Reporter | Chen Qirui
Editor | Lou Qinqin
Not all beauty brands rely on head anchors.
On July 13th, the local beauty brand Polaiya said at the investor exchange meeting that in 2021, the head anchor delivery accounted for a small single digit in the total sales of product live broadcast. On Tik Tok, nearly 60% of Polaiya’s live broadcast activities are self-broadcast by the brand. At present, Polaiya mainly broadcasts live on Tmall, Tik Tok and JD.COM platforms.
During the "6.18" period in 2022, Polaiya ranked fifth in the Tmall beauty sales list; Its make-up brand Caitang ranks ninth in Tmall’s make-up sales list. In the future, Polaiya will continue to broadcast live, and this year, it will open a second official account in Tik Tok, mainly to promote popular items such as the essence of double antibodies.
According to the report of Qingyan, the information media in the beauty industry, Lin Qingxuan’s self-broadcast accounted for 60% during the "6.18" period in 2022, and the master anchor accounted for 40%. Shanghai jahwa Group, which owns brands such as herborist and Yuze, started the construction of the live broadcast center in December 2021, saying that 70% of the self-broadcast content will be completed by the internal team in 2021, and the store self-broadcast GMV will increase by more than 300% year-on-year.
According to the research report of CITIC Securities, in 2021, Li Jiaqi and Viya will account for about 10% of the live broadcast sales of Polaiya. Li Jiaqi and Viya accounted for about 25% of the live broadcast sales in shanghai jahwa, mainly in Yuze and herborist. According to the report, most A-share cosmetics listed companies are not highly dependent on the head anchor.
With the rise of anchors such as Li Jiaqi and Viya, live broadcast has become an important channel for beauty brands to promote online sales growth.
In this process, the head anchor promoted the sales growth of high-end overseas brands such as Lancome and Estee Lauder, and also made new domestic brands such as Perfect Diary and Flower Xizi come out of the circle, while local brands such as Polaiya and Yuze, which have been established for many years, also made a second spring through live broadcast.
However, the problem that some brands rely too much on the head anchor soon appears. The head anchor has a stronger voice, and the pit fee is more expensive. Beauty brands entering the live broadcast room of the head anchor sometimes lose money and earn traffic. Previously, the dispute between Li Jiaqi and L ‘Oré al also showed that the head anchor’s price requirements risked disrupting the brand price order.
Recently, after anchors such as Li Jiaqi and Viya stopped broadcasting one after another, some brands also realized that over-reliance on head anchors would increase the uncertainty of development. During "June 18th" in 2022, Li Jiaqi suddenly stopped broadcasting, which once caused a large inventory backlog of brands.
In fact, some beauty brands have already begun to reduce their investment in the head anchor, mainly by adding more stores to broadcast themselves. As early as the early outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, some beauty brands such as Lancome began to gradually increase their investment in self-broadcasting in order to reduce the losses caused by the closure of stores.
With the rise of short video platforms such as Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker, beauty brands have gradually extended their self-broadcasting channels from Taobao. In addition to beauty brands, the practice of self-broadcasting is also used by shopping malls such as Yintai, and counter clerks can broadcast live in shopping malls after training. Yintai’s self-broadcasting in shopping malls has established its own system.
Since the previously popular head anchor has gradually faded out, whether it is willing or not, it has become an inevitable trend for beauty brands to reduce their dependence on the head anchor. But not all brands can achieve sales growth through self-broadcasting.
At present, the successful self-broadcast beauty brands have usually developed in the market for a long time, and have a large number of sales points in offline channels. They have a considerable budget to build a live broadcast base, which can be broadcast by their own teams on Tmall and Tik Tok, and also gain exposure in the live broadcast of comprehensive shopping malls such as Yintai.
For those start-up brands, it is usually difficult to get traffic attention by choosing self-broadcasting, and entering the live broadcast room of the head anchor is often a key step for them to enter the mass market. In 2022, the "6.18" Tmall beauty and make-up sales list also showed that, without the support of the head anchor, the number of start-up local brands on the list had been greatly reduced, and overseas brands that had been suppressed once again dominated the list.
The excessive concentration of resources by the head anchor leads to the inequality of the right to speak between the anchor and the brand, but also because of the concentration of resources, the head anchor can bring rare traffic to small brands that lack exposure. In the current period when the field of head anchor is still green and yellow, start-up brands and small brands may face more challenges.
