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On Xiaohongshu, managers take the C position, accumulating trust with sincerity and driving growth with trust.

Written by Wan Tiannan of Financial Story Club Edited by Chen Jiying

The platform invited him three times in a row, but ENO, the manager of the cultural and jewelry brand Yinobennuo, ignored them all. After much consideration, he decided, "I still feel that live streaming has no chance."

The unit price of ENO's products is often over ten thousand yuan, but looking at the entire live broadcast industry, competing on low prices is the mainstream. ENO is worried that live broadcasts will not sell well.

Moreover, ENO, who dresses casually and neutrally, thinks that he "has nothing to do with beauties" and cannot follow the path of a good-looking anchor.

What's more, ENO is used to speaking her mind and doesn't like to perform to establish her persona, so she is naturally not good at live-streaming sales that follow a scripted routine.

It was not until the beginning of last year, when the Xiaohongshu operator came to invite ENO for the fourth time in the cold wind, that ENO, unable to save face, decided to do a trial broadcast to get the job done.

The first live broadcast was somewhat perfunctory, with no live broadcast room and a 85-yuan desk lamp used for lighting. The picture quality was so poor that it was "unbearable to watch", but it still sold 170,000. A month later, the GMV of the live broadcast soared to 1.08 million.

Looking at the still "unattractive" self in the mirror and reading the "more touching than love letters" from users, ENO was touched. "Xiaohongshu users not only see the bright spots of the product, but are also willing to tolerate me with my edges and shortcomings."

Compared with Yinobenno, the furniture brand OKENSHO's start on Xiaohongshu was even more "humble".

As a new brand built from 0 to 1, OKENSHO brand manager Lance once made a wish with his partners, "As long as we can sell one sofa every day, we can break even." As a result, just five months after the store opened, the daily sales of OKENSHO sofas reached 165.

When this achievement was achieved, the number of fans of the OKENSHO brand was only about 20,000 to 30,000, and the number of fans of its founder Lance was only over 200.

Fashion designer Zhou Qi had a very ordinary hand when she started her business. She was in Zhengzhou, Henan, where there were neither abundant professional e-commerce talents nor the advantages of a fashion industry belt. However, since she founded her personal brand in May last year, her monthly GMV has exceeded 10 million in less than a year.

These young entrepreneurs who do not follow the trend, do not compete inward, do not use routines, and do not only pursue low prices, all have one common identity - the brand manager of Xiaohongshu.

The concept of a designer originated in Europe and the United States. It was originally a relatively niche concept, referring specifically to the founders of trendy clothing, rap and hip-hop labels. However, the designers who flock to Xiaohongshu cover all categories, from clothing to shoes and hats, from collectibles to furniture.

In the current situation of collective involution in the e-commerce industry, can the seemingly niche track of the business owner become a big outlet? Why do business owners flock to Xiaohongshu to start a business? They don’t have routines, but they have methods. Can their growth path be replicated and promoted?

Without shouting or tricks, it can still achieve monthly sales of 10 million yuan a year

What is the difference between a designer brand and an ordinary brand? The biggest difference may be the "human touch". The designer fully integrates his personal style, aesthetics and tonality into the brand and products.

Zhou Qi is a typical case. She is not a dark horse that suddenly emerged.

Before that, she worked as a fashion editor, fashion show director, and also worked as a fashion blogger driven by interest. She gave at least 3 to 5 and up to 50 matching schemes for the same piece of clothing. Her Xiaohongshu account became a show for her to show her dressing formula.

By May last year, Zhou Qi had gathered thousands of "Internet girlfriends" and had the confidence to open a store.

When she first opened the store, Zhou Qi was a little confused. She had no idea what category to focus on.

At this time, the "Internet girlfriend" gave the answer, "Brother Qi, your pants are really friendly to pear-shaped figures, and they make you look one size thinner!"

After hearing the feedback, Zhou Qi upgraded pants to the core category of his live broadcast room. In this way, half a year after the launch of the live broadcast, the GMV of a single broadcast in Zhou Qi's live broadcast room has exceeded one million yuan.

Just like Zhou Qi, the starting point of the brand management on Xiaohongshu is people - the managers build their ideal lifestyle and display it in notes and live broadcast rooms. The end point of the service is also people - relying on content to attract users who resonate with the same frequency, extract their needs and meet them accurately.

Unlike many live broadcast rooms that create personalities, compete in acting skills, manipulate people's hearts, and use hunger marketing, the managers of Xiaohongshu focus on "authenticity", accumulate trust with sincerity, and drive growth with trust.

Zhou Qi had "learned from others" in other live broadcast rooms, "Link on 321!" "Babies!" "Last 500 pieces! Go get them!"

But Zhou Qi, who is a quiet person, has a flat voice and can't shout. "It made me feel that I had no chance of doing live broadcasting and that I was not born to do this job."

It was not until the launch of the show on Xiaohongshu that Zhou Qi discovered that authenticity and sincerity could impress users. "I share it with everyone because I think it is comfortable to wear and easy to match. If you need it, you should choose it, instead of forcing people to buy it because it is so good and you will never find it again."

The utmost sincerity and truthfulness, to some extent, realizes "treating others as you would like to be treated, and achieving unity between oneself and others."

This is also because the core of the brand of the manager is "people" rather than "goods". Therefore, when the managers of Xiaohongshu sell goods through live broadcasts, they will not blindly pursue performance and compete on low prices, resulting in homogeneity and low quality.

Instead, we put people first and return to the origin of user needs in every link to gain insight, match, optimize and satisfy them. In fact, as long as we hit the user, even high-end quality products can become popular.

The experience of OKENSHO brand manager Lance is very convincing. Before coming to Xiaohongshu, Lance's team worked as a live broadcast agent on other platforms. At that time, continuously lowering the lowest price was the team's main weapon to attract users and increase GMV.

This went on for a while, and Lance felt that he had lost his original intention. He said self-deprecatingly, "The cheapest furniture must be made of raw materials, so why don't we just sell wood directly?"

After coming to Xiaohongshu to establish its own brand, the OKENSHO team no longer competes on "price" but on "people".

When developing the first new sofa, the OKENSHO team started from people's basic needs - taking "comfort" as the first indicator.

After the new sofa was launched, the OKENSHO team did not "hard-praise the product" or promote low prices as they did in the past to encourage users to place blind orders.

Instead, they laid it all out and faced the doubts head-on. Although every broadcast was like going to a grave, and the pressure was huge, they never shied away from the shortcomings of the product. The product was launched for a year, and it had been iterated twelve or thirteen times based on user feedback. Although the price of more than 7,000 yuan was mid-to-high-end, it became a well-deserved star product because it perfectly met the needs of users, and more than 10,000 people had purchased it.

"We need to keep interacting with users and satisfy their real life experiences, instead of just sitting there waiting for orders and quotes," this is the truth Lance came to after more than a year of entrepreneurship on Xiaohongshu.

Why has Xiaohongshu become a wilderness where managers gather together?

On other e-commerce platforms, brands managed by managers are mostly in the marginal substitute zone, but on Xiaohongshu, the managers are in the C position - this is the result of a two-way effort.

This is due to the platform positioning of Xiaohongshu.

Not long ago, Xiaohongshu COO Conan clarified Xiaohongshu's unique positioning as a "lifestyle e-commerce" in a conversation with economist Xue Zhaofeng - what users buy on Xiaohongshu is not only good products, but also a desirable life.

In the view of Gintoki, head of e-commerce operations at Xiaohongshu, the people behind the scenes are very important in running a lifestyle e-commerce business. The store run by the manager sells a lifestyle.

This is also due to Xiaohongshu’s supply and demand structure and distribution mechanism.

As Gintoki said, Xiaohongshu e-commerce is not a "highway" that is short-sighted and transaction-oriented, nor is it an inward-looking pyramid with resources highly concentrated at the top, but a wilderness with infinite possibilities and many long-tail opportunities.

This long-tail opportunity can be seen from users' search behavior.

Data shows that in June this year, long-tail search terms that express users' personalized and specific needs accounted for more than 60% of all search terms on Xiaohongshu.

The brand that is in close contact with users can meet their demands for personalization, circleization, diversification and long-tail.

"Today, everyone's life is really different. It has become segmented and personalized. So what we need to do is to help users find life scenarios or products that match their personalized needs and meet long-tail needs," Conan concluded.

In addition, unlike other highly inward-looking e-commerce platforms, Xiaohongshu is currently still in a period of rapid development.

From last year to today, the number of merchants with monthly sales exceeding 5 million on Xiaohongshu has increased by 3.5 times year-on-year. In the past year, the number of purchasing users on Xiaohongshu has increased by 4.3 times year-on-year, and the number of live broadcast users has increased by 6.3 times.

Whether it is a new manager or a brand with some experience, they can find new opportunities and increase growth from 0 to 1.

Yinuo Bennuo is a typical example. In the past, 80% of users in the cultural relics industry were male, but Yinuo Bennuo's Xiaohongshu users are 78% female, and "cultural relics girls" have become a hot word, with more than 2.2 billion views.

What makes Xiaohongshu even more friendly to new entrepreneurs is that the threshold for starting a business is low, the investment is low, and the risk is low.

On Xiaohongshu, merchants with monthly sales of 5 million or 10 million do not need to rely on expensive advanced live streaming equipment. Many leading merchants can broadcast directly at home using their mobile phones.

At the same time, on Xiaohongshu, since the managers and users can interact face-to-face with high density and efficiency, they can hear user feedback in a timely manner in each link of new product launch, make real-time adjustments, and even co-create with users to reduce the risk of inventory backlogs. "Users' wonderful ideas and our bold designs can collide with each other."

This high level of participation and voice also maximizes the emotional value and emotional connection of users. In order to communicate closely with users, OKENSHO maintains a high frequency of six broadcasts a week.

The manager model that has grown on the Xiaohongshu platform is healthier and more benign, based on high interactivity, high trust, high repurchase rate, and low return rate.

Since the beginning of this year, due to various extreme internal conflicts, the relationship between supply and demand on e-commerce platforms has been distorted, and even entered into a zero-sum game. Many leading live broadcast rooms have a high return rate, resulting in a surge in GMV, but meager profits or even losses.

The manager is in charge of the entire chain of R&D, product development, account operation, live streaming and other links, and the manager and the brand are highly integrated. Therefore, the manager must be careful about his reputation and be more attentive in quality control and service, thereby improving the user experience, increasing the average order value and repurchase frequency, while reducing returns, achieving a win-win situation for both parties.

In the past year, the number of users purchasing through Xiaohongshu live broadcasts has increased 6.3 times, the average order value per live broadcast customer has remained stable at more than 400 yuan, and the return rate of live broadcasts has also remained at a healthy level.

Play the card of the manager well: there are methods, no routines

In online jokes, the manager is teased as "more Western than the boss, more friendly than the CEO, more relaxed than the person in charge, and more romantic than the general manager."

Joking aside, to be a good manager, although there are no routines, there are methods.

For users, trust is an important driving force for the brand manager to close deals. Xiaohongshu users generally come with needs and questions, and want to find content answers and solutions here, so they are very patient and rarely make orders impulsively or blindly.

Data shows that in 75% of the live broadcast rooms on Xiaohongshu, orders have to wait for 5 minutes. For some items with high average order value, the viewing time for the live broadcast will be even longer.

Once a trusting relationship is established, the average order value, stickiness, and repeat purchases are all very impressive. From a case study, fans account for nearly 70% of transactions in Zhou Qi's live broadcast room; from a broader market perspective, in the past year, the number of repeat purchase orders from Xiaohongshu in the same store has increased by 4.4 times year-on-year.

Therefore, instead of rushing to make deals for quick success, it is better to build a foundation of trust based on long-termism.

The common path is to build a trusting home ground through live broadcasting. Yinuo Bennuo has benefited greatly from this. It has been operating Xiaohongshu for four years and has accumulated more than 100,000 fans, of which 80,000 were attracted after it launched live broadcasting in the past year.

During the live broadcast, ENO will explain the product in all dimensions, from raw materials, to design concepts, to wearing scenarios, suitable groups of people, and popular trends. Compared with "whether it can be sold or not", what she cares more about is "whether I have explained this thing clearly."

Users are very receptive to such unreserved and professional live broadcast explanations, and Yinuo Bennuo has achieved a repurchase rate of up to 70%.

However, most brands cannot provide 24-hour live broadcasts. Therefore, during the live broadcast window period, they can enrich brand content through integrated broadcasting and strengthen the trust relationship with users.

Zhou Qi made good use of this point, making notes and live broadcasts work together. In notes, Zhou Qi continued to share his dressing experience. The account content was full and three-dimensional, and he also maintained high-frequency interaction with users. "When users saw notes that they were interested in, they would take the initiative to make an appointment for live broadcasts."

Right now, Xiaohongshu is upgrading its related live broadcast products to shorten the link from notes and searches to live broadcast transactions, making the conversion smoother and more seamless.

After establishing the initial connection, the manager can also use group chats to accumulate traffic, strengthen trust, expand private domains, and extend users' LTV (life time value), thereby improving the sustainability and certainty of the business.

Leon, head of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce products, defined group chat as "a user operation field and a transaction conversion field."

Last year, the orders contributed by Xiaohongshu group users accounted for as much as 19%. Taking the Yujian brand as an example, the average stay time of users who entered the group chat was 47 minutes, and the UV (unique visitor) value of users who placed orders in the group chat was higher, 14 times the average of the entire store.

In the group chat, not only can the managers interact with fans, but fans can also achieve efficient and high-quality communication and sharing.

Zhou Qi has a deep feeling that "In a group chat, 10 users' sincere feedback on a product may be more effective than 10,000 words I say in the live broadcast room."

Xiaohongshu has also recognized the value of group chats and is establishing more touchpoints and improving operations and conversion tools: through live broadcast previews, new product releases, etc., it can convey the latest information in a timely manner and stimulate user participation; provide marketing tools such as limited coupons and limited-time sales to improve conversion efficiency.

In order to help more managers grow, Xiaohongshu E-commerce has launched the "Treasure Manager Plan" for managers at different stages of development, providing hundreds of billions of traffic for full-cycle and full-coverage support.

Xiaohongshu’s three major merchant platforms - Qianfan (a one-stop e-commerce business platform), Dandelion (a blogger cooperation platform that integrates planting and harvesting), and Chengfeng (an integrated e-commerce marketing platform) are also being comprehensively upgraded, covering basic operations (live streaming tool upgrades, business diagnosis traction, benchmark case guidance), buyer cooperation, marketing investment, etc.

For example, many managers are new to the entrepreneurial track and need to do every step themselves, which makes it difficult to achieve perfection. To this end, the Chengfeng platform will provide a wealth of automated delivery products and tools, including smart creativity before delivery, smart hosting during delivery, and smart diagnostic suggestions after delivery, making delivery worry-free and secure.

After a year of unbridled growth in the wilderness of Xiaohongshu, ENO, Lance, and Zhou Qi are now familiar with the route and are becoming more and more confident.

Zhou Qi's anxiety and immaturity from a year ago have all been swept away. "What's great about being the manager of Xiaohongshu is that you don't need to worry too much about the environment, your own conditions and the resources you have. You just have to work hard and leave the rest to Xiaohongshu."