#头条创作挑战赛 #
Onesight recently released the "BrandOS TOP100 Overseas Brand Social Media Influence List", of which in the e-commerce overseas brand social media influence Top30 score list, the brands on the list are mainly divided into three categories, platform (such as AliExpress, Banggu), clothing accessories and other fashion brands (such as SHEIN, UNICE, Zeelool) and beauty brands (such as Hua Xizi, Hua Zhi). The author used Semrush to check the proportion of traffic sources of each brand's website, most of which mainly came from the United States, and a few brand traffic came from Taiwan/Hong Kong.
Source: Onesight
But in addition to the commonality, there is also a personality - Hibobi, the vast majority of traffic comes from mother and baby brands in the Middle East.
Hibobi organic traffic source distribution |Source: semrush
When it comes to mother and baby brands going overseas, PatPat has been in the limelight for the past two years, and for a long time, and people in the overseas industry to mention mother and baby, the other party must cue PatPat. But this time Hibobi entered the list, let us see another piece of the mother and baby market.
Hibobi was founded in 2019 with baby and children's clothing as the main category, and now it has also expanded to maternal and baby products, children's toys, learning products and parent-child clothing, mainly for the Middle East market, in which Saudi Arabia contributes an absolute proportion.
Before this, few people discussed the mother and baby market in the Middle East, until not long ago, SHEIN held a parent-child show in the Middle East, which reminded us of other consumer groups in the Middle East besides women....
The market threshold in the Middle East disappeared in the baby and children's clothing track?
Because of the particularity of the Middle East market, products that have been verified in other markets are much less likely to run through in the Middle East market, which is applicable to both Internet products and consumer goods. But the role of this "law" seems to have weakened in baby and children's clothing.
In the face of stupid individuals, humans all over the world seem to have no resistance. Many young people are afraid of raising children, but they give unconditionally to pets, which is probably the charm of high appearance but language barriers.
Humans actually have such a "young beast" period, probably before the age of 6-7, or even shorter, before the age of 3-4. Children at this age will also be given absolute tolerance, even in this hierarchical and religious part of the Middle East.
There are many Islamic countries in the Middle East, and there are more requirements for women's dress, the most typical is wearing a veil and wearing simple colors. Although there may be more color under the burqa, most women are still restrained. Their most unrestricted stage should be when they are young. Usually, girls can dress freely until the age of 6-7, sometimes wearing a veil between the ages of 7 and 12, and starting to wear burqas after the bar mitz.
Hibobi official website
From the category divided by Hibobi's official website, Hibobi's products are mainly provided to children before the age of 14, including infants, toddlers, preschool and school-age children. In my opinion, the baby and children's clothing track chosen by Hibobi is the least constrained and least affected by localized features in the Middle East market.
Middle East replacement fertility rate above 2.1+ The founding team accumulated Hibobi focusing on Middle Eastern mothers and babies
According to the "Global Population Outlook Report" released by the United Nations in 2022, the comprehensive fertility rate in all regions of the world will show an overall downward trend in the next 30 years, and the average number of children per woman will gradually decrease to 1-3. The total fertility rate of generally economically developed countries reaches 2.1, which can ensure that the total population will not decline with the change of generations. As can be seen from the figure below, replacement fertility rates in Europe and the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and East and Southeast Asia will be below 2.1 after 2020, and many countries are expected to face difficult negative population growth problems in the next 30 years.
Changes in composite fertility rates in all regions of the world, source: Global Population Prospects Report
Among them, there are 3 regions where the generation replacement level can still remain above 2.1, namely sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania outside Australia and New Zealand, and North Africa and West Asia, West Asia and part of North Africa is what we often call the Middle East.
In addition to the opportunities shown by the Middle East market itself, Hibobi's establishment of the Middle East as the starting market is probably related to the background of the core team.
According to enterprise investigation data, Hibobi is a brand of Hangzhou Hi Baby Technology Co., Ltd., and the brand CEO is Huang Feilong. As can be seen from his LinkedIn profile, Huang Feilong graduated from multimedia advertising and worked for Vipshop, Beibei and PatPat before Hibobi. These 3 experiences actually helped Huang Feilong accumulate 3 capitals to build Hibobi, with e-commerce operation experience, familiar with the mother and baby track, and understanding the Middle East market.
PatPat has been paying attention to the Middle East market since 2016, while Huang Feilong, who worked at PatPat from 2017 to 2019, has a general idea of the feasibility of the maternal and baby category in the Middle East.
Source: LinkedIn
In addition to the CEO, many of Hibobi's employees have worked closely in the Middle East market, such as Hibobi's BD director who previously worked at Jollychic, and the head of the UAE region who had payment-related experience in the Middle East...
From the investigation of Hibobi's historical risks, it can be seen that PatPat's parent company had a judicial entanglement with Hi Baby, mostly because of personnel and peer competition. If you don't look at the path of Hibobi's development to today, you will find that there are still many differences compared with the same track brand.
Source: Qichacha
Positioning the mid-range, looking outside the Middle East or emerging markets?
Semrush data shows that PatPat's organic traffic mainly comes from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, and paid traffic is currently mainly from Brazil, which shows that PatPat has made some achievements in developed markets with stronger consumption power, and opened up emerging markets through paid buying volume, and overall along the path of consumption power from high to low to do market penetration. Of course, the choice of PatPat is also related to the general environment, and many manufacturers have improved the convenience of relevant upstream and downstream links in Brazil.
PatPat official website traffic source distribution | source: semrush
Whether it is from the perspective of traffic or the depth of brand services, the Middle East is still the most important market for Hibobi. For example, in the payment methods provided by Hibobi, in addition to several global ones, Hibobi also accesses popular payment methods in the Middle East such as Mada and Tamara, while common payment methods in Latin American markets such as Brazil have not yet been opened.
In addition, Hibobi has set up official accounts on various social media, most of which are used for content distribution, except for accounts on Twitter. Hibobi has 2 accounts on Twitter, one is the main account, mainly Arabic content, and the other is a dedicated account for answering questions @hibobi here to help, similar to a public customer service. If the user asks a public question on Twitter, the account will respond and direct the user to WhatsApp, and the user can also send a private message to this account, and the main account will be @hibobi here to help account to direct traffic, which is Hibobi's service for Arabic-speaking users.
Although it first went overseas to emerging markets, Hibobi positioned itself as a mid-range brand, and the product pricing is not low. The price of Hibobi's baby clothing is concentrated at $10-20, which is similar to PatPat, and even Hibobi's highest-priced baby clothing is higher than PatPat's.
Hibobi (top) vs. PatPat (bottom) highest price for newborn clothing
Such positioning is okay in the Middle East, where per capita consumption power is high, and whether it will be hindered in other emerging markets is a question that the author considers. Therefore, before checking the information, the author boldly speculates that Hibobi will focus on developed markets outside the Middle East.
But according to Semrush data, Hibobi's organic traffic is currently mainly coming from Saudi Arabia, while paid traffic is mainly from Mexico, and then the United States, and Hibobi's eyes seem to be on emerging markets. In this regard, the author found several possible ways to play Hibobi.
Hibobi official website traffic source distribution |Source: semrush
Although the price of Hibobi is not low, if you look closely, you will find that its product iteration is fast, and the products that are replaced will be discounted very much, many of which are 2-3 discounts. In this way, many clothing actually sell for $2-10. In other words, although Hibobi is positioned in the mid-range, it has a layered price, which can meet the 2 conditions of standing in the mid-range brand image and being affordable at the same time.
Hibobi official website (Note: 1 Saudi Riyal ≈ 0.27 USD)
This strategy also ensures that Hibobi will not dissuade consumers in terms of product prices even if they go to other emerging markets outside the Middle East where unit prices may be lower. This is a common strategy, in the previous article we mentioned that the oral care brand MeToo, which grew up on TikTok, its positioning and pricing are not low in Indonesia's TikTok small store, but the early use of promotions, live broadcasts and other ways to reduce prices and discounts to attract users to buy, in the case of ensuring brand positioning, did not delay sales.
Source: MeToo TikTok Live Room
In Mexico, Hibobi also appears to be encouraging product distribution. Hibobi also has several official accounts on Facebook, and in addition, there are many personal accounts with "Hibobi" in the username, and it is not difficult to see from the content posted by these users that these users are more like local clothing distributors, buying from different brands and selling locally, SHEIN, PatPat are the source of these users. As you can see from the profiles of these users, most of them live in Latin America, and Facebook is likely to be the entrance to these resellers' private domain communities.
Hibobi related distributor Facebook account
epilogue
Users in emerging markets may have the disadvantages of weak brand awareness, low spending power and underdeveloped e-commerce infrastructure for overseas brands. Looking at the emerging markets we are familiar with, in addition to the Internet infrastructure driven by large factories and pioneers has become more and more mature, there may be more room for user plasticity. For new brands, it seems feasible to avoid developed markets that are in flux and try them in emerging markets.