Dialogue with the founder of Red Brin: Mastering the upstream of the second luxury supply chain can open up the market

Author| Zhang Chao Editor| Luo Lijuan

Where is the closest you've come to luxury?

In this era of short video live broadcasting, many people's answer may be second-hand luxury live broadcast room.

Those luxury brands that were once difficult to reach and difficult to obtain a ticket have a difference in color and flaws after some life polishing, and through the intuitive and close physical presentation of the live broadcast room, they can resolve the trust threshold of online transactions.

In addition to the short video platform, this "two luxury" live broadcast wind has also been involved in well-known second-hand luxury e-commerce including red Brin, only two, fat tiger, heart and so on. They not only set up account matrices on their own Apps, but also on platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Taobao Live, and started a live streaming business.

As one of the top players of the vertical track, Red Brin has laid out the live broadcast business since 2019, and the GMV of the live broadcast month in 2020 exceeded the 100 million yuan mark, achieving a leap of about ten times a year in GMV. At present, there are nearly 10 "Red Brin" related accounts officially certified by the Douyin platform alone, of which the number of fans of one account of "Red Brin Second-hand Luxury Flagship Store" has exceeded 250,000.

The number of fans of Douyin's "Red Brin Second-hand Luxury Flagship Store" exceeded 250,000

In the view of Xu Wei, founder and CEO of Red Brin, live broadcasting does have great advantages in carrying goods at high unit prices, and it is a more specific, direct and vivid way of presenting goods, which translates the offline luxury sales scene to online. According to her, the average unit price of the red Brin live broadcast room has reached 8,000 yuan.

However, from the perspective of actual operational efficiency, live broadcasting is still heavier than the mall sales model. At the end of the day, "live streaming is a labor-intensive industry. Xu Wei analyzed that in a unit of time, the goods that the anchor in the live broadcast room can introduce are not as efficient as the users who browse the mall page to obtain information.

This also determines that Red Brin will not only focus on the development of second-hand luxury live streaming goods, but will walk on two legs" of mall sales and live streaming with goods.

Red Brin, which was launched in 2017, is a "latecomer" to the second-hand luxury e-commerce track. Due to the relatively slow start of non-standard products, coupled with the fact that the trust system between the platform and consumers has not been completed in the early years, Red Brin has experienced a period of "hard days".

But since the platform adopts the C2B2C model and is in the second-hand commodity consignment business, Red Bolling is bound to need to build a long-term valuable supply chain. In Xu Wei's view, one manifestation of the unique competitiveness of Red Bolling lies in the control of the source supply chain.

"The supply chain of the second-hand market is more complicated, and we believe that the goods must be done to the source, try to shorten the unnecessary links in the transaction chain, and get the most upstream, the best and the cheapest goods." Because of this, Xu Wei revealed that the overlap rate of red Brin buying and sellers is very high, "much higher than other second-hand transaction categories." ”

After the "climbing period", "in 2021, our business situation is relatively good, it is still a continuous head growth, and the overall performance is up to expectations." Referring to the company's performance in the past year, Xu Wei expressed satisfaction. Among them, on the day of 618 and the day of double 11 in 2021, the transaction volume achieved a multiplier growth year-on-year.

At the moment when the "first share of China's luxury e-commerce" Siku received a delisting warning, only two, fat tiger, concubine fish and other similar players have obtained financing, the industry competition is also more intense, how to highlight the siege of red Bolling? Xu Wei, founder and CEO of Red Brin, gave her answer.

The following is the main content of the dialogue (compiled by the 24/7 Technology Editor):

"Mastering the Upstream of the Supply Chain"

All-weather technology: What is the overall operation of red Bollinger in 2021? How has it changed compared to 2020?

Xu Wei: In 2021, our business situation is relatively good, it is still a continuous head growth, and the overall performance meets expectations. Taking the 618 and Double Eleven data in 2021 as an example, on the day of 618 in 2021, the transaction volume of the first 3 minutes of red Bolling increased by 1090% year-on-year; on the day of double 11 in 2021, the transaction volume increased by 550% year-on-year.

2020 performance is also relatively good, measured by GMV, the number of users, in 2020, red Bollinger completed more than 5 times the rapid growth, monthly live GMV began to break 100 million.

All-weather technology: In a group of second-hand luxury e-commerce, what is the competitiveness of red Brin?

Xu Wei: It can be seen from the following dimensions:

First, there is a difference between service and no service. Some multi-category second-hand trading platforms, there will also be second-hand fashion plates, but basically it is still a C2C model, and the difference between the platform and the service and no service is very large.

Second, the difference in seller service and source supply chain control. The supply chain of the second-hand market is more complicated, and we believe that the goods must be done to the source, try to shorten the unnecessary links in the transaction chain, and get the most upstream, best and cheapest goods.

In the field of second-hand fashion, where is the upstream source? Sellers (internally called C1 sellers), buyers (internally called C2 buyers), the industry before we appeared there is another supply chain source, called small B (internal called B1 sellers).

Usually, B and C coexist in all second-hand trading markets. There will definitely be a part of the small B because of information asymmetry or geographical convenience, a part of the C's goods gathered into the hands of B; but we and other players in this industry are particularly big difference point is that red Brin has always insisted on being the upstream of the supply chain, that is, C1 sellers.

Of course, we do not rule out cooperation with small B, but only by truly grasping the upstream, cheapest, highest quality and richest supply of the supply chain can we truly open up the entire market.

The essence of B's goods also comes from C, but it has been aggregated again in B's hands. A large part of the industry does not actually achieve the upstream, but just does a small B.

Where is the specific perceptible difference between Small B and C? For example, when opening the wardrobe, we will see that the commodity brand is very rich in categories, but Small B is involved in the industry by recycling, they usually recycle goods from the hands of C1, and the recycled goods are hard currency-level goods, mainly bags and accessories, then the bandwidth it undertakes is very limited.

A C1 seller, if you want to really cycle your wardrobe, a large part of the goods in it will not be undertaken. Because Small B is a recycling method to advance its own funds, from the perspective of capital use efficiency and prevention of inventory overstock, Small B will try to choose standardized or hard currency goods in large non-standard categories.

The scale of the large clothing market is several trillion yuan a year, if we only do head brand bags and accessories, the market share is very small; there are a large number of C1 sellers who actually have further circulation value, but they have not been undertaken.

In the industry, we have the ability to do supply chain differentiation, and we use platforms and ecological methods to cut into this industry. "Consignment + recycling" two kinds of service capabilities we have, but for most of the small B, in fact, can only do recycling, can not do consignment, this is the difference in the supply chain.

The third difference is the sales ability of the buyer side. We are a trading platform, linking the seller and the goods of small B, the supply chain to sell the goods, the formation of conversion; on the sales side, many in today's industry only have one form of sales - live broadcasting.

It is undeniable that the entire live e-commerce development is very fast, after the development of the large third-party platform live e-commerce, there is today's peers to enter, basically their sales composition is through the opening of a series of live matrix accounts on these platforms to sell goods.

However, live streaming has its limitations. The core of live broadcasting is to sell high-end customer orders, which need to be displayed in a way that sees and believes; for products of mass-level categories, it is not appropriate to enter the live broadcast room. Because live broadcasting is a very heavy way of operation, in the unit hours on the shelves of a single inventory category, the number of goods that can be talked about is limited. Therefore, if this model is to be corrected, it is necessary to sell high-end single goods.

From the consumer side to understand the same, high customer list of goods need to watch live broadcast, low customer order of goods in fact do not watch live broadcast, look at the picture can also make order decisions.

Even in the state of Taobao today, the contribution of live e-commerce to its entire plate is relatively low. Behind the reflection is that a large number of consumers actually do not spend a lot of time watching live broadcasts, it is still a mall, providing a "shopping - ordering" service process. We estimate that the development of live e-commerce to the present, the transaction accounted for about 10% of the entire e-commerce.

Therefore, (second-hand luxury platforms do) live e-commerce is to do high customer list, for specific groups of people who have time to watch live broadcasts.

Today, I see a lot of peers, in fact, there is only one kind of sales ability of live broadcasting. For us, in fact, the two legs of mall sales and live broadcasting have developed, and the development is very good, and the form and ecology of our sales are more abundant. This means that we carry more user and scene needs, from relatively affordable goods to high-value goods are sold, and the entire bandwidth can be pulled up. As businesses move forward, the magnitude of scale that can be involved and converted into our users will be different.

What we are doing is a larger user population, but also a larger market size.

24/7 Technology: How can companies reach more consumers and keep them on the platform?

Xu Wei: China is now the largest consumer of luxury goods, and we have stored a large number of buyers and users in the past few years.

In fact, before all markets enter second-hand transactions, there will be a very high-speed stage of development, leaving a large amount of inventory and leaving a large number of potential buyers who can be converted into sellers. The predecessor of the seller is the buyer, if you don't buy it, you can't become a seller. Therefore, when we go to the target user group, this group of people still has a particularly clear identity.

In today's era of big data, there are various ways to identify the user tags and the targeting of user groups, as well as the channels in which they are active. We reach users in a variety of ways, converting the people we've bought and sold over the past few years into our sellers.

We will have content marketing methods, methods of cooperation with KOLs, to reach the people behind KOLs, which is also a very high channel for our target groups to gather. At the same time, we will also have online short, flat and fast advertisements to introduce what kind of services Red Brin provides to sellers, and then find users.

"Live broadcasting is a labor-intensive industry and an operation-oriented model"

All-weather technology: What is the current proportion of sales in the mall and live broadcast? What is the average unit price of live streaming?

Xu Wei: Both pieces of development are very good, both are at the head of the industry, and when taken apart, they are also the absolute heads of the industry. The average unit price of live broadcasting is 8,000 yuan and above.

All-weather technology: Why do you think live broadcasting is a relatively heavy development model?

Xu Wei: The browsing efficiency of the product is not high. The anchor basically takes 2-3 minutes to finish a product, and the efficiency of this information reception is not the same.

From the operational back-end point of view, I can use a very small team to maintain a very large transaction volume mall. Because it is structured, it relies more on products and technology to build a very good sales field.

Live streaming can be considered a personal intensive industry, mainly relying on the sales team, and the anchor itself is an online Sales. To do more large-scale sales, it is not that there is this field, or to continue to add accounts, people, anchors.

It can be understood that one is a lighter team operation model, the other is a heavier operation team model, the number of personnel is completely different; to achieve the same unit benefit, the former generally has to match a lot less people than the live broadcast model.

24/7 Technology: How much is Red Bolling currently investing in live streaming? How many accounts and staffing are there?

Xu Wei: Since June 2019, Red Brin has begun to open live broadcasts in its own apps and external platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and is the earliest enterprise in the industry to lay out live broadcasting business.

Red Brin has set up a professional anchor team within the company, systematically cultivated anchors, and combined with live broadcast products, marketing systems, etc., to build a complete set of solutions.

24/7 Technology: What is the essence of Red Brin gaining user trust?

Xu Wei: There are two layers of Red Brin users, one is the seller, the other is the buyer, and the service provided to the seller and the buyer is essentially different. For sellers, it is to help idle cash, and for buyers, it is to provide cost-effective and guaranteed goods.

If you look at it from this point of view, today's sellers want to dispose of their own idle goods, the largest traffic platform is actually idle fish, or some offline transaction scenarios, but these channels and scenarios lack services. The experience of the idle platform is that the sellers themselves take pictures to upload, edit product information, act as customer service, communicate with potential buyers, negotiate prices, logistics also have to operate by themselves, if there are after-sales problems also need to be solved by the sellers themselves.

The second-hand trading market, especially the circulation of high-end and high-quality goods, especially needs a standardized process and service to provide to sellers. Therefore, to gain the trust of sellers is to turn the self-service sales process in the market into a service process.

On the buyer side, the core problem for buyers to buy a second-hand commodity is that the second-hand commodity is quite non-standard, away from the inherent sales system of the brand itself - is the product real, the quality of the product is guaranteed, the price of the product is reasonable, and whether there are after-sales related services after purchase?

Therefore, for buyers, a one-sentence summary is to turn a process of buying non-standard goods into a process like buying new products and standard products, and also to provide a different and differentiated service. This service for second-hand non-standard products, can be understood as far as possible to the purchase threshold, decision-making threshold to the drop, the whole process is like buying a standardized commodity, very convenient and assured, can form a repeated purchase.

In this abstraction, it is a service, but in terms of service protection, there is still a difference between sellers and buyers. In terms of integration, red Brin actually builds a trust platform between sellers and buyers, otherwise second-hand transactions will indeed encounter many challenges in circulation.

All-weather technology: At present, there are many accounts on the live broadcast platform for second-hand luxury goods sales, and it is difficult to distinguish between true and false, will it affect the user's trust in the platform?

Xu Wei: The account shows that this industry is developing rapidly, and it will definitely be uneven, and there will be some behaviors that rub the outlet of the industry. But I think this matter itself and live broadcast may not have anything to do with, live broadcast is a sales process, true or false lies in whether the goods have undergone enough quality inspection guarantees, in fact, it depends on how the quality inspection system is built, and the platform controls the quality inspection of the business.

After the user places an order to buy, most of the regular, well-done brands, or platforms, in fact, will provide a warranty when trading second-hand. After building its own quality inspection system, the platform has confidence and dares to give users relevant after-sales service commitments and guarantees.

For example, if it is an account system on Douyin, the Douyin platform is not allowed to sell fake goods, and the supervision system of the relevant third-party platform will also have a guarantee for consumers.

Today's era, not ten years ago, twenty years ago Silk Street era, fake goods can run rampant; it cannot be ruled out that one or two out of 100 people are selling fake goods, but this is also a temporary phenomenon, and it will eventually be banned.

In fact, platform merchants, including relevant national agencies, are doing quality inspection supervision, consumers themselves are becoming more and more demanding, the general trend will certainly not say a grain of rat spoiled a pot of porridge, the overall or more formal, sustainable development, I feel that the entire industry is still becoming more and more formalized.

24/7 Technology: What do you think the most ideal state of the relationship between used luxury platforms and consumers looks like?

Xu Wei: In the past few years, this industry has not been a situation where consumers do not place orders in large numbers, it is a completely negative, and now everyone watches, places orders, and then grabs; some good products in the live broadcast room are often the state that everyone can't buy.

The core is that companies like Red Brin are building their own service guarantee system to ensure the delivery of sellers and buyers, so they are particularly relieved that there is no problem in trading on it.

"Luxury is always a state of adequacy"

All-weather technology: You have made investments before, what are the differences between the company and the entrepreneur's identity as a company from the perspective of an investor?

Xu Wei: After all, investors have not done it directly, and the core work is to judge the general direction, the track, the possibility of monetization of the business model, and the withdrawal of capital. As a company founder and CEO, these points are also considered, but on this basis, a large part of the work falls on the business itself.

The general direction is right, the track is right, the business model is also correct, or there must be a secondary process from 0 to 1 to N. Every step of the enterprise must grasp the company's key strategy, the business needs to focus on some key projects, how to get the results of these business management problems, of course, there are organizational problems.

Investors do not need to be responsible for the organization of the company, and the most critical interaction with investors is the company's founder and CEO; running the company needs to do a huge and complex organizational system, including people and things - this thing refers to the business of the business, and the person refers to the construction of the company's organization.

All-weather technology: In the past two years, luxury brands have been controlling production, will this affect the development of second-hand luxury e-commerce?

Xu Wei: Overall it was fine.

First, many brands have been affected by the epidemic and may have some restrictions on the production line, but the impact is not as serious as everyone thinks, because they are originally in the state of Limited-Supply.

The entire luxury industry from the production to the sale of new products, in fact, there is a lot of consumption in the middle. For example, luxury brands produce 100 bags, and in the end, those that are not sold will have a differentiated circulation channel in the market to avoid the flow of the impact on the new product price system; if the circulation cannot be carried out, the commodity will be scrapped later.

Today, at the level of consumer purchases, C1 consumers have not actually felt the shortage of goods. Have you felt which package has been in short supply over the past few years? This is hardly the case.

It is a fact that the production end is affected, but because of the logic of the entire new product circulation, in fact, to the consumer side, I can think that it is always a state of sufficient supply. But this sufficiency is not the sufficiency of the mass consumer goods level, it will also be a quantitative, quota concept, on the whole, it is not much different from before the epidemic.

Second, the second-hand business is actually a continuous accumulation of stock market, which is less affected by fluctuations in half a year or a year.

It can be seen that second-hand goods circulate longer in the medieval market in Japan than in Europe, the United States and China, and even if they are preserved for 20-30 years, especially the head brand.

Therefore, today we are looking at a stock market, is the accumulation of inventory in the past ten years, there is a possibility of continuous transformation, will not say that because of the new products in this half year, a year (production reduction) so much impact, it is a larger market.