The queen of goods is a bit annoying lately.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Time Weekly” (ID: timeweekly), author: Li Xinting.
The 521 Via Carnival with big names has come to an end, but the “cargo queen” Via has been a bit annoying recently.
Recently, some Weibo netizens broke the news that the fashion brand Supreme co-branded products sold by Wei Ya in the live broadcast room are actually counterfeit products. Later, Wei Ya responded with “refund and not return” as a solution.
This is not the first time Wei Ya has fallen into controversy. Since 2020, the women’s shoes and women’s online stores under the name of Wei Ya have been reported by other brands of clothing more than once, claiming that they have plagiarized their products.
Weiya has other worries.
“Weiya’s team is very anxious.” On May 23, Sarah (pseudonym), a beauty industry practitioner, told Times Weekly reporters. Sarah once participated in the e-commerce operation of an internationally renowned skin care brand. She revealed to the Times Weekly reporter that since 2019, her company has continued to promote its brand self-broadcasting on Taobao, and its sales have increased considerably. This has attracted the attention of the Wei Ya team. attention. “Before they were staring at competitors, now they even stare at our company’s self-broadcast.” Sarah said.
In addition to corporate live broadcasts, vertical anchors and the rapidly emerging Douyin Kuaishou live broadcast have also begun to share the traffic of Taoist super anchors. Under the new situation of live streaming with goods, the top stream anchor Wei Ya is facing a bottleneck in transformation. On May 22, regarding the operation of the Wei Ya team, a reporter from the Times contacted Wei Ya’s agency Qianxun Cultural Media via email, and no reply was received as of the time of publication.
Bringing goods has been repeatedly disputed
“The Supreme incident exposed the weaknesses in the selection of products and the supply chain of the team of the leading national anchor of Wei Ya.” In response to the recent controversy that Wei Ya has brought goods, May On the 23rd, Cao Lei, director of the E-commerce Research Center of the Net Economics, told the Times Weekly reporter.
On the evening of May 14, a small hanging-neck fan was sold in the Weiya live studio. Wei Ya said that the product is the first joint cooperation product between the fashion brand Supreme and the domestic brand “Gu Zi”, and the price is only 198 yuan. Subsequently, this fan was revealed as a copycat product by fashion blogger Abestyle.
Abestyle said that Gucci is a small domestic brand, and the genuine Supreme has never been co-branded with any domestic brands, and the price will not be only 198 yuan. Since then, Gu Zi posted on the official Weibo toApologize.
Abestyle said that the operator behind this joint name may be “Sichuan Super Brand Management Co., Ltd.”, which has forged the illusion of a genuine Supreme through a series of industrial and commercial registration operations. On the Supreme New York official website, there is no related product promotion of “Supreme x GUZHI”.
On the evening of May 17, Via responded to the time in the live broadcast room. She said that the disputed product was recommended by the e-commerce platform partner. “It is indeed the joint name of Supreme in the United States, but it is not the Supreme in my ideals, but this shouldn’t happen to me, so I hope that the merchant can refund all purchasers in full without returning the goods.” Wei Ya said.
In Cao Lei’s view, Wei Ya’s response is suspected of shirking responsibility. “The reason for the wrong product selection by the e-commerce platform partner is contrary to common sense. The head anchor must bear the main responsibility when selecting the product. At the same time, Wei Ya’s response also exposed the immaturity of his team in dealing with public opinion crises.” Cao Lei said.
Although Wei Ya has repeatedly emphasized the importance of anchor quality control, in recent years, she has been repeatedly questioned by the market.
In January 2020, the Italian luxury brand ASH Aixi posted on Weibo that it had received multiple complaints from consumers and sales channels, stating that the “Viya high-end customized women’s shoes” Taobao store was plagiarized (counterfeit production) A number of products under the ASH brand have been sold in the “Viya Live Studio”. In March of the same year, the clothing brand squarecircle posted on Weibo that Wei Ya was selling its own women’s clothing store merchandise on the live broadcast, including a knitted cardigan sweater suspected of plagiarizing squarecircle’s previous merchandise.
Subsequently, Qianxun (Hangzhou) Culture Media Co., Ltd. where Wei Ya is located issued a statement of apology, stating that the relevant supplier has admitted that the product is indeed plagiarized and is willing to bear corresponding responsibility.
Cao Lei believes that the intellectual property disputes involved in Wei Ya’s stores will attract more and more attention as the e-commerce industry enters an atmosphere of strong supervision, and Wei Ya’s product selection team needs to further improve its capabilities. “Otherwise, the image of Wei Ya live broadcast may be ruined.” Cao Lei analyzed.
Self-broadcasting to occupy the anchor market
Weiya’s status as a live broadcast “first sister” is facing challenges.
Since the launch of Taobao in 2016, Wei Ya’s products have gradually shifted from women’s clothing to all categories. Beauty, home appliances, movie tickets, books, agricultural products and even rockets have all appeared in Wei Ya’s live studio. Since 2020, Wei Ya has frequently “turned over” with goods.
On April 2, 2020, Wei Ya sold a house in the live broadcast room for the first time. On the day of the live broadcast, 852 deposit coupons were sold, and more than 200 people chose to refund the next day. Many netizens think that Wei Ya’s introduction to the house is not professional enough, and what Wei Ya really brings is the various homes in the model house.The most concerned items for non-buyers.
The sales performance of Wei Ya’s home textile products is not outstanding. In 2020, the home textile company Mengjie Co., Ltd. and Wei Ya cooperated 7 times, of which 6 times the total sales of goods were 12.813700. According to the company’s 2020 financial report, Mengjie shares had a revenue of 2.22 billion yuan that year. The revenue driven by Wei Ya contributed little to the company’s revenue.
The major brands have begun to develop their own broadcasting business, which has also shaken the bargaining power of many top anchors.
Sarah has cooperated many times with Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi. She told Times Weekly that although super anchors have made amazing contributions to the company’s beauty products sales, cooperation with “top stream” also has high communication costs and operations. risk.
“The two super anchors want the lowest discount on the entire network. We can only change the plan repeatedly. Each time we cooperate, we must communicate at least half a month in advance, and the plan must be changed at least 3 times.” Sarah said.
At the same time, since communication with Wei Ya needs to go through layers of personnel, once the product language is changed temporarily, it is difficult to communicate to the anchor in time. In addition, the super anchor has a large number of products on the shelves in each live broadcast. Can their own products? The shelves can only be confirmed one or two days in advance, which puts a lot of pressure on the brand’s inventory, sales and after-sales links.
More importantly, choosing a super anchor to bring the goods will affect the company’s brand premium. “Choosing an anchor to bring goods is equivalent to doing a promotion. In the long run, this will affect the brand’s positioning and channel maintenance.” Sarah added.
Sarah revealed that her company has been promoting brand self-broadcasting since 2019, and the sales conversion rate of self-broadcasting is now 5 times that of normal store sales. She told the Times Weekly reporter that self-broadcasting is better than Daren’s live broadcast with high professionalism, flexibility, and strong controllability. At the same time, corporate self-broadcasting can also carry out user education and brand image output.
Take three squirrels as an example. In 2020, three squirrels will broadcast more than 1,000 games by themselves. According to media reports, the total sales of the brand self-broadcasting established by the three squirrels on Taobao Live and Jingdong Live in 2020 will total more than 150 million yuan, which is equivalent to the amount of goods that Wei Ya contributed to the three squirrels in 2020 by 1.6 The billion yuan was basically the same.
Sarah believes that branded self-broadcasting will strengthen the bargaining power of companies on super anchors. “If the anchor does not broadcast, then we will sell it ourselves, and sales are good anyway. Now even the Wei Ya team is paying attention to our live broadcast activities.” She said.
Industry environmental changes
While the cargo-carrying business is facing bottlenecks, Wei Ya is also facing the impact of internal and external traffic.
Brand self-broadcasting has evolved from self-publishing by merchants to the focus of Taobao live broadcast support. On April 28th, Xuande, vice president of Alibaba and person in charge of Taobao Live, revealed at the “2021 Taobao Live Streaming Ceremony” that the official product pool of Taobao Live will be completely open to all anchors, professional verticals.Both anchors and high-quality brand live broadcasts will receive more support and encouragement.
The advantages of Taobao live broadcast are also being weakened by platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin. IiMedia Consulting’s analysis shows that in 2018, Taobao’s total live broadcast transactions accounted for nearly 80% of the total live broadcast e-commerce transactions, and by 2020, this proportion has dropped to 41%. The financial report shows that in 2020, Taobao’s live broadcast transaction totaled more than 400 billion yuan, while Kuaishou’s total transaction was 332.6 billion yuan, approaching Taobao.
On other platforms, the contribution of Daren’s live broadcast to the total turnover has also begun to prevail. According to Cicada’s statistics, as of March, among Douyin accounts with monthly sales exceeding 1 million, enterprise accounts accounted for 65%, and among accounts with monthly sales exceeding 10 million, enterprise accounts accounted for 53%.
More importantly, more and more anchors are catching up with the two super anchors, Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi. According to Taobao list data, currently, the three anchors with the highest enthusiasm for Taobao cooperation are Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi and Shirley. Compared with Wei Ya, who has many years of live broadcast experience, Shirley has been in the top three of the list after only one year in the live broadcast, and her rise is amazing.
The live broadcast brought the goods into the second half, and the Wei Ya team is widening the business boundary in a variety of ways.
In January 2020, Qianxun’s “Super Supply Chain” base officially invited foreign investment. According to Qianxun’s CEO Oli, the base will share the goods resources accumulated by Wei Ya Live to more anchors and MCNs with goods.
Since 2020, Wei Ya has also appeared in “Creation Camp 2020”, “Crossover Singer”, “CCTV Year of the Ox Spring Festival Gala”, “Tucao Conference” and other top variety shows, continuously expanding her personal influence.
At the same time, the Wei Ya team has also accelerated its deployment in Douyin. According to information on the official website of Qianxun Culture, currently among Qianxun’s anchors, there is a popular Douyin anchor, Baibaitu. At the same time, many of Qianxun’s anchors have already settled in Douyin.
Since the second half of 2020, Qianxun Culture has successively established two subsidiaries, Qianxi and Qianyu. Qianxi positioning IP one-stop service, covering the entire link of IP co-branding, product packaging, selling point design and promotion and sales. Up to now, more than 150 IP copyrights have been signed, including mainstream classic IPs such as Hello Kitty and Doraemon. ; Qianyu aims to realize the cooperation between entertainment content and e-commerce live broadcasts through in-depth excavation of entertainers, performances, film and television, variety shows, music and other entertainment content.
In May, the Qianxun Live Broadcast Academy project was officially launched and will share experience with e-commerce live broadcast practitioners.
In Cao Lei’s view, the above information all point to the conclusion that the peak period of Wei Ya’s live broadcast of goods has passed. At present, Wei Ya’s business has entered a bottleneck period. “Weiya is using various methods to extend the life cycle of the business and increase her valuation and imagination.” Cao Lei said.
Cao Lei said that the current business layout of the Wei Ya team fits the current live broadcast e-commerce market environment as a whole, which makes the company’s business more diversified.Will reduce the personal business dependence on Wei Ya.
But when it comes to specific actions, Cao Lei has reservations. In terms of incubating the head anchor, Cao Lei pointed out that it is not easy for Qianxun to incubate a head anchor comparable to Wei Ya. “The emergence of the head anchor needs the right time, the right place and the right people, the introduction of a large amount of traffic resources and the bonus grafting of the whole industry.” Cao Lei analyzed.
In addition to business bottlenecks, policy tightening is also reshaping the ecology of live streaming. On May 1, the “Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Online Transactions” were formally implemented. According to the New Deal, live streaming videos must be kept for 3 years. Products sold through live streaming will strengthen the accountability of anchors. This is undoubtedly another heavy pressure for the Wei Ya team in transition.