.
In 2020, the epidemic pressed the fast-forward button on the development of live streaming with goods. Taking the Taobao platform as an example, as of the end of 2020, Taobao Live provides more than 100,000 live broadcast content, users can watch more than 500,000 hours per day, and nearly 100 million products are listed in the Taobao live broadcast room; the number of live streaming anchors has also increased significantly, an increase of 661% over 2019. The data shows that in 2020, the average daily active users of Taobao Live broadcasting increased significantly, an increase of 100% year-on-year.
Among them, the live streaming data of beauty and skin care products is very eye-catching. According to the data of ECdataway Data Wei-Live Insights, in 2020, the total sales of makeup, perfumes and beauty tools in Taobao Live exceeded 9.43 billion yuan.
He Mei (pseudonym), a consumer who loves beauty, told Red Star Capital Bureau that after the epidemic, the purchasing agents in the circle of friends have gradually "disappeared", but they are accustomed to buying cosmetics in the live broadcast room. He Mei said: "Now there are many brand official flagship stores are also live broadcasting, which is more reassuring than purchasing on behalf of the purchaser, and the price is cheaper. ”
It can be seen that the development of live e-commerce has led to the price advantage of purchasing cosmetics is shrinking, and the endorsement of anchors and brands is also squeezing the living space of daigou.
Liu Si told Red Star Capital Bureau: "Now many cosmetics are live sales, the price is too low, we have no profit." Li Qing also realized this: "Now everyone has a lot of shopping channels, the quality is uneven, the price is chaotic, only the quality is not going to go, the price competitiveness is relatively weak." ”
Nowadays, Li Wen, whose purchasing business is blocked, has begun to transform into live e-commerce. In an interview with Red Star Capital Bureau, Li Qing was attending an e-commerce training class of an institution to learn how to live stream goods. He sent a photo of the live class to Red Star Capital, each of whom was equipped with a selfie tripod in front of him, and some students were demonstrating the live broadcast scene on the podium, and the live video of the students was playing on the big screen behind them.
Li Qian is attending an institution's live e-commerce training class The picture is provided by the interviewee
Talking about the reasons for the transformation, Li Ask said: "If you do purchasing, the private domain traffic is too small, and the live broadcast audience is wider, the market can be broadened, and the money is more." In addition, Li Qing feels that the experience of purchasing agents in the past has also helped him to transform, such as the control of channels, the professionalism of product knowledge, the collection of feedback on the use of, and how to select products correctly.
According to Li Qian, there are many purchasing peers around who have transformed into live broadcasts, but few people can stick to it. "Live broadcasting is an emerging industry with a very low threshold, which everyone can do, but it is also an industry with a very high threshold, because the elimination rate is more than 90%. At this point in time, it is not too early to switch to live broadcasting, and it did not catch up with the first wave, but it is still an opportunity, and it may take time to verify whether it is correct or not. Lee asked.
The tide of Korean makeup has receded, and domestic products have risen
There is a daigou to start a domestic brand distributor
In addition to the live e-commerce boom, the domestic makeup brands that have sprung up like mushrooms are also snatching the market from the purchasing agent.
Taking "Han Dynasty" An Yi as an example, the time he entered the daigou industry coincided with the node of the Wave of Korean Makeup rushing to China. According to data, after the launch of the Korean drama "You from the Stars" in 2014, the export volume of Korean cosmetics to China reached 600 million US dollars, accounting for 31% of its total exports; in 2015, the Chinese market accounted for 40% of the total exports of Korean cosmetics, with an amount of more than 1 billion US dollars.
In the context of the popularity of Korean makeup, there are more and more Korean cosmetics such as Anyi. However, in recent years, with the decline of Korean makeup and the rise of domestic products, the Korean cosmetics in the hands of daigou are also "not fragrant".
On January 2, the Red Star Capital Bureau reported that inline, the Korean makeup brand Innisfree, which was once popular in China, now has a tendency to lose to China. Compared with its peak with more than 600 stores in China, Innisfree's store withdrawal rate has reached 77%. In 3 years, Innisfree's operating profit has shrunk by 93%.
Consumer Liu Chen (pseudonym) told Red Star Capital Bureau that it has always had the habit of consuming Korean makeup, such as the eyebrow pencil of Aili Hut, and will buy hoards from the purchasing agency every time. However, after the epidemic, Liu Chen did not have goods when he looked for a substitute to buy eyebrow pencils, so he replaced them with eyebrow pencils of domestic beauty brands, which were cheaper than Korean makeup, and the effect was similar, and it was also very convenient to buy on the e-commerce platform.
On the other hand, domestic beauty brands have stepped on the dividends of short videos and live e-commerce and gradually gained a foothold. According to the "2020 Xiaohongshu Year Sino-US Cosmetics Insight Report", in the first half of 2020, the reading volume of domestic brand content on the Xiaohongshu platform increased by 65.9% year-on-year, far exceeding european and American brands and Japanese, Korean and Thai brands.
CICC Research Report pointed out that domestic cosmetics with quality, efficacy upgrades, get rid of the original "low price, inferior" label, get more and more consumer recognition, and emerge a number of excellent domestic pioneers such as Perfect Diary, Colorkey, Huaxizi; in the field of efficacy skin care, domestic brands represented by Winona, Yuze, Runbaiyan, etc. are also leading the growth rate.
After the "Korean makeup" in his hand was not easy to sell, An Yi told red star capital bureau that there have been peers who have transformed into distributors of domestic brands. "Russian generation" Wang Nuan also said that he was also doing daigou at the same time, took two domestic small brands of agents.
"In the eyes of the brand, the purchasing agency is the same channel as the live broadcast room," said Li Qing, a former purchaser.
In the "gray area": smuggling, sentencing
Daigou is withdrawing from the stage of history
It is worth noting that in January 2019, the E-commerce Law of the People's Republic of China landed, stipulating that online sellers, including micro-businesses and purchasing agents, need to register for the record, pay taxes normally, and explicitly include new forms of online transactions such as micro-businesses and purchasing agents into supervision.
This means that the gray era of daigou is over.
Previously, daigou has always been a profession that is on the edge of policies and regulations. Some insiders commented on Red Star Capital Bureau: "Overseas purchasing is cheaper than domestic counters, so it is sought after by consumers." Where does the spread come from? In addition to national pricing and currency ratios, 'taxes' should be one of the major ones. ”
There are also many examples of legal liability for purchasing agents. Just a month ago, the Zhengzhou Municipal People's Procuratorate held a hearing on whether overseas students are suspected of smuggling.
According to China News Network, Xiao Xu, a graduate student at a university in Spain, has opened an online store on an online platform since August 2020, sold luxury brand bags, shoes and hats from Spain to China in the form of live purchasing, and smuggled goods into the country through a logistics company for profit. Between August and November 2020, a total of more than 190,000 yuan of customs duties were evaded.
Ding Mingyu, a senior procurator at the fourth level of the Fourth Procuratorial Department of the Zhengzhou Municipal Procuratorate, introduced that the criminal suspect Xu Mou violated customs supervision, smuggled ordinary goods into the country, and evaded the amount of tax payable, and his behavior violated the first paragraph of article 153 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, and should be investigated for criminal responsibility for the crime of smuggling ordinary goods.
According to a report by Xinhua News Agency in November 2014, two tour guides in Zhejiang took advantage of the convenience of taking the group abroad to purchase cosmetics in overseas duty-free shops many times, carried the cosmetics purchased from abroad into the country in the form of carry-on, and chose the non-declaration channel to clear customs when entering the country.
After trial and judgment by the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court, the two tour guides evaded customs supervision in order to seek illegal benefits, smuggled various types of cosmetics by carrying them with them and did not truthfully declare them to the customs, and evaded a relatively large amount of tax payable, which constituted the crime of smuggling ordinary goods. On November 21, 2014, both were sentenced to three years in prison, suspended for four years, and fined 230,000 yuan.
At the same time, legal and compliant cross-border e-commerce platforms are becoming mainstream. According to the "2021 China Cross-border Sea Amoy Industry White Paper" released by iResearch, in 2020, the cross-border import retail platform has become the most commonly used channel for Chinese consumers, accounting for 58.3%. The proportion of personal purchasing is only 3.4%.
With the tightening of supervision, the arrival of the epidemic, the outlet of live broadcasting, the rise of domestic products and other factors, cross-border purchasing agents are slowly withdrawing from the historical stage.
Red Star News reporter Yu Yao Qiang Ya Milling
Edited by Yu Dongmei
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