On December 28 last year, New Oriental announced the establishment of "Oriental Selection" to open the first live broadcast with goods.
Until February 28, New Oriental Live broadcast with goods for two months, in these two months, the color of the goods?
Two months is not as good as Luo Yonghao half a day?
At the end of December last year, Yu Minhong launched the first live broadcast of helping farmers on his Douyin number, and announced the launch of New Oriental's first live streaming platform "Oriental Selection". During the three-hour live broadcast, the full screen scrolled the comments of "Support Teacher Yu", and the live broadcast room once rushed to the third place in the list with goods, with a total turnover of more than 5 million yuan. Although the results of the goods are not eye-catching, and the products are controversial due to the high price, the live broadcast debut of New Oriental still attracts a lot of attention.
With Yu Minhong's platform, superimposed on the influence of New Oriental, Oriental Selection seems to have made a good start. But two months later, the original huge Eastern Selection did not seem to be able to maintain this strong momentum.
According to the data of Xinjiao, as of February 25, Oriental Selection has conducted a total of 33 live broadcasts, with a cumulative number of 419 goods with goods, a cumulative sales of 8.1184 million yuan, and a cumulative sales volume of 194,400 pieces. During the same period, Luo Yonghao, a former employee of New Oriental, conducted 49 live broadcasts in the "Make a Friend" live broadcast room, with a cumulative number of 3,019 goods, a cumulative sales of 856 million yuan, and a cumulative sales volume of 4.112 million pieces. Compared with the two, the sales of the two months selected by The East were only equivalent to the performance of Luo Yonghao's live broadcast room for half a day. With such a turnover, I am afraid that there is still a long way to go before Oriental Selection becomes a new pillar of growth.
New Oriental, who is used to being a teacher, seems to have become a "student" this time. Luo Yonghao, who was struggling to find a job at the beginning, turned into a "lecturer". According to the news, make a friend set up a few days ago to set up a "make a friend e-commerce academy", and also pulled li Liang, the former principal of Beijing New Oriental School, to start the layout of live streaming training with goods.
Some netizens broke the news that in the "Make a Friend's E-commerce Academy" offline live broadcast with goods training camp, Luo Yonghao jokingly called Yu Minhong a "laid-off person in the education industry". In connection with the previous grievances between the two, I can't help but sigh, the story that was thought to end with Luo Yonghao's departure from New Oriental is now staged in a sequel plot.
Image source: Network
Yu Minhong can't replicate Luo Yonghao?
What is puzzling is that yu Minhong, who has been well-known in the education circle for many years, is not invincible in the live streaming of goods?
The reasons are many, from the perspective of products, the category selected by the East is not as comprehensive as "make a friend". Under the label of "New Oriental Agricultural Products Sub-brand", most of the goods selected by Oriental are food and beverages, and this category accounts for more than 80% of all products, contributing 96.85% of sales to the live broadcast room.
Compared with the "Make a Friend" live broadcast room, food and beverage accounted for only 21.23% of the total products, and categories such as clothing, shoes and hats, beauty and skin care, and life and home also accounted for a considerable proportion. Although 3C digital goods account for only 6% of the total number of products, they contribute the highest sales. Similarly, the beauty and skin care category, which accounts for only 15.2% of the total number of products, ranked second in terms of sales contribution.
Compared with digital, beauty and other products with higher unit prices, the lower unit prices of food and beverages have become an important reason hindering Oriental Selection's sales. However, compared with general agricultural products, the prices of products selected in the East are generally higher. Although it has always emphasized "high quality", "high price" does not conform to the tone of agricultural products. Previously, Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya's live broadcasts of helping farmers were mostly public welfare, and the unit price was often within 100 yuan. Many netizens also said that "I originally wanted to support New Oriental, but after looking at the price, I found that I couldn't do it." "Blindly looking for high-quality and high-priced agricultural products is obviously not the need of most live broadcast viewers." What's more, the characteristics of agricultural products such as difficulty in after-sales, large loss, and uncontrollable quality also pose a greater problem for the supply chain management and pre-sales and after-sales maintenance of the live broadcast room.
At the moment when the live broadcast of all categories is the mainstream, agricultural products may be used as a breakthrough, but in the long run, it seems that it cannot afford the profit task of Oriental Selection.
Moreover, the Oriental selection of "class-style" live broadcast methods is not mainstream. It is true that most of the anchors selected by The East are transformed from former New Oriental teachers, and in the live broadcast, popular English grammar, reading a poem, and introducing historical and humanistic knowledge are common operations of "teachers". At the beginning, the "classroom-style" live broadcast method did make oriental selection different from other live broadcast rooms. However, live streaming with goods sometimes emphasizes high-pitched excitement, fast and efficient, such as in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, many times he is a few words, or a joke, will be ridiculed by netizens "less long-winded, grasp the goods", "class-style" live broadcast method is very challenging to carry goods.
In fact, it is not only the Oriental Selection that has such a situation, but also the same dilemma in making a friend in the early days. In the face of the audience who want to "listen to Lao Luo say cross-talk in the live broadcast room", Luo Yonghao used the PPT model, which is a familiar and common way for commercial promotion meetings. There is no beauty, no filters, no anchor shouting sales, fans found that sold more than 100 million yuan of goods, but the paragraph did not see, "straight men with goods" let many viewers extremely disappointed.
The development of live streaming with goods to the present, gradually formed a common way of playing, for example, the beautiful image created by beauty and filters, the lively brainwashing salesmanship, the short and accurate introduction... Crossover sounds brave, but the art industry has a specialty, and the anchor still needs to learn the general gameplay of the industry.
Now make a friend live broadcast room, 7 * 24 hours all-weather live broadcast, handsome men and beautiful women of the anchor standard, professional introduction... Luo Yonghao's subsidiary has successfully hatched a number of mature anchors. The "teachers" selected by the East are still far away from the road to "anchors".
In addition, Oriental Selection also encountered the unavoidable problem of cross-border live broadcasting - how to "go to Yu Minhong"? Dongfang Yanxuan was born with the aura of Yu Minhong and New Oriental, but now this has become a "sweet burden". Judging from the data, the highest-selling live broadcast selected by The East so far was on February 22, which is not unrelated to Yu Minhong's arrival in the live broadcast room on the same day. So far, Dongfang Selection has not been able to successfully "go to Yu Minhonghua".
On the other hand, "make a friend", as Luo Yonghao pays off his debts, he has rarely appeared in the live broadcast room. In the 7*24-hour all-weather live streaming mode, Luo Yonghao basically only appears in the prime time after 8:00 pm on Friday. According to media statistics, Luo Yonghao's time in the live broadcast room of making a friend has accounted for less than 3%, but this has not had a greater impact on the sales of the live broadcast room.
Huang He, founder of Make a Friend Technology, once said in an interview that the ultimate goal of "making a friend" is not Luo Yonghao's personal studio, and luo Yonghao's GMV ratio has dropped to 30% by the end of 2021. Similarly, the oriental selection positioning is also "New Oriental's live streaming platform", not "Yu Minhong's personal studio", how to reduce the impact of Yu Minhong's aura, so that the live broadcast room can really operate independently and normally? In this regard, the Oriental Selection may need to dig more new people.
Don't put transformation in the same basket
Looking back at the development history of New Oriental, it is found that it is a company that pursues stability and long-term development. New Oriental has made a name for itself with the study abroad examination training, but in the K12 education business, online education, etc., New Oriental is more willing to "come first", waiting to see other companies take a certain business path, and New Oriental relies on brand advantages to keep up.
Now that the K12 business has been stopped, New Oriental is once again standing at the crossroads of development. On the road of transformation, New Oriental is not willing to make a desperate bet. According to Tianyancha data, since July 2021, New Oriental has established 94 new companies. On average, a company is set up almost every 2.4 days, covering data services, live streaming, real estate leasing, publication retail and other fields.
While "chasing new" new ones, New Oriental is also waiting to see which road can "lead to Rome". The main idea is not to put all the eggs in the same basket, whether it is live streaming with goods, or other businesses, it is only one of the attempts of New Oriental, waiting for a certain business to run through, and then concentrating resources to attack.
At the end of last year, Wei Ya, Sydney and other head anchors were banned for tax evasion, which to a certain extent broke the monopoly of the market situation of head anchors and brought more opportunities and growth time to new anchors. The Oriental Selection, which is still in the early stage of development, just needs time to incubate anchors, expand categories, and determine business models... Although there are various problems in the selection of the East, most of the difficulties it encounters are the difficulties that usually exist in cross-border live broadcasting, and if it can be overcome like Luo Yonghao, there is still room and hope for continued development in the current live broadcasting environment.
Rather than judging whether the Oriental Selection can lead the New Oriental to break through, it is more important to see the development of the Oriental Selection and whether it can make the New Oriental willing to bet the "treasure" on it.