With the loss of low-price advantages among top live-streamers, store-based broadcasts dominating the mainstream, and the return of rational consumer behavior, live e-commerce has entered a new phase.

Who can provide new solutions for live e-commerce in this new phase?

Xiaohongshu offers an answer: buyer live streams.

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01

New Trends in Live E-commerce

Over the past two years, live e-commerce seems less popular than it was a few years ago.

The most obvious sign is the collective "retirement" of top live-streamers, such as Li Jiaqi, Xinba, and Xiao Yangge, who have gradually reduced their live-streaming sessions and faded from the spotlight.

A significant reason for this is that top live-streamers have lost their most potent weapon: low prices.

Early on, Li Jiaqi admitted that he could secure "the lowest price on the entire network" because merchants wanted to quickly boost sales and obtain platform promotions, so they chose to subsidize prices with advertising fees.

However, this sales promotion method is inherently unsustainable.

Moreover, as all major e-commerce platforms have embraced low prices in recent years, price has become a core element in platform traffic allocation, gradually returning control to the platforms.

At the same time, to maintain pricing power and brand strength, brands have also opened their own store broadcasts, with the market size now exceeding 50%, surpassing influencer broadcasts (by celebrities, KOLs, etc.).

These are changes on the supply side. From the demand side, consumers have become accustomed to various "1, 2, 3, go to the link" live streams that resemble hypermarkets, gradually becoming more sophisticated and discerning, adopting a more rational approach to live shopping.

Previously, low-price and promotion-oriented live streams often led to impulsive purchases, resulting in high return rates, low repurchase rates, and low average order values. The return rate for women's clothing live streams can reach 80%; low-price sales rarely allow consumers to deeply understand product value, making repurchases difficult; low-priced, cookie-cutter products can only compete on price, leaving businesses with little profit or even losses.

Today, with the loss of low-price advantages among top live-streamers, the rise of store broadcasts focused on enhancing brand power, and the return of rational consumer behavior, live e-commerce has entered a new phase.

Last year, a widely circulated view in e-commerce circles was that "the most worthwhile e-commerce platforms to invest in 2024 are WeChat Video and Xiaohongshu."

Among them, Xiaohongshu offers a new variable for the transitioning live e-commerce industry: buyers.

In late August last year, Xiaohongshu introduced the concept of "buyer e-commerce" at its first e-commerce partner conference.

Xiaohongshu began exploring e-commerce in 2014, trying various formats such as self-operation, live streaming, and note-based sales before reinvesting in e-commerce after finding a new approach.

Amid the red ocean and slowing growth of live e-commerce, Xiaohongshu has delivered impressive results over the past year. What is the secret?

02

The Secret to Xiaohongshu's Rise Against the Trend

What is a buyer? In Xiaohongshu's words, they are the people who connect "products" and "users" on the platform, creating purchasing scenarios. They select and organize goods based on their taste and aesthetics, sharing them with their fans.

The term "buyer" is not new, but Xiaohongshu's adoption of it as a crucial link in its e-commerce ecosystem is well-timed.

Buyers originated in the European and American fashion circles, traveling the world to source clothing, shoes, jewelry, and other goods, understanding consumer preferences, grasping fashion trends, and meeting the needs of diverse consumers.

Xiaohongshu buyers share a similar core: they are professionals in their fields, focus on taste and aesthetics, and have a loyal fan base.

In any era, the key to becoming a buyer is sustained trust from fans.

This is precisely Xiaohongshu's unique advantage over many e-commerce platforms. Xiaohongshu is a lifestyle sharing community with over 100 million daily active users. The concept of "community" is more humanistic, where some people showcase their lifestyles and attitudes, displaying their unique aesthetics and tastes, while others strongly identify with and trust them.

The buyer ecosystem naturally grew out of Xiaohongshu's community atmosphere.

Home furnishing buyer @Xingren has over 760,000 followers on Xiaohongshu. He initially discovered that his fans were interested in the home furnishing products he used daily and actively requested purchase links.

Over time, he became a buyer, incorporating more associations with real-life scenarios into his content, fulfilling users' precise needs and directly converting them into sales.

Image: @Xingren's live stream preview video

Like Xingren, many Xiaohongshu creators initially shared their lives and passions, attracting a group of like-minded individuals who "followed their buys," allowing creators to see their value and transition into buyers.

Three elements are necessary for a thriving business ecosystem: trust, value, and exchange. Xiaohongshu buyers have their fans' trust, can discover and share valuable products, but a more complete exchange link is needed to close the loop. This is why Xiaohongshu has focused on building live streaming and buyer live stream systems in recent years.

Through buyer live streams, Xiaohongshu buyers can complete the entire chain from simply seeding interest to "seeding and harvesting" in one go, deepening business cooperation forms and significantly enhancing commercial value.

Currently, brands face issues such as inefficient traffic acquisition, high costs, and unstable customer acquisition quality in their online marketing efforts. However, finding a buyer on Xiaohongshu who aligns with their brand values means connecting with the precise consumers behind the buyer, potentially achieving a multiplier effect on the platform.

Xiaohongshu food buyer @WensenTebieE once saw frequent requests from fans in the comments section of his notes, asking him to recommend cast iron pots in his live stream. The most popular brands had prices ranging from 1,000 to 7,000 yuan. However, fans trusted WensenTebieE and felt comfortable buying with him.

Five years ago, WensenTebieE, who loves food, shared his first note about making Spanish paella on Xiaohongshu, launching his blogging journey. Later, passionate about food, he quit his job to study professional cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts Institute in France.

During this time, he continued to update Xiaohongshu, sharing the fresh dishes he learned. After graduating from culinary school, he became a food buyer, moving his kitchen to live streams, achieving a GMV of 1.48 million in his second live stream.

Image: Screenshot of @WensenTebieE's Xiaohongshu profile

His culinary background made it easier for him to describe the characteristics of various ingredients and kitchenware to his fans, allowing them to see the products' uses through buyer live streams. More and more brands are inviting him to participate in live streams.

If a user group is rational and has a strong demand for a product, they will focus more on factors reflecting value, such as design, craftsmanship, and brand, rather than solely comparing prices. This leads to "three highs and one low": high conversion rates, repurchase rates, and average order values, along with low return rates.

Before joining Xiaohongshu, Xingren had been deeply involved in the home furnishing industry for years, previously only seeding interest on Xiaohongshu and collaborating with merchants on notes.

In January this year, at the strong urging of his fans, Xingren made his debut on Xiaohongshu's live stream and achieved a GMV of over 3 million in a single session.

He didn't want his live streams to be disconnected from his daily content. Most of the products in his live streams were small kitchen appliances he had previously recommended in his notes, such as multi-functional cookers, health pots, and blenders, all of which he had personally tested. He believes, "Brands are now more focused on integrating brand and effectiveness. The future trend for brands is definitely deeper cooperation, and pure brand promotion will decrease."

There are many buyers like WensenTebieE and Xingren on Xiaohongshu. They tend to be more specialized and individualized, no longer promoting low prices like market stall owners but sharing quality products like boutique store owners, helping consumers perceive product value.

Closing the exchange loop not only completes the process from "seeding interest to harvesting" but also facilitates the exchange and interaction of value and trust, making the business ecosystem more vibrant and creative.

We can also see that the existence of buyers essentially reconfigures the "people-product-place" paradigm in e-commerce, enabling Xiaohongshu to differentiate itself in the competitive e-commerce landscape.

Xiaohongshu's "people" are consumers who pursue quality lifestyles and the buyer community, who prefer personalized, high-quality goods and services, trusting authentic sharing and recommendations between individuals;

"Products" are carefully selected by buyers to match their respective lifestyles, many of which are "middle products" distinct from low-priced promotions and blockbusters, featuring good design, product power, and value waiting to be discovered;

"Place" is the platform where buyers showcase their lifestyles, with notes for seeding interest and live streams for both seeding interest and conversion.

This allows Xiaohongshu's business ecosystem to thrive continuously, making Xiaohongshu buyers a new profession that benefits buyers, brand merchants, and users alike.

03

Buyers Become a New Profession

Currently, more and more creators are flocking to Xiaohongshu to become buyers, aiming to capitalize on the live e-commerce boom.

Generally, there are three significant challenges for aspiring live e-commerce bloggers: difficulty in earning money, intense competition, and high barriers to entry.

However, on Xiaohongshu, as long as you can consistently provide valuable content with your professional knowledge, have a certain aesthetic sense and taste, and find a field and fan base that truly resonate with you, you can become a successful buyer and even turn it into a new profession.

Xiaohongshu's maternity and childcare buyer @FanQieGuanTouChloMato had 1 million followers on Weibo but still faced difficulties in monetization, often "working for love."

The content she shared during her pregnancy on Xiaohongshu received enthusiastic feedback from sophisticated mothers and scientific parenting groups, leading her to enter the maternity and childcare sector. When she decided to start live streaming, she had only 50,000 followers and predicted, "If sales exceed 100,000, I'll be grateful."

FanQieGuanTouChloMato shared many maternity and childcare products on the community, earning her fans' trust through long-term seeding, and her debut live stream generated over 1 million in sales. One overseas car seat brand became a bestseller, contributing 300,000 in transactions to the brand. Now, FanQieGuanTouChloMato has become a top buyer with nearly triple the number of followers.

Image source: @FanQieGuanTouChloMato's Xiaohongshu profile

She admits that when selecting products, she must have personally used and been impressed by them, not just to sell for the sake of selling; she also ensures that every product entering the live stream has a good user reputation and reviews.

As traffic on various platforms becomes increasingly saturated and acquisition costs rise, Xiaohongshu has yet to produce absolute top bloggers, and its "decentralized" traffic distribution mechanism provides more exposure opportunities for small and medium-sized bloggers.

Some small and medium-sized bloggers can accumulate highly engaged and loyal fan bases in niche categories based on their aesthetics and product selection. Even low-follower buyers can leverage live streams to drive high sales and reap the benefits.

For example, maternity and childcare buyer @SiGeWaZuHeShengHuo, two second-time mothers from Hangzhou who partner to care for their children, currently have only 69,000 followers.

They began live streaming as buyers when they had accumulated 1,000 followers, leveraging their rich professional knowledge of children's shoes, clothing, and toys accumulated through parenting to empathetically seed interest and recommend branded products in their live streams.

Image: @SiGeWaZuHeShengHuo's live stream preview video

When they had only 50,000 followers, their monthly GMV reached 5 million, ten times their monthly sales from three months earlier. Even one of the mothers' husbands quit his job to join their buyer team.

Even without joining MCN agencies or large live-streamer teams, individuals or small teams of two or three people can achieve impressive results.

Moreover, distinct from current live streams that compete on low prices, GMV, and daily broadcasts, Xiaohongshu's live streams feature a unique style where buyers narrate calmly, conveying a sense of "take your time, make a decision after careful consideration." Consumers can take their time, considering and making rational decisions.

Many Xiaohongshu buyers also believe that they haven't changed their speaking habits during live streams, remaining consistent with their usual personal styles. Being able to authentically be oneself is also an essential factor attracting many buyers to Xiaohongshu.

Numerous bloggers from other platforms are also flocking to Xiaohongshu to find a live streaming style and fan base that better suit them. Some small and medium-sized bloggers who were originally on platforms like Taobao, Weibo, Bilibili, Douyin, and Kuaishou have found success on Xiaohongshu without emphasizing low prices or increasing live stream frequency and scripts, achieving GMVs of millions or even tens of millions in a single session, even boosting many niche brands.

As Xiaohongshu's win-win-win buyer ecosystem continues to evolve, buyers within the platform are unleashing their potential and achieving career advancements, while potential buyers are continuously being discovered.

China's live e-commerce industry emerged in 2016 and has since grown into a nearly 5 trillion yuan market, becoming a red ocean with gradually slowing growth compared to earlier years.

Xiaohongshu's "buyer + e-commerce" approach provides differentiated new solutions for live e-commerce at its turning point, creating new opportunities for brands and creators.

Xiaohongshu's rise against the trend also signals that live e-commerce has entered an era centered around "people," with consumers standing at the center of the stage as protagonists. They are no longer analyzed and dissected individuals or compared by retailers using statistical data from outside the scene but vibrant participants voicing their preferences and pursuits.

Traditional live-stream e-commerce primarily revolves around static products, focusing on aspects like lower prices and higher sales, which can be meticulously analyzed and measured. However, in the post-live-stream era, which centers around "people," individuals are dynamic and ever-changing, and cannot be neatly segmented or measured by any scale. At this time, those who can better identify and meet the personalized needs of consumers through superior consumer guidance and interaction—allowing trust, value, and exchange to flow more freely—will find it easier to stand out.

From this perspective, Xiaohongshu's lifestyle e-commerce is a "latecomer that arrives first."

For those interested, you might want to keep an eye on Xiaohongshu's upcoming first-ever Live Partner Conference, which is open to creators across the internet. For some individual creators, this could be a rare new opportunity in the current landscape.