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"The first person to bring goods on Taobao" Zhang Dayi closed the online store for ten years, where does the celebrity e-commerce go?

Original production of Shell Finance

Reporter Cheng Zijiao

Edited by Yue Caizhou

Intern Peng Zitong

"The first person to bring goods on Taobao" Zhang Dayi closed the online store for ten years, where does the celebrity e-commerce go?

Zhang Dayi, who used to be the "first person to bring goods on Taobao", is now facing the closure of the store.

On September 19, Zhang Dayi disclosed on his personal Weibo that he would close the Taobao store "My Joyful Wardrobe", which had been open for 10 years, but would continue to make clothing, and then the new products would be transferred to the Taobao "Black Label Store" with higher prices and quality.

Zhang Dayi posted an article talking about his interest in starting a business, experiencing listing, exhaustion, and thinking about the industry. For example, "the development of e-commerce brings opportunities and challenges, and celebrity e-commerce is suitable for small and beautiful", she also talked about the stage of "can't turn and dare not transfer the platform", and also revealed the particularity of the clothing category.

The Beijing News Shell Finance reporter observed that as of press time on September 20, "My Happy Wardrobe" still had 12.39 million fans.

Looking back on Zhang Dayi's career, she was the head merchant of Taobao women's clothing, and her success not only brought greater commercial benefits to herself, but also injected impetus into Ruhan Holdings, the former "first share of Internet celebrities". However, with the continuous change of the market and the intensification of competition, Ruhan Holdings has gradually lost its former glory. Two years before the Nasdaq rang the bell, it was delisted as a result of a 7% decline in market capitalization.

Missed the outlet of live broadcast e-commerce, and the high return rate and pressure rate have made it more and more difficult to do women's clothing business. Traditional influencer e-commerce mainly relies on the effect of influencers and the ability to bring goods, but with the changes in the market and the intensification of competition, this model is obviously difficult to cope with complex market competition.

01

"Revenue does not represent profit" influencer e-commerce is facing the problem of transformation

The Beijing News shell financial reporter observed that at present, Zhang Dayi's Taobao store "My Joyful Wardrobe" has 12.39 million fans, hardware crowns, monthly sales of more than 90,000 items, and more than 70,000 praises in half a year, ranking "Top 2 (second) in the list of Korean casual women's clothing stores".

"The first person to bring goods on Taobao" Zhang Dayi closed the online store for ten years, where does the celebrity e-commerce go?

The homepage of Zhang Dayi's Taobao store "My Joyful Wardrobe".

September 24 will be the last time the store will be renewed. The customer service revealed that Zhang Dayi's team will continue to operate the black label store "The Vever" in the future, and the category is still women's clothing, but the price is higher.

Zhang Dayi posted that she has experienced a stage where she can't and dare not transfer the platform, and she believes that the meager gross profit margin of the clothing category cannot support various operating costs, and if the platform is transferred, it may lead to losses and the return rate is higher than Taobao.

A number of women's clothing merchants also told the Beijing News shell financial reporter that the return rate of women's clothing and the problem of pressing goods is the consensus of the industry, and the return rate can once reach 60% to 80% or even higher, "The return rate of women's clothing has increased year by year in recent years, and it may have been 20% a few years ago, and now it has become about 70%," said a Guangdong clothing wholesale boss.

Zhang Dayi also said that the core value of celebrity e-commerce is small and beautiful, flat management, celebrities can really do front-line work to truly achieve healthy profits and complete the needs of fans at the same time, and once the company becomes bigger, the invisible cost will be higher and higher, income does not represent profits, "unless celebrities do everything on the front line as in the 14 years (2014), otherwise celebrity e-commerce will go downhill more and more."

02

The delisting of Ruhan Holdings has become an important turning point, and 4G popularization and live streaming have divided traffic

In 2011, Feng Min and Chen Sijia, CEO of Ruhan Holdings, founded the Taobao women's clothing brand "Libelin", and Zhang Dayi, the "Ruili girl" at that time, became its brand model.

In 2014, Ruhan Holdings successfully incubated the first generation of Internet celebrity Zhang Dayi, and created a "phenomenal" store on Taobao at that time - My Joyful Wardrobe. 2014 is also widely regarded as the "first year of the Internet celebrity economy", and Zhang Dayi has also become a representative of this new economic force.

In 2015, "Double 11", Wuhuanxi's wardrobe became the only C store (personal store) to enter the women's clothing ranking on the whole platform; In 2016, "Double 11", Wuhuanxi's wardrobe became the first women's clothing store on Taobao with sales exceeding 100 million; In 2016, Zhang Dayi opened a makeup store on Taobao, and on the first day of opening, he set a sales record of selling 20,000 lipsticks in 2 hours; At the Taobao Live Festival in 2016, Zhang Dayi drove a turnover of 20 million yuan in two hours.

The phenomenal Internet celebrity economy has also received an olive branch thrown by capital. In 2019, Ruhan Holdings was listed on the United States NASDAQ, and Zhang Dayi also became the first Chinese Internet celebrity to ring the bell on the NASDAQ.

After Ruhan Holdings was listed on the NASDAQ on April 3, 2019, it was broken at the opening. The market was not satisfied with the performance of Ruhan Holdings, mainly due to its unsatisfactory financial performance before listing and its failure to demonstrate sustained profitability.

Ruhan Holdings has received investment from Alibaba and has a certain reputation in the market, but these factors have not reversed the depressed stock price.

After the listing, the financial status of Ruhan Holdings has been in the spotlight. Ruhan Holdings suffered significant losses in both 2020 and 2021. In 2020, Ruhan Holdings' revenue fell sharply, mainly due to its over-reliance on top influencers and its poor response to market changes. In 2021, Ruhan Holdings' operating conditions deteriorated further, eventually leading to its delisting.

The delisting of Ruhan Holdings is undoubtedly an important turning point in the field of celebrity e-commerce. The company, once listed on the NASDAQ in the United States, was once regarded as a representative and model of the red economy. However, with the passage of time, Ruhan Holdings gradually exposed problems such as a single model and insufficient profitability. At the same time, the rise of emerging e-commerce platforms and live-streaming models has also had a huge impact on traditional celebrity e-commerce.

On June 20, 2016, Zhang Dayi opened the first Taobao live broadcast, with 421,000 viewers, and in the absence of promotional discounts, the new transaction volume of the store was about 20 million, and the customer unit price was nearly 400 yuan, refreshing the sales record of Taobao live broadcast.

However, the follow-up misjudgment of the form of bringing goods made Zhang Dayi miss the outlet of live broadcast e-commerce, and in the rivers and lakes of bringing goods, anchors such as Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya were quickly praised by capital to the front of the stage and became the new top stream. With the popularization of 4G, the live broadcast dividend broke out, and Zhang Dayi's traffic, which was popular in the graphic era, was quickly divided.

In this context, Zhang Dayi's choice to close the above-mentioned phenomenal Taobao store is undoubtedly a difficult decision. This also reflects the survival dilemma and development bottlenecks faced by the celebrity e-commerce industry.

On the one hand, with the diversification and personalization of consumer needs, it is difficult to meet market demand by relying solely on the Internet celebrity effect and the ability to bring goods; On the other hand, emerging e-commerce platforms and live-streaming models are reshaping the industry landscape, and traditional celebrity e-commerce companies need to find new breakthroughs and growth points.

According to iResearch's research report, the commercial realization of the celebrity economy mainly comes from the C (consumer) end and the B (merchant) side, and the C end is mainly based on e-commerce realization, live broadcast realization, content payment, and derivatives sales. The B-side is financial support from advertisers and media platforms. According to the main ways of monetization of Chinese influencers from 2018 to 2019, the proportion of monetization in the form of advertising and marketing in 2019 reached 98.9%, an increase of 12.3% over 2018, and the proportion of e-commerce monetization was as high as 96.6%. Other methods such as IP licensing, offline commercial performances (business cooperation), etc., all increased in 2019. With the gradual maturity of advertising and e-commerce monetization models and the gradual exploration of other monetization models, the commercial monetization of the influencer economy will be more diversified in the future.

The research report also said that with the continuous prosperity of the cultural and entertainment industry, the business model of the celebrity economy around various media such as celebrities, objects, and virtual images is developing more and more rapidly. The core data of business monetization is traffic and sales. In the mature business environment of the celebrity economy in the future, ensuring the authenticity of data will promote the development of all players in the industrial chain in the right direction.

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