Xiaohongshu E-commerce Story: Exploring Paths, Diversity and Business Journeys

Changes took place within a few months.

Chen Chen, who has been in the live-streaming e-commerce industry for many years, became the business head of a Xiaohongshu buyer last year. At the end of last year, when she communicated with brands to open stores and collaborate on Xiaohongshu, the process was not smooth. Some brands did not even have a position to connect with Xiaohongshu buyers.

But soon, the trend changed. After the Spring Festival this year, they suddenly found that many previously hesitant brands have gradually begun to focus on laying out on Xiaohongshu and came to her asking, "What should we do?" "Can we cooperate?"

"Everyone wants to find certainty in new places." In just half a year, doing e-commerce on Xiaohongshu is no longer an unconventional choice. Many merchants were initially attracted by the digital explosive power brought by the buyers, smelled business opportunities, valued channel dividends, and gradually found a way that suits them. Some merchants were pulled in. Driven by buyers and attracted by peers, some people got business results, and more people followed the path.

The driving force behind this is that the ecosystem is changing over time. In the past two years, new business anchors have been continuously growing in Xiaohongshu's e-commerce.

Initially, buyers representing various lifestyles introduced the first batch of distinctive new merchants and reaped the fruits. Subsequently, the merchants who flocked in found a way to do business through store live-streaming and brand managers in addition to buyers, and a business operation path from point to area has gradually formed.

Data doesn't lie. In the just-passed Double 11, the official battle report of Xiaohongshu showed that during the event, the number of merchants with a transaction volume of over 10 million was 5.4 times that of the same period last year, the number of buyers with a single live-streaming transaction volume of over 10 million was 3.6 times that of the same period last year, and the number of store live-streaming rooms with a single live-streaming transaction volume of over 1 million was 8.5 times that of the same period last year. There are also a number of new merchants who have settled in for less than a year and have achieved a transaction volume of over 1 million on Xiaohongshu.

Behind these growths is the influx of various lifestyle merchants and buyers into the blue ocean of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce, and the ecosystem is beginning to become diverse and rich. "Compared with last year, it can be seen that Xiaohongshu's lifestyle e-commerce is more diverse, whether it is the user portrait, or the overall appearance and business operation path of buyers and merchants." Yin Shi, the person in charge of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce operations, told 36Kr.

"The prosperity and vitality of the ecosystem are sometimes more important." Yin Shi concluded that behind the prosperity and vitality is growth. In the e-commerce world, it is to provide different ecological roles with a clear business operation path and the ability to continuously obtain benefits. It needs to be solid and long-lasting. He calls it "diversified scalability".

When the consumer industry can no longer rely on homogeneous supply and low prices to meet demand, meeting personalized needs and providing diverse products is a differentiated choice for Xiaohongshu's e-commerce. And with the surging of e-commerce roles, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce ecosystem is also in the process of growing from a grassland to a tropical rainforest due to this choice.

The Buyer is the First Path: From Selection, Sales to Shaping

Two hours, 11 links, 300,000 in sales.

Four years later, @Darrrrcy can still remember this scene. In July 2020, she set up her phone on the living room table alone and started her first live-streaming. The products she explained were the fascia gun and yoga clothes she was using, 2 brands, 11 products.

Compared with the carefully arranged live-streaming rooms and professional explanations now, it was a somewhat simple and home-based trial, but the effect was unexpected. She earned 50,000 in commissions alone and made her first pot of gold in live-streaming on Xiaohongshu, which was a "novelty" at that time.

At that time, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce had not yet been pushed to the forefront, and there was no such thing as a Xiaohongshu buyer. But "buyer" has become Darcy's career for the past four years. If there are no accidents, there is one live-streaming per month. This Double 11, Darcy has risen to be a ten-million-level buyer, with a single live-streaming selling more than 12 million GMV.

Darcy has also become a witness to the opening of the prelude to Xiaohongshu's e-commerce. In the following years, the value of the "people" hidden in the Xiaohongshu community has been discovered, and ecological roles have gradually emerged, laying the groundwork for the future growth of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce. Buyers represented by Darcy are the first answer found by Xiaohongshu's e-commerce.

"Buyers are also a handle to help merchants operate, and it is the operation process of the core crowd." Yin Shi, the person in charge of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce operations, recalled that initially, when Xiaohongshu's e-commerce was promoting the supply of design brands, it found that the product content and price required detailed explanations, and aesthetic people were needed to match and find the target user group. This path of buyers has been cleared, and similar brands have followed this path to Xiaohongshu's e-commerce.

This is especially true in the trendy sports and outdoor field where Darcy is. Changes in the public lifestyle have also promoted the growth of a number of brands, especially on Xiaohongshu, where various outdoor and trendy sports are constantly popular. Darcy has witnessed the gradual enrichment of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce merchants.

In the early days, without enough brands, Darcy would go to the merchants' offices herself to negotiate cooperation for live-streaming with the sports and outdoor brands she wanted to recommend. From initially only being able to cooperate with distributors to various trendy sports brands such as Adidas, DESCENTE, and HOKA, to a number of domestic trendy brands and original design brands have all opened stores on Xiaohongshu. Now, Darcy spends a lot of time just on product selection. Sometimes the eliminated products "pile up like a small mountain" in the studio.

Apparel brand merchants basically "change every 2 or 3 years", and the competition is fierce. Brand merchants value Xiaohongshu buyers because they play the role of super users - promoting a brand, digging out popular products, and creating new products.

The backpack brand kipling, which is under the VF Corporation, the parent company of The North Face, found Darcy when the brand was declining in the Chinese market, and the other party said, "There's really no other way," and bet their budget on her.

Darcy selected the one called "Young and Charming Pink Purple" from a pile of bags and made a clever outfit with a black Crocs sweatshirt, tight flared jeans, a pink hat, and a contrasting color bag for a high-speed rail trip, presenting the value of its use and matching in a life scene - the practicality of being easy to wipe in case of accidental coffee spills. After it sold out in her buyer's live-streaming room, this bag was out of stock in all channels, and during that time, "even purchasing agents couldn't get it".

In Darcy's view, the role of a Xiaohongshu buyer has its unique value. "We not only select and sell products and brands, but we also shape products and brands."

This year, Darcy collaborated with a new brand MESOSPH. She participated in the co-creation of the product, selected the colors and designs that might be popular, and ultimately this single product became the "best-seller" of the brand on Xiaohongshu. During this Double 11, Darcy also helped another single product of the brand, a small sheepskin down jacket, sell more than 3 million.

Such a new brand story from 0 to 1 is rare in 2024 when the new consumer trend has passed.

On Xiaohongshu, many buyers like Darcy are emerging. The cooperation between buyers and brands is spreading out various possibilities like water plants. A batch of distinctive new merchants have also entered the ecosystem of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce.

The rotation of countless individual gears is also pushing the platform forward rapidly. In the past two years, Darcy has also witnessed with her own eyes that more and more merchants have noticed the dividends on Xiaohongshu and have used buyers to open a way on this hot land.

However, for the platform's e-commerce ecosystem to grow from grass to forest, this is far from enough.

Go and Find the Differentiated Choice for Business Operation

Lai Shangbo, the brand manager of the furniture brand Sinaibo, began to sense the change in the water temperature from a series of screenshots.

Since 2023, he found that a large number of users came to ask how to purchase with screenshots of Xiaohongshu bloggers' shares every day, and his perception was gradually reconstructed. With more than ten years of intuition in doing e-commerce, he told himself that he must seriously do Xiaohongshu. Just after 618, he quickly pulled his colleagues to form the Xiaohongshu project team and set a "military order", a seemingly aggressive goal: to take down Xiaohongshu in three months.

The progress was faster than expected. In September, the first live-streaming special with the buyer KK sold 2 million.

"This made us very excited!" Lai Shangbo recalled that since then, the entire operation center of Sinaibo has begun to change - the original shelf e-commerce team was reduced from 10 to 3, and new media operations were added. The buyer has become the first anchor point for Sinaibo's operation on Xiaohongshu, but he hopes to have a stable business on weekdays. In the same month, Lai Shangbo realized that the number of viewers of the store's self-broadcasting was increasing. After many years of doing e-commerce, Lai Shangbo keenly sensed that this was a signal. A business operation path from the recommendation of Xiaohongshu bloggers, to the seeding and trading of buyers, and then to the closed loop of store live-streaming has formed in his mind.

Lai Shangbo made a decisive decision and organized a store live-streaming team of more than 20 people to "quickly enter" within just fifteen days. Lai Shangbo summarized their strategy in five words - "Great efforts create miracles". They live-stream from morning to night, and during the major promotion nodes, it can even be extended to 16 hours. The live-streaming room is decorated as a user's home scene, and the introduction of each product is broken down very detailed, and it is necessary to explain it as closely as possible to the lifestyle and scene. "For example, for waterproof fabrics, we combine the specific needs of pet-raising and child-raising families, and the sofa should be easy to clean, and we talk thoroughly with them."

The success of store live-streaming is "an additional way to operate", and it is also a certainty for doing business. In less than two months, Sinaibo has ranked among the top three in the home furnishing store live-streaming category. During this Double 11, more than half of Sinaibo's transaction volume on Xiaohongshu comes from store live-streaming.

Like Sinaibo, after opening up the situation through cooperation with buyers, many merchants have begun to have a team dedicated to doing e-commerce on Xiaohongshu. The founders with a keen sense of smell are willing to invest more costs on Xiaohongshu. Seeing the demonstration, the "buyer + store live-streaming" model has become the "standard model" for merchants' e-commerce operations on Xiaohongshu. After seeing a group of merchants who have achieved results, during this 618, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce stated that it will focus on supporting store live-streaming in the future. By this Double 11, the number of store live-streaming rooms with a single live-streaming transaction volume of over 1 million on Xiaohongshu is 8.5 times that of the same period last year.

On the road to crossing to store live-streaming, Sui Meizhi is also one of the early explorers, but she found another answer.

Sui Meizhi, who has been growing Damascus roses for 6 years and started her business by building a base in Yantai, Shandong, came to Xiaohongshu with her new skin care brand and opened a store.

In the first year, following the usual thinking, she recruited four young anchors with a doctoral degree and a good image to explain the products. However, in the beauty and essential oil category she is in, knowledge popularization did not work. It should be noted that "nourishing the skin with oil" has been popular on Xiaohongshu for a long time, and the concept is not new. Her attempt failed.

This made her realize that "Xiaohongshu users are not followers. They know the products. Even if others memorize everything, it is difficult for them to truly understand the concept, and the appeal will be much worse."

So Sui Meizhi decided to go on live-streaming herself as the brand manager. She thinks she is "not photogenic", but after growing roses for 6 years, adjusting the formula and modifying the products over and over again, she is undoubtedly the person who knows the origin of the products and how to use them the best. This is a path that has never been tried before.

The first live-streaming was at the end of 2022. In one and a half hours, she told the complete entrepreneurial story and cried. This live-streaming also left a group of users who still follow Zhihe Wuyou to this day.

Sui Meizhi's business has gradually improved. From selling several thousand yuan in one live-streaming to 50,000, 100,000, and when she achieved the first monthly sales of one million, Sui Meizhi only had 8,000 fans on Xiaohongshu. This Double 11, when Zhihe Wuyou set a new high of over 2 million in a single live-streaming, she only had 15,000 fans. Sui Meizhi attributes this to finding the precise users in an appropriate way.

Before Xiaohongshu publicly defined the "brand manager", a group of brand managers like Sui Meizhi who have been immersed in the supply chain for many years have already tried to explore a path on this "new land" of Xiaohongshu.

In July this year, Xiaohongshu proposed to support more brand managers to grow and operate in Xiaohongshu's e-commerce. Brand managers not only explain products, but also share knowledge, provide emotional value and personalized services. 36Kr learned that a group of women's clothing brand managers will design and produce new products based on the product demands received in the Xiaohongshu community and live-streaming.

In Yin Shi's view, traditional brands can only make users remember the logo and style, while brand managers make users remember the person, and the brand manager