Recently, Simba, the head anchor of e-commerce, made radical remarks against the platform Kuaishou in a live broadcast, which led to the closure of his account and that of many of its anchors. Then a screenshot appeared on the Internet, and it was suspected that Xinxuan Group issued a notice saying that "its anchors will be suspended indefinitely". The conflict between Simba and Kuaishou seems to be on the verge of intensification. The conflict between Simba and the platform is not limited to Kuaishou, as early as last year, his account on Douyin was completely banned. What confidence do Simba and his team have to challenge the two major platforms, and what is the fundamental reason for the game between the platform side and the head anchor? Let's take a look.
A sudden "conflict"
On April 20, after Simba, the head anchor with goods, started the live broadcast on the Kuaishou platform, he gradually lost control of his emotions due to some negative comments in the live broadcast room. Excited, he mentioned the dispute with some other streamers and began to denounce the platform. Simba, who became more and more emotional, scolded "Kuaishou is a garbage platform", and because of these outrageous remarks, the live broadcast room was banned. After the "Xin Youzhi" account was banned, Simba quickly replaced the small and medium-sized anchor account under Xin Xuan to start broadcasting, but was soon banned again for violating community rules for his radical remarks.
According to reports, Simba angrily reprimanded the Kuaishou platform during the live broadcast: "You dare to block all my anchors, I dare to sue you that the platform has no cash flow! "
On April 20, Simba's live broadcast room was blocked. Network diagram
With the closure of his four anchor accounts of "Xiaoluo", "Xu Jie", "Jiajia" and "Dandan", he found an assistant who had never brought goods to live broadcast to build a new account. After calming down a little, he said, "Kuaishou doesn't need me" and said that he would "retire".
On the 23rd, a screenshot circulated on the Internet, and the screenshot information was: Due to force majeure, the anchor of Xinxuan Group will be suspended indefinitely from now on, and the specific rebroadcast date has not been determined. Xinxuan Group said that some of the anchors' small stores have not yet been closed, users with shopping needs can still place orders, the small store customer service and Xinxuan customer service team will continue to serve the majority of Xinxuan users, please contact the customer service of the small store or Xinxuan assistant for after-sales problems of goods.
In response to this news, Xinxuan Group has not officially responded. Kuaishou Xinxuan's assistant said that the current manual customer service is normal, and the customer service staff said that the aforementioned news does not affect the user's commodity transaction in transit.
Founded in 2017 by Xin Youzhi (known as Simba), Xinxuan Group has developed into a comprehensive digital new retail enterprise integrating supply chain management, celebrity incubation, digital e-commerce, education and training, with more than 4,000 employees. And Simba (real name "Xin Youzhi") is a live broadcast Internet celebrity who is out of the circle from Kuaishou, as the "first brother of Kuaishou", Simba's Kuaishou account fans are shown to be 99.99 million +, and the actual number is over 100 million.
At present, how the latest round of "conflict" between Simba and Kuaishou will end remains to be expressed by all parties.
The Douyin account was completely banned
As a head anchor, the normal situation should be closely related to the platform, but Simba just "likes" the hard platform, and even ended up being completely banned by Douyin.
Simba came out of the circle from Kuaishou and has more than 4 million followers on Douyin, but his relationship with the Douyin platform seems to be very stiff. According to reports, as early as 2021, Simba sued Beijing Weibo Vision Technology Co., Ltd., an affiliate of Douyin, in court, and the causes of many cases involved disputes over online infringement liability, reputation rights, etc., and the trial court was the Guangzhou Internet Court.
On August 30, 2023, Simba's account on Douyin was officially banned for 24 hours, and the reason given by the platform was that Simba was suspected of belittling and damaging the platform's image.
Simba's Douyin account was completely banned. Network diagram
On November 1 of the same year, Simba said in a live broadcast on Douyin, "I don't care about your platform, I don't care about your traffic, I can erase everything I have ambitions for, I don't care about you." The next day, Simba's Douyin account was completely banned. At present, it is no longer possible to search for the account information on Douyin. Data shows that Simba had more than 4.15 million fans on Douyin at that time. Regarding the reason for the blocking, a person familiar with the matter said that Simba had repeatedly posted false information, insulted and abused on Douyin, and led to war. Xin Xuan said that there was no response for the time being.
However, some industry insiders pointed out that Simba's "main position" is Kuaishou, and his fans on Douyin are only 4.15 million, while Kuaishou's fans were about 100 million at that time, and the ban on Douyin accounts has little impact on Simba.
The first brother has been banned by Kuaishou repeatedly
Compared with Douyin, Simba's entanglement with Kuaishou is more complex and far-reaching.
At the same time that Simba broke with Douyin, his account on the Kuaishou platform was in a normal state, with more than 99.99 million followers, and the videos posted by the account were in a normal state of browsing. Simba rose from Kuaishou, and the Simba team is known as the head of the six major families in the Kuaishou platform anchor circle, and in 2019, the Simba family's delivery data accounted for about a quarter of the entire Kuaishou e-commerce GMV (estimated online sales). According to public data, its total GMV will exceed 50 billion yuan in 2023 and more than 200 billion yuan in the five years from 2018 to 2023.
Simba is known as the "first brother of Kuaishou". Network diagram
Because of Simba's prominent role in Kuaishou's e-commerce performance, he is known as "Brother Kuaishou". But the relationship between this "Kuaishou brother" and the Kuaishou platform is also very delicate, and there have been many "conflicts" between the two sides.
At the end of December 2020, due to the "Sugar Water Bird's Nest" incident, in addition to being dealt with by relevant government departments, Simba's personal account was banned by Kuaishou for 60 days, and the accounts of more than 20 anchors in his team were also banned for different days.
During 618 in 2021, Simba questioned Kuaishou for restricting his current because he had too few fans in the live broadcast room, and his account was banned for a week.
In September 2021, Simba angrily scolded the Kuaishou platform in the live broadcast room: "You must give me the policies that others have, and you must give me the traffic that others have." After that, he was banned from the platform for a week.
In December of the same year, Simba sued Kuaishou in court on the grounds of an online infringement liability dispute.
On March 8, 2024, Simba was banned for 48 hours due to "radical remarks" during the live broadcast on the Kuaishou platform.
The platform actively "divested" Simba
Why is it that as an important provider of Kuaishou e-commerce performance, it is so contradictory with the platform?
According to the analysis of industry insiders, Simba, as a representative anchor of the e-commerce sector of the Kuaishou platform, achieved each other when Kuaishou rose, but after Kuaishou has grown into an industry giant, the two sides have different needs in many aspects such as products, services, and resources.
Kuaishou's e-commerce sector has long been supported by six families led by the Simba family, which has also led to Kuaishou falling into a difficult situation of riding a tiger: it is too closely bound to the head anchor, resulting in both the anchor and the platform being prosperous and loss, and Simba has had many negative incidents, which has brought a wake-up call to Kuaishou. The key thing is that the head anchors led by Simba have recruited a wide range of disciples, set up their own mountains, and built a family-style private domain traffic "empire", and now Kuaishou is going to tear down their "walls" with their own hands.
Kuaishou's financial report shows that the total amount of e-commerce transactions on the Kuaishou platform has increased significantly from 59.6 billion yuan in 2019 to 381.2 billion yuan in 2020.
In September 2020, the new version of Kuaishou added a scroll-up and down-scroll mode, and the original "same city" entrance at the top of the homepage was moved to the bottom and replaced by a "featured" entrance, which became a new public domain traffic entrance for Kuaishou, which was distributed by the platform.
At the beginning of 2021, when Simba was banned and disappeared, Kuaishou vigorously supported new anchors, created a "good things alliance" to strengthen the supply chain, and reformulated traffic rules. In the statistical cycle from March 8, 2021 to March 14, 2021, the sales of Kuaishou beauty anchor "Yu Dagongzi" reached 150 million yuan, surpassing the main anchor of the Simba family.
Kuaishou officials have repeatedly stated that they will further support middle-waist anchors. In 2021, Zhang Yipeng, head of the Kuaishou e-commerce marketing center, made it clear in an interview with the media that the platform is willing to give a part of the very expensive traffic to the middle-waist anchors, hoping that the Kuaishou platform can become an ecologically rich e-commerce community, and Kuaishou's investment in supporting small and medium-sized anchors is not capped.
In the book "The Power of Being Seen - What is Kuaishou" written by Kuaishou Research Institute, the Kuaishou e-commerce section mentions cases such as "Doll Couple" and "Lola Run", and does not mention anything about Simba and other six family-style anchors.
Many members of Simba's team will enter the top 10 GMV of Kuaishou live streaming in 2023. Network diagram
In 2019, the Simba family's delivery data accounted for about a quarter of Kuaishou's e-commerce GMV. In 2020, the GMV of Kuaishou e-commerce exceeded 200 billion yuan, and the total GMV of the 10 anchors of the Simba family was 6.5 billion yuan, accounting for 6% of the total GMV. It was also in this year that Kuaishou vigorously promoted "removing head traffic and continuing to support middle-waist anchors". Regarding this strategy, Zhang Yipeng, the person in charge of the Kuaishou e-commerce marketing center, said bluntly: "I may not be able to sell Simba, Li Jiaqi, and Wei Ya as a mid-waist anchor, and I will bring 10 anchors together, and the volume will definitely be larger than in the past." In September 2021, at the peak night of Kuaishou Live's summer, more million-level small and medium-sized anchors emerged, and the media said that "they accounted for more than 90% of the revenue". More middle-waist anchors walked to the center of the stage, and in the case of no much growth in the traffic market, it is equivalent to the traffic of head anchors such as Simba being divided.
Simba's apprentice fans are approaching 100 million
Interestingly, while the platform wants to "strip" Simba, the Simba team itself is constantly proposing to "de-Simbaize".
In December 2020, Simba was banned from the platform for 60 days due to the "fake bird's nest" incident. Perhaps it was this sudden public opinion storm that made him realize that it was too risky to concentrate traffic on himself. In March 2021, Simba said in an interview: "This year is mainly about 'de-Simba', don't let everyone always think that Simba is how, in fact, he is a company and there are thousands of people......"
In the following period, Simba gradually reduced the frequency of live broadcasts and only attended some important events. He has revealed several times that he intends to quit live broadcasting. At the beginning of March this year, Simba said in the live broadcast that he wanted to suspend the live broadcast, precipitate for two years, and then choose a new track to start again after two years......
Dandan's current number of fans is more than 98 million. Kuaishou screenshot
In addition, developing a successor is also an important job that Simba is doing. At present, there is only one account with hundreds of millions of Kuaishou fans, and the other account closest to breaking 100 million is Simba's apprentice Dandan, with more than 98 million fans. The data shows that in 2023, Dandan will rank first in Kuaishou's annual delivery list, with a GMV of 17.1 billion yuan, surpassing Simba's 12.5 billion yuan.
In addition, Simba's rest of the apprentices "Cat Sister", "Shi Da Beautiful", "Zhao Mengche" and others have fans in the order of forty or fifty million, and their results in bringing goods are not bad. "Dandan", "Shi Da Beautiful", "Zhao Mengche" and others have all entered the top 10 in the estimated sales (GMV) of Kuaishou live streaming in 2023. "Sister Cat" will also achieve a single delivery of more than 100 million yuan in 2023, and gradually emerge.
Although Simba has revealed several times that he intends to withdraw from live broadcasting, judging from his recent actions, Xinxuan is still continuing to increase live broadcast e-commerce. Since 2024, Xinxuan Group has signed planting and processing contracts with a number of domestic agricultural product production bases to continuously improve the supply chain. In addition, Xinxuan has recently established a short video slicing company. A person close to Xinxuan Group said that the "slice distribution" business is one of the areas that Xinxuan Group will focus on in 2024.
Weakening the head anchor has become an industry trend
Simba took the initiative to "weaken" his influence in the team, and Kuaishou chose to "de-Simba", which is actually the common choice of multiple platforms: "de-head anchor".
In March last year, the official public account of Oriental Selection released a recruitment of "million anchors". Since Dong Yuhui became popular, Dongfang Selection has begun to continuously improve the training system, planning to train and launch multiple batches of new anchors. Today, the core anchor team has more than 20 anchors such as Dunton, Yoyo, Mingming, and Qiqi. Li Jiaqi's MCN agency Mei Wrist is also preparing a variety show "All Girls' Anchors", the purpose of the program is very clear, Xu Xuxiong, deputy general manager of Mei Wrist, said that he should try to use the influence of the head anchor to create more waist anchor IP. Last year, the United States recruited anchors in a high-profile manner for the first time, which was interpreted by the outside world as a signal to weaken Li Jiaqi.
It is foreseeable that reducing the dependence on a single overhead anchor and improving the sustainability of the business model of the live broadcast room has become the future development trend of the industry. Not only MCN institutions are "de-heading anchors", but similar actions are also carried out on Taobao, Douyin, Kuaishou and other platforms, and the "de-heading" of the anchor industry has become a consensus.
"It's good for risk aversion. Because a company relies too much on a super head anchor, it is very risky. Mo Daiqing, director and senior analyst of the online retail department of the e-commerce research center of the network economic society, said. Mo Daiqing pointed out that cultivating new anchors and creating new super head anchors is conducive to the healthy development of itself and the industry. Wei Ya and Sydney were banned for tax evasion, and Simba was also deeply involved in the sale of counterfeits...... Once the top anchor is absent due to various problems, the vacant e-commerce traffic cannot be fully utilized. One of the most typical examples is that after Wei Ya was banned, Taobao also ushered in the first decline in quarterly GMV since 2019.
Liu Chaoliang, head of new retail of Jiabao Group, analyzed that the high-traffic dividend period of live streaming has passed and has entered a stage of stable development, and everyone is no longer as enthusiastic about super head anchors as they were two or three years ago. After the absence of super anchors, part of the traffic that originally belonged to them was allocated to the middle-waist anchors, but more traffic dividends flowed to brands.
Upstream news is based on China Youth Daily, Daily News, Nanfang +, Jimu News, E-commerce Daily, Finance Associated Press, Nanfang Daily, etc
Source: Upstream News