Simba once again went crazy in the process of live broadcasting, and shortly after the broadcast started on the evening of April 20, Simba gradually lost control of his emotions due to some negative comments in the live broadcast room, shouting Kuaishou as a "garbage platform".
said that Taiyuan Lao Ge and Ma Hongtao and others repeatedly touched him to rub his popularity, and said: If the platform does not claim justice for him, he will be interviewed by major media, revealing the dirty behavior of the platform's emotional script anchor and the platform, and kindly reminding the platform that this move will "bring down the platform"!
This time, Simba's words were as fierce as ever, and Kuaishou was also very decisive, and he was ruthless, banning Simba's account and associated accounts one after another.
Simba's importance to Kuaishou is declining
On March 20, Kuaishou announced its fourth quarter and annual results for 2023. Among them, the e-commerce part performed well, with an annual GMV of more than 1.18 trillion, becoming one of the fastest e-commerce platforms to exceed one trillion GMV.
As the existence of "other services" in the financial report, the e-commerce business accounted for only 12.4%, but the growth rate was as high as 44.7%, with a revenue of 14.1 billion yuan, and it is expected to account for 14.1% in 2024, with great growth potential.
In August 2023, the 2022 annual report released by Xinxuan Group showed that the group's total annual turnover was 50 billion yuan. Combined with the top 50 online anchors in net income in 2023 announced by the Guangdong E-commerce Summit Forum (the statistical time is from January 1 to December 31, 2023), Simba ranks second, with an annual net income of more than 3 billion yuan. (According to Simba's diversion live streaming model, the revenue here is equivalent to the profit)
In this way, Simba's GMV only accounts for about one-twentieth of Kuaishou e-commerce GMV, not one-third of what is rumored by the outside world.
In fact, before it was listed, Kuaishou has been trying to continuously reduce the influence of super anchors on the platform, especially Simba, through technical and operational measures such as algorithm adjustment and platform mechanism, and at the same time continue to increase the support of brand self-broadcasting.
According to the financial report data, in 2023, the average monthly number of moving merchants of Kuaishou e-commerce will increase by more than 90% year-on-year.
At the 2023 Kuaishou E-commerce Gravity Conference, Cheng Yixiao, founder and CEO of Kuaishou Technology, proposed three important business vanes, namely: low-cost and good products, high-quality content and intimate services, and said that resources will be tilted towards high-quality operators.
In August last year, the "Big Brand Big Supplement" channel was launched, which distributed brand products that meet the requirements in the mall channel, buyer's homepage, search, recommendation and other scenarios, and invested nearly 100 million yuan in cash in a single quarter to subsidize high-quality goods.
During the Double 11 period, the overall GMV of "big brands and big supplements" increased by 300% year-on-year, and the overall GMV of brand merchants increased by more than 3 times, of which the number of brands increased by 100% year-on-year exceeded 2,300.
In addition to live broadcast e-commerce, Kuaishou will start to build a pan-shelf field in 2023, and now it has integrated a variety of scenarios such as recommendations, malls, searches, and stores, so that merchants can operate in non-content scenarios outside the live broadcast room.
According to the data released by Kuaishou, in the fourth quarter of 2023, the GMV of pan-shelf scenarios has achieved more growth than that of the broader market, accounting for more than 20% of the total GMV of e-commerce. In the New Year's Festival at the beginning of 2024, the GMV of pan-shelf increased by 383% compared with the previous year's Festival.
"Zhuang Shuai Retail E-commerce Channel" found in the study of Simba's official corporate store in Kuaishou that the store is divided into ten categories: mother and baby, beauty and skin care, household cleaning, daily cleaning and care, fresh fast food, grain and oil seasoning, food and wine, mobile phone digital, cultural toys/musical instruments, and fashion bags.
Recently, 214 pieces of maternal and infant parent-child products were all products from the "Goodbaby Flagship Store" and "Kunshan Goodbaby Children's Shoes Franchise Store" opened by Goodbaby in Kuaishou.
In addition to the three categories of beauty and skin care (30 pieces in total), household cleaning (32 pieces), and daily cleaning and care (22 pieces), the number of products in the store reached double digits, and the other categories were in single digits, and some products were also sold out. (Data cut-off date is 4:00 p.m. on April 23, 2024)
Although Simba claims to have a strong supply chain system, in fact, the products sold mainly come from brand flagship stores and specialty stores, and earn commissions and pit fees through live streaming.
Of course, it is also possible that many brands of Kuaishou stores are opened by Xinxuan Group and provide agency operation services. If so, Simba still has some supply chain value for Kuaishou.
It's just that when brand merchants have accelerated the opening of flagship stores in Kuaishou and received more and more subsidies and traffic support from Kuaishou officials, compared with Dongfang Selection's supply chain with self-operated goods, the importance of Simba's live broadcast e-commerce model that leads to brand stores has been greatly reduced.
In other words, at the supply chain level, Simba's importance to Kuaishou is not as important as Dongfang Selection to Douyin e-commerce.
At the consumer level, the reputation of Simba 818's exclusive store is only three stars, and the system shows that it is "backward". The Black Cat complaint platform searched for "Simba", and there were a total of 814 consumer complaints, involving non-gifting, false publicity, product quality problems, selling fake goods, delayed delivery and other issues.
The new ecology of live broadcast e-commerce, Kuaishou needs a new brother
Whether it is the supply chain level, consumer word-of-mouth, or Simba's actions to scare other anchors and platforms at every turn. are forcing Kuaishou to speed up the construction of a new e-commerce ecology to avoid the benign development of the platform and word-of-mouth being coerced by super anchors.
Simba's remarks to the outside world seem to be retreating, on the night of the 20th, with the "Xiaoluo", "Xu Jie", "Jiajia", "Dandan" four anchor accounts were blocked because of Simba, he found an assistant who had never brought goods to live broadcast to build a new account, bluntly said "Kuaishou does not need me", and regretfully said that he would "retire".
At noon on April 21, Simba called to stop the ongoing live broadcast of its big anchor "Dandan", and instructed other anchors under it to temporarily stop live streaming and enter a state of rest.
In fact, as early as March this year, in the first live broadcast of the year, Simba revealed that he intended to withdraw from the live broadcast and bring goods, and wanted to change tracks, such as learning artificial intelligence.
On the one hand, Simba himself stated that he would leave Kuaishou to withdraw from live streaming, and on the other hand, Xinxuan Group continued to increase supply chain construction and live streaming business.
Since 2024, Xinxuan Group has signed planting and processing contracts with a number of domestic agricultural product production bases.
At the beginning of April, Xinxuan Group issued an internal letter, announcing the establishment of a subsidiary for live broadcast slicing and delivery, which is mainly responsible for key processes such as short video content creation, planning, editing, store operation and traffic delivery. At the same time, the subsidiary will also participate in the distribution of short video content and business cooperation through overseas channels. It is understood that "slice distribution" will become one of the key areas of Xinxuan Group in 2024.
Perhaps only when Simba leaves, can Xinxuan Group have greater development.
As a platform, Kuaishou, in addition to increasing efforts to introduce brand merchants to open flagship stores on the platform, providing subsidies to enhance brand self-broadcasting and increasing the proportion of sales in pan-shelf malls, is indeed actively supporting the growth of other anchors as Simba said.
The fuse of Simba's anger at Kuaishou this time was another fast-growing "super anchor" - Taiyuan Lao Ge, who has more than 60 million fans, directly challenged Simba's status as "Kuaishou's first brother".
For the rise of Taiyuan Lao Ge in Kuaishou, Simba boils down to the "emotional anchor" route, that is, the other party only knows how to perform emotional scripts in the live broadcast room, and brings goods by providing users with "emotional value".
Simba said on the night of April 20 that Kuaishou deliberately increased its support for emotional anchors in order to suppress himself.
After the analysis of the Kuaishou account of @Taiyuan Lao Ge [Don't forget the original intention] and the official corporate store of Lao Ge Preferred Kuaishou by "Zhuang Shuai Retail E-commerce Channel", both the number of fans and the number of works are very different from @辛有志 Simba 818, but judging from the likes and readings of short video works, many of Taiyuan Lao Ge's works have been ahead of Simba. Among them, the recent short video of "Gansu Come On" has reached 257,000 likes.
Lao Ge Preferential and Simba 818 exclusive stores are both shown as 4-year-old stores, with a total sales volume of 110 million, 2.997 million fans sold, and 4453 people rated "very good quality".
Although there is a big gap between the total sales volume of Lao Ge's preferred store and the 610 million and 10.122 million fans of Simba's 818 exclusive store, Lao Ge's preferred reputation with goods is 4 stars, and the system displays "good", which is better than the Simba 818 exclusive store with only 3 stars and the system shows "backward". (Data cut-off date is 5:00 p.m. on April 23, 2024)
The Black Cat complaint platform searched for "Taiyuan Laoge", and there were 232 consumer complaints, which was also far lower than Simba's 814.
Judging from the word-of-mouth of the Kuaishou store and the consumer complaint data of the Black Cat platform, Simba angrily scolded Kuaishou and said that Lao Ge Youxuan only sold goods by "acting" to win the trust of consumers, and the statement that he "carefully selects goods and truly seeks benefits for his family" is obviously untenable.
In response to Simba's groundless accusations, Taiyuan Lao Ge immediately counterattacked, not only "aggrieved to cry" several times during the live broadcast, but also confronted Simba with a powerful response: You can't me every day because others like me, have I mentioned you until now when I play the Internet?
Taiyuan Lao Ge's meaning is obvious: As a Kuaishou brother, why does Simba still need to rub my traffic, is it because he can't sell goods?
According to the research of "Zhuang Shuai Retail E-commerce Channel" in the field of live streaming, live streaming will enter the second half from 2023, forming the integration of content field, marketing field and shelf field.
First of all, since Li Jiaqi's "part-time job" incident, it is difficult for both super anchors and small and medium-sized anchors to obtain price advantages and earn excess profits by coercing brands to provide the so-called "lowest price on the whole network".
Secondly, as Douyin Kuaishou increases its support for brand merchants, more and more brands have joined the platform to carry out live streaming business, forming a diversion for anchors, and super anchors are no exception.
Finally, Douyin Kuaishou has launched shelf malls and carried out traffic tilting. For anchor stores in the diversion mode, the richness of goods also puts forward faster requirements, and the previous live broadcast model of selected SKUs does not meet the requirements of the new ecology of platform e-commerce.
By comparing Lao Ge Preferred and Simba 818 exclusive stores, "Zhuang Shuai Retail E-commerce Channel" found that Lao Ge Preferred product categories are more detailed than Simba 818 exclusive stores, and the number of products is also richer.
Lao Ge is divided into 20 categories, while Simba 818 exclusive stores are only 10, and each category will be subdivided into multiple subcategories, and the number of products is much more than that of Simba 818 exclusive stores: for example, there are 14 subcategories with a total of 175 products under food and wine, and there are only two subcategories and only two products in Simba 818 exclusive store, one of which also shows "sold out".
Whether it is the word-of-mouth of the goods or the richness of the goods, Lao Ge is far above the Simba 818 exclusive store, and the new brother of Kuaishou is rising.
Conclusions
After analysis, "Zhuang Shuai Retail E-commerce Channel" believes that Simba is no longer so important to Kuaishou for three reasons:
First, more and more brand merchants choose to open flagship stores in Kuaishou, and the so-called supply chain advantages of Xinxuan Group have become no longer prominent.
The second is that the new forces represented by Taiyuan Lao Ge are rising rapidly, and these "new super anchors" are emotionally stable, with stronger product selection capabilities and platform operation capabilities, and are more in line with the requirements of the new ecology of Kuaishou e-commerce.
The third is that Simba's unstable state of mood swings and the practice of creating various emergencies conflict with the current consumer mentality of pursuing cost-effective and good services, which has caused negative public opinion on the platform, and seriously affected Kuaishou's stock price and the normal operation of other merchants and anchors.
So, for Simba and Xinxuan Group, how to deal with it in the future?
"Zhuang Shuai Retail E-commerce Channel" believes that Simba may gradually retire and only appear in key promotion nodes such as 618, 818, and Double 11, or create some more positive and healthy marketing events as the IP of Xinxuan Group, driving the business growth of the entire Xinxuan Group.
In addition, Xinxuan Group needs to strengthen the construction of the supply chain, or carry out self-management in the category of agricultural products, constantly enrich the goods and improve the team's ability to select products, otherwise it will be difficult to get the support of the platform, and the competition with other anchors and brands will continue to be at a disadvantage.
As for the multi-platform omni-channel operation, although Simba declared that "he will not serve any platform except Kuaishou in this life", this is only his personal remarks. As a company, Xinxuan Group is entirely likely to get out of Kuaishou after Simba's retirement, and go to Douyin, Taobao Tmall, Jingdong and Pinduoduo to carry out live broadcasts, and even open physical stores offline.
Simba once revealed about where he wants to go in the future: "I want to find a way to open the supermarket and not leave everyone in another way. ”
In the second half of live e-commerce, even if the old one doesn't go, the new one will come!