Image source @ Visual China
Wen | learn a little economics every day
Luxury does not spare any fashion platform.
On April 15, COACH Coach announced that it had entered Kuaishou E-commerce and began to sell goods to the old irons. After a three-day debut, except for the first live broadcast with 86,000 views, the rest of the time plummeted to 20,000, and even the number of people online at the same time was only three figures.
For a time, "Kuaishou on the COACH or COACH on the Kuaishou" became one of the topics of debate, "grounded gas selling bad luxury goods" became everyone's stereotype of the official live broadcast sales, compared with the official live broadcast room, they seem to be more willing to go to Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room to buy other brands.
Luxury goods "off the field" live with goods, why no one pays?
01 Big names are also anxious
This is another time that COACH has added online sales channels in the Chinese market after settling in Dewu and Douyin in 2021.
According to the "2021 China Luxury Market Report", since 2016, China's luxury consumption has entered a state of rapid growth, and in 2019-2020 before the new crown epidemic, the compound annual growth rate reached 48%, and it is still expected to become the world's largest luxury market after the epidemic.
Coach's parent company Tapestry Group also said in the release of the 2021 financial report: the Chinese market has grown significantly in the post-epidemic era, and expansion to second- and third-tier cities is one of the plans for future development in China.
Different platform audiences are different, compared with COACH on the major platform pricing is: Kuaishou 545 yuan 5950 yuan; Tmall flagship store between 450 yuan and 22000 yuan; Douyin e-commerce 357 yuan to 17500 yuan, the target population is obvious, COACH has made efforts to study.
For example, the sinking market for Kuaishou mainly sells bags, ready-to-wear, shoes and small leather goods, etc., the price range is low, there is no sign of entry, and Kuaishou does not have the slightest publicity meaning, slightly casual.
However, before entering Douyin, COACH announced a high-paste picture a few months in advance, and launched the Douyin Super Product X COACH pop-up store in July of the same year, and even the global limited sale of fashion products can only be purchased through Douyin in Chinese mainland, and the price range is also higher.
According to the official data released by Douyin, 85% of the app's users are under the age of 24, more than 70% are women, and most of them come from families in first-tier cities, which is good news for luxury brands, as long as the marketing is in place, it can win women with strong spending power in one fell swoop.
It has to be mentioned that the first luxury Dior to enter the Douyin e-commerce. In July 2018, when a number of luxury brands struggled with whether to enter the short video e-commerce in order to ensure the tonality of the brand, Dior boldly made himself younger and invited Angelababy to promote it, the effect was remarkable, and quietly tested the water for 4 months and received nearly 190,000 likes.
Immediately after that, Chanel and Michael Kors, who were originally far away from digitalization, also cooperated with Douyin, and sat on the benefits of the traffic pool through the debut of short videos and topic challenges.
In most people's cognition, luxury brands have always shown a high-cold face, and when they began to use the seemingly lively and grounded way of e-commerce live broadcasting, it was somewhat subversive, such as LV's debut.
In March 2020, LV ushered in the live broadcast debut in Xiaohongshu, as the "first person to eat crabs", the random set lighting, high paste picture quality, and the overall rustic environment made netizens call out "without the slightest desire to buy".
After the epidemic, LV's market in China has been hit hard, and its parent company has even issued a warning that at the same time, the wave of live broadcasting is becoming the most brutal form of openness and popularization of luxury brands, and LV has to rely on live streaming to sell goods to "survive".
In addition to LV, Prada, Dior, Burberry, Chanel and other well-known big names, the rest of the industry has accelerated the digital process, manifested in actively entering online channels, cooperating with live broadcast platforms, and conducting live broadcast shows for the first time.
According to the degree of openness of luxury goods, it can be divided into: public live broadcast, non-public live broadcast, exclusive private live broadcast, different ways for different groups of people, as detailed in the following figure.
Image source Zhihu
For example, in 2021, the Italian luxury brand MaxMara chose to invite Liu Mintao to be a guest in the live broadcast room when entering Tmall, using the star effect to carry goods for all categories of e-commerce, with the endorsement of stars, everyone has a "filter" effect on the product, thus driving the consumption of the target population.
Lv also learned the lesson of "eating crabs", and at the Kuaishou "Spring/Summer 2022 Men's Show", LV avoided the risk of rollover through the live broadcast of the fashion show, and filmed promotional videos for the fashionistas who were on fire at the time to warm up.
The rapid expansion and the opening of a large number of Ole shops seem to have the possibility of lowering the image positioning, and being able to buy bags with the same sense of design and brand influence at a lower price is the competitiveness of light luxury goods, and if it is too fast, it will be out of the brand tone.
The CEO of luxury e-commerce platform Farfetch has said that the overall average age of global users is 36 years old, while the average age of mainland luxury consumers is only 29 years old; LV's target population portrait is over 35 years old, but only 26 years old in China...
Gradually younger consumers in the pursuit of quality of life while improving their spending power, such groups and e-commerce platform user group overlap, luxury goods embrace e-commerce not only to avoid the risk of the epidemic, but also to deepen the Asia-Pacific market.
02 "Excellent Students" in the Luxury Live Broadcasting Industry
For brand owners, "opening live broadcasts is the norm, not opening live broadcasts is another kind"; and for consumers, "placing orders while watching live broadcasts is the norm, and refusing to live online shopping is outdated".
In the process of digitalization of luxury goods, there is an e-commerce "veteran" whose sales reached 1.5 million yuan in a single session of the "38 Super Live Broadcast Day" alone. Compared with the obscure live sales data of other luxury brands, Secoo's live broadcast room seems to be more accessible to the audience.
The success of Secoo stems from its complete stepping on the outlet of e-commerce live broadcast dividends, especially in business management, operation, identification, customer service, logistics and other aspects of the overall industry's pain points, which is the scarcity of luxury goods that have just entered the e-commerce.
Its original supply chain and quality control advantages can be well grafted into the live broadcast, ensuring the quality of the goods at the same time, but also so that consumers have no worries, on the other hand, it also makes the brand have a professional stage to present its own brand tonality.
According to Bain & Company's 2021 China Luxury Market Report, luxury sales from online channels have almost doubled in the past two years, and the second-hand market has also flourished.
Because the people who buy second-hand generally pay more attention to the new and old degree of luxury goods, this can be better presented in the live broadcast room, and will not damage the brand tone, but will show the extended value of luxury goods to the extreme.
However, there are still many first-line brands in China that only have official websites, or even do not settle in e-commerce, let alone frequent live broadcasts.
Therefore, most of the bags that can appear in the anchor's live broadcast room are unofficial channels, which come from agents, bonded areas and second-hand luxury goods own platforms, etc., except for the head Li Jiaqi, who has the privilege of matching Bottega Veneta, there is no one to come.
Is it that these brands still can't put down their stature? Or do they not need to use live streaming to broaden their channels?
In fact, from the overall point of view, most of the consumption scenes of luxury goods are offline, but due to the long-term impact of the epidemic and the popularity of the Internet in the future, it is only a matter of time before the digitization process is accelerated, and only a small number of people can reach luxury goods, and the price of products that are really suitable for appearing in the live broadcast room should not be too high, but meet the consumption level of most people within the scope of brand cognition.
At the same time, the appearance of fake luxury goods such as "original list", "tail list", "big-name OEM" and so on is not uncommon, and in August 2020, a Hangzhou woman was arrested by the police on the spot when she sold fake women's clothing on live broadcast. At the same time, the problem of "no return and no replacement" and the wrong goods have seriously damaged the reputation of the original brand.
At that time, most of the live broadcasts did not have this function of playback, resulting in many buyers being unable to collect evidence and report, until two months after the above incident, a provision was issued: the online live broadcast with goods should provide a playback function.
In 2020, Secoo also spread rumors of "mixed sale of true and false", and there has been no response so far.
As the "Research Report on the Development of China's Second-hand Luxury Goods Market 2020" said, because China's luxury goods industry has not established a sound industry standard for the time being, it has caused industry chaos such as the flood of fake goods, and reasonable after-sales protection, imitation inspection mechanism, perfect merchant certification system, and regular self-inspection and spot checks will be the key to e-commerce platforms competing for the trillion-level luxury market.
"Luxury + live broadcasting" is the innovation orientation of the entire industry, especially the return of consumers' rational understanding of the format of live streaming with goods.
For official stores, we still have to focus on offline stores, and we can't completely split the brand tone for a certain sales volume; for luxury e-commerce collection stores, online channels will become mainstream, offline stores will be divided into part of the traffic by official stores, if the live broadcast room is professional enough, after-sales can be compared to the "original factory", it is not difficult to think that luxury goods can enter the middle class.
In the post-epidemic era, the long-suppressed retaliatory consumption in China has made the sales of major brands in shopping malls dumbfounded, and the sales volume has far exceeded their expectations, and even a large number of products have been out of stock. Embracing the sinking market is the general trend of Chinese business, but for a long time, they have only dealt with stars and shows, just touching the net to show a "clumsy" side, seemingly arrogant and unfamiliar.
Luxury live streaming is not LOW, but the trend of the times. In the Internet age, whoever robs the traffic is the winner, after all, luxury goods are the role of "high cold" and have their arrogant nature.
The only difference is that no matter when it enters the market, luxury goods will not lack consumers, let alone traffic, because it is itself traffic.
Resources:
Embracing Internet celebrities, live streaming with goods, has luxury become low? - Entertainment hard candy
Why would anyone be willing to pay 700,000 for a Hermès in a live broadcast room? How Secoo deconstructs luxury live streaming – the new list
Luxury live broadcast, how to routine you? - Surging Paper
COACH enters Kuaishou with goods, Burberry loop recording, luxury live broadcast what is the new story? ——Titanium Media APP
"Luxury + Live Broadcast" What new tricks have been played by Secoo? ——China News Network
Luxury and Live: The Irreversibility of Technological Development – AmyBao