Observation on the first day of Double 11: Merchants are still seeing explosive order surges, but growth is no longer the primary goal.

This year's Double 11 was like a rebirth through tribulation for maternal and infant brand Babycare.

Over the past three to four months, it was passively caught up in an industry crisis, as reports claimed that formamide was detected in diapers of multiple brands.

The doubts did not dissipate until the night of October 15, when a joint circular from four government departments was released — no formamide was detected in products of all 180 brands.

At 8 p.m. on October 20, Tmall Double 11 officially opened full-category sales. According to Babycare's disclosure to Caijing Story Collection, two hours after the launch, Babycare's store sales exceeded 100 million yuan, and it quickly rose to the top 1 of the Tmall maternal and child industry store ranking. The 22.5 million fans accumulated in its Tmall flagship store continued to cast votes of trust for Babycare. "With the official circular and users' trust, we can finally hold our heads high," an insider of the company admitted.

Marubi Biology also achieved remarkable results. Its new product, the 4.0 version of the Little Red Pen Eye Cream, which was strongly promoted by Marubi this year, ranked Top 4 on the bestseller list of dark circle removing eye creams in the Double 11 opening, and it was the only domestic Chinese brand among the Top 5 on the list.

The Little Red Pen, with cumulative sales of millions of units, has maintained long-term popularity not by blindly cutting prices, but by product upgrading and functional iteration. The 4.0 new product clearly states its efficacy — reducing fine lines around the eyes and brightening the eye area in 7 days. Coupled with Double 11 discounts, its explosive sales are reasonable.

Sun Huaiqing, Chairman of Marubi Biology, has long been aware of this logic. In a public statement in May this year, he directly tore off the fig leaf of the industry: "All growth of the company this year must be based on profitability. For loss-making businesses and channels, even if they can bring scale expansion, we will firmly not carry them out."

One has re-entered growth after rebirth from tribulation, the other refuses to burn money and prioritizes profits, both have achieved "great results" in this year's Double 11.

Beyond the surface of the outbreak, in the face of drastic changes in the internal and external environment, platforms and brands have actively adopted a new set of problem-solving ideas: merchants' growth goals have shifted from GMV priority to profit priority, they have begun to allocate more resources to shelf e-commerce with higher certainty in channels, and their operation strategies have shifted from blindly competing for low prices to focusing on repurchase, new products and services.

These three changes have jointly formed a complete picture of brands' performance in this year's Double 11.

I

Merchants' goals have changed: from GMV priority to benefit priority

At 10 p.m. on the 20th, the CMO of a sports brand posted a group photo of overtime work on his Moments, "Another year of Double 11, the big show has begun."

"Double 11 is supposed to be a familiar topic, but our brand has new expectations every year," the aforementioned CMO told Caijing Story Collection, "but the goal has changed. We no longer only focus on GMV data, but also pay attention to ROI."

In this year's Double 11, the brand pays more attention to operating efficiency, and has included profit indicators into the team's evaluation system. "The marketing and sales teams are not only responsible for revenue scale, but also assessed on the efficiency of expense use and profitability. Investment must bring output, and ultimately generate profits — this business common sense that was once neglected by the market is now returning rapidly."

Not only top brands, but also long-tail merchants are becoming more and more sober.

"Selling 1 million yuan of goods without profit is worse than selling 100,000 yuan of goods to earn 10,000 yuan." This year's Double 11, Hurricane, who is engaged in e-commerce operation agency in Hangzhou, found that more and more merchants "have switched the order volume target to the profit target. It is no longer a competition for who is the most aggressive, but a competition for who is better at accounting. Fulfillment costs and per-order costs must be calculated in advance".

Some customers directly sent the budget sheet to Hurricane for review, "If my advertising budget increases by 30%, how much will profit and order volume increase respectively?"

Some merchants revealed that in this year's Double 11, the boss requires the operation team to learn to do accounts: Newly added profit = Newly added GMV × Gross profit margin - Newly added advertising fee - Preferential subsidy cost - Platform fee - Return loss.

Profit priority has become a long-term strategic choice for brands. This shift is not a whim, but an inevitable result under the pressure of the overall market: No large-scale platform can be separated from the total social retail data. Under the new market situation, brands' expectations for growth also need to gradually shift from high growth to steady growth.

The industry reshuffle is fierce. The beauty, snack and consumer electronics industries are still achieving positive growth. Some industries are dragged down by the withdrawal of state subsidies and high base figures, so their prospects are not optimistic; some industries have shown a significant upward trend, such as the clothing industry. Although the overall market is not optimistic, driven by original design, core indicators such as transaction quality of shelf platforms have improved against the trend, the return rate has declined, and it is expected to take the lead in completing a round of structural reshuffle.

Policy orientation is also changing. On the eve of Double 11, seven government departments deployed the "Five Optimizations" action for quality e-commerce, clearly correcting the disorderly competition such as "automatic price following" and "the lowest price across the network" of e-commerce platforms, and vigorously cultivating quality e-commerce.

Marubi Biology adjusted its course in advance, and the dividends have been cashed in. In the first half of this year, although Marubi's revenue was still declining, its net profit has begun to grow in reverse. Facing the widespread phenomenon of "revenue growth without profit growth" in the industry, Sun Huaiqing made a clear cut: "The company is fully shifting from scale expansion to benefit priority, and adheres to profitable growth."

A similar scene also happened at Three Squirrels. Its revenue decreased by 3.61% year-on-year, but the net profit attributable to shareholders surged by 79.94% year-on-year. Its founder Zhang Liaoyuan said that he would adhere to healthy growth, "Low price is definitely not our strategy."

Perfect Diary, which was once driven by live streaming, has also started brand transformation, and now its gross profit margin has finally increased to more than 80%.

More notably, under this shift, the overall e-commerce market has maintained its momentum in this year's Double 11. According to the officially released data, on the first day of this year's Tmall Double 11, Tmall remained the main position for brand transactions, with 124 brands achieving transaction volume exceeding 100 million yuan; the number of ordering users on the first day of JD Double 11 also achieved double-digit growth.

One minute after the launch, FILA's transaction volume exceeded 100 million yuan. One hour after the launch, adidas' transaction volume exceeded 200 million yuan. The pregnant women's nut set of Three Squirrels won the Top 1 of boxed nuts in the Tmall Double 11 opening.

Not only top merchants, but also long-tail merchants performed well. A Guangzhou gold original designer brand, considering the recent decline in gold prices and consumers' low willingness to consume gold, did not increase its marketing budget in this year's Double 11. The person in charge of the brand, Xiaoyu, told Caijing Story Collection, "On the first day of launch, orders increased by 12% year-on-year."

II

Allocating heavy resources to shelves: the great migration of channels

Double 11 is the peak of the annual investment budget for many brands, but under the principle of profit priority, the allocation of funds needs careful consideration.

Xiaoyu said frankly, "We can't afford or operate well on live streaming platforms anymore, and the cost keeps rising. From 2023 to 2026, the average CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of live streaming platforms has increased by as much as 50%. When Double 11 comes, the number of bidding merchants increases, and the price will rise again. With the same amount of money, instead of acquiring new users on short video and live streaming platforms, it is better to go to Tmall to launch preferential groups to activate old customers."

Some operation agency experts observed that during the big promotion period, many brands' investment proportion in shelf e-commerce is much higher than the overall market level, and the budget proportion of the shelf scenario has risen to more than 60%. In this year's Double 11, live streaming platforms clearly abandoned the goal of "reducing returns and ensuring profits" set at the beginning of the year, and required brands to prioritize scale expansion. However, brands are under performance pressure and are unwilling to burn money, so there are differences between the two sides on growth goals and paths, leading brands to reduce their overall investment on live streaming platforms.

Three Squirrels' return to profit growth benefits from adjusting the proportion structure of live streaming and shelf e-commerce. In the first half of 2026, among the online revenue, the revenue proportion of live streaming and shelf e-commerce was about 38% and 62% respectively, while the data of last year was 47% and 53% respectively. In just one year, about 9 percentage points of online revenue share has shifted from live streaming to shelf e-commerce.

Marubi also made it clear that it will give priority to ensuring the steady growth of shelf e-commerce with strong profitability, and shrink the loss-making business segments in content e-commerce.

Lao Gao, founder of "Golden Crown Club" which is engaged in e-commerce community operation, said frankly that it is a wise move for brands to shift from live streaming to shelves, "The core advantages of shelf e-commerce are very clear: stability, sustainable growth, scalability, more controllable data, and it can accumulate repurchase, brand power and supply chain barriers."

The high return rate has become an unbearable burden for merchants. The return rate of shelves in many categories is even about 20 percentage points lower than that of content e-commerce. According to estimates, for every 10 percentage points decrease in the return rate, the channel net profit margin can rise by 3 to 5 percentage points.

The profit margin of shelf e-commerce is relatively more guaranteed. The aforementioned operation agency expert revealed that the median net profit margin of brands on Tmall is about 12% to 15%; Xiaohongshu has a small scale, and high-unit-price goods can achieve 9% to 11% profit margin, but its ceiling is limited by scale; it is more difficult to make money on live streaming platforms, mature brands can break even and make small profits through official store live streaming, while it is difficult to make money or even lose money by only investing in influencers' live streaming.

Impulsive one-time transactions account for a relatively high proportion in live streaming sales, and repurchase is not easy to achieve. Coupled with the high commission and high booth fee of influencers, the comprehensive cost is relatively high.

Marubi has a deep understanding of this. Under the high traffic cost, the profit has been under continuous pressure. In 2025, the revenue increased by 16.48% year-on-year, but the annual sales expenses increased by 25.8% year-on-year. Under the sharp increase of pressure, Sun Huaiqing decisively led Marubi to reduce the position in live streaming and increase the position in shelf e-commerce. In contrast, shelf e-commerce is more suitable for accumulating brand assets and doing a good job in member repurchase, and the comprehensive cost is more controllable.

"In the past, many brands followed the trend and thought that live streaming was new e-commerce and shelves were old e-commerce. In fact, there is no new or old e-commerce. After accounting, you will know that shelf e-commerce is the future," Lao Gao said frankly when communicating with brands.

After shifting to shelves, more and more brands have begun to invest heavily in flagship stores, and at the same time, a number of brands are still increasing their investment in brand official live streaming based on flagship stores. The proportion of sales from influencers' live streaming of beauty brand Kans dropped from 43.5% in 2024 to 19.5% in early 2025, and further dropped to 7.5% in July this year; official live streaming accounts for more than 80% of its total sales.

According to media reports, Three Squirrels has improved its official live streaming matrix to achieve all-day user coverage.

Optimizing offline channels is also the consensus of many brands. They open offline flagship stores to build user awareness and one-stop service points, and seize new opportunities in instant retail at the same time.

In the past two years, Three Squirrels has successively closed unprofitable traditional snack shops, and allocated resources to the life hall format with higher per-square-meter efficiency and stronger repurchase — offline operation is not the goal, profitable business is the goal.

III

Operation strategies have changed: members, new products, services

When the strategy changes, the tactics must also change accordingly. In this year's Double 11, brands generally rely on four major driving forces for growth: repurchase, new products, services and AI.

More and more brands have realized that instead of spending money to acquire a new customer, it is better to retain existing old customers well. According to Bain & Company's research, the cost of acquiring a new customer is usually 5 to 25 times the cost of retaining an existing customer.

Under the overall pressure of the clothing industry, JNBY has achieved outstanding performance — its revenue and profit have continued to grow simultaneously, relying on members to drive growth. The number of fans of JNBY's Tmall flagship store has soared to 4.48 million; the financial report discloses that in the past three years, the retail sales contributed by JNBY's members accounted for more than 80% of the total retail sales.

In this year's Double 11, JNBY continues to focus on member business on Tmall. For new members, JNBY directly gives red envelope coupons: 20 yuan off for orders over 20.01 yuan, 70 yuan off for orders over 1400 yuan; it also connects rights and interests with 88VIP members, so that the latter can enjoy a 10% discount on all new products in the store.

Not only JNBY, in this year's Double 11, many brands have included repurchase into the assessment indicators, the proportion of old customers is generally required to reach more than 35%, and some categories require 45% — it is cost-effective to keep old customers in the member system for repeated operation.

Brands allocate heavy resources to Tmall also because it is more suitable for repurchase — as of June 30, 2026, the scale of 88VIP members is about 64 million. They are the high-value users that brands are eager to get, and also the potential member pool of brands.

The repurchase indicator has also become a product signboard to drive conversion. Repurchase data such as repeat customers of products and brands will be highlighted on the product detail page by Tmall. The aforementioned Marubi Little Red Pen 4.0 eye cream has crushed many overseas big brands, ranked Top 1 on the repurchase list of dark circle removing eye creams in Double 11, and has become the most convincing word-of-mouth advertisement.

New products have also become the main engine driving growth. In the past, brands released new products on a regular cycle, but now they are launching new products throughout the year. It has become the consensus of brands to warm up new products on the eve of the big promotion, and then take advantage of the big promotion to achieve great results. One month before the launch of Tmall Double 11, the number of merchants launching new products for the first time on Taobao and Tmall increased by 64% year-on-year, and the scale of first-launched new products reached a new high. This is particularly prominent in the beauty field. International big brands iterate their products every 2 to 3 years, while domestic brands such as Marubi have achieved twice iterations a year.

In this year's Double 11, both Tmall and JD have put services in the core position. Tmall has launched characteristic services, such as the integrated service of disassembly, delivery and installation in the home decoration industry, free film pasting, "return if you don't like the food", and aging-friendly services driving more than 500,000 merchants to give out 100,000 aging-friendly products. JD's service channel made its debut in Double 11 for the first time, covering more than 100 subdivided services.

The effect of good services in creating demand and driving growth has been initially verified. Jialuo, President of Tmall, revealed, "Our tests with brands show that as long as