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author/liu yi

find that wig

every day, tens of thousands of people go to huang yiding’s douyin live broadcast room to look for a suitable wig.

huang yiding is from xuchang, henan province, and runs a wig brand morica. he once met a mother in the backstage of his live broadcast room. she sent him a photo of a custom wig she had made for her teenage daughter, who had lost her hair during chemotherapy. the wig was made of real hair, about 40 centimeters long, and hung down to just above the girl's shoulders.

hair is more than just a business.

zhou peiye, 26, works as a manager at xuchang meisilin wig company. he still remembers the first time he met aunt sun two years ago. at that time, he went to the hospital to visit his boss who was hospitalized, and heard that a woman in the same ward had just started chemotherapy and her hair had fallen out.

when he met aunt sun again, zhou peiye brought eight wig products from his company. it turned out that after the boss got to know aunt sun, he talked about his wig business and decided to pick a high-quality one for her. the rest were donated to the hospital.

a few days ago, aunt sun contacted zhou peiye and wanted to order another wig. after a period of chemotherapy, her hair slowly grew back. but a new problem arose: the wig was lifted up by the new hair, making it difficult to fit the scalp and not looking good when worn. she didn't want to pass these worries on to her family, so she could only spend more time and take care of the wig more carefully to make her hair smoother.

aunt sun also discussed with zhou peiye whether it was possible to sell the drugs to fellow patients she met at a price higher than the cost price but lower than the market price.

during the communication process, zhou peiye clearly felt the changes in auntie sun. after being confined to the hospital and the ward for a long time, she had a strong desire to share, but she was "cautious" in expressing herself. most of the time, zhou peiye was listening, and auntie sun carefully recounted how she got to know the boss through chatting, how she put on the wig, and the attitudes of the people around her.

zhou peiye recalled the shock he felt at the time, "they (chemotherapy patients) are not opposed to seeing people, but they are opposed to the huge changes in their appearance." in the face of a devastating disease, hair becomes the least important price to pay.

zhou peiye found that people who suffer from hair loss due to diseases have more troubles and concerns when it comes to buying wigs.

on the one hand, they are not able to purchase wigs offline for various reasons; on the other hand, they have a more urgent need for practical wigs - if the effect is not good, it will directly affect their daily life.

how can people who need wigs break through geographical, time and disease restrictions and find suitable wigs faster? the douyin live broadcast room with surging traffic has become a window.

the anchors use their hands to touch and head circumference to measure on behalf of users, and use pictures, sounds and texts to show different styles of wigs, saving people the trouble of running offline.

〓 the "wig" anchor is live streaming on douyin

zhou peiye's company also set up online one-on-one image consultants, who are live broadcast hosts and customer service staff who are familiar with wig products. all content related to helping users use wigs is delivered to the widest range through the douyin live broadcast room.

after buying a wig in the live broadcast room, users can also choose to watch online videos and receive one-on-one guidance if necessary. "users are not averse to video chatting with us. they may feel a little embarrassed. it's okay not to show their faces. they can learn how to wear and take care of it in the video."

not only does one need to learn how to take care of it, but one also needs to work hard on the selection. wigs need to be "real" and fit different aesthetic styles. in huang yiding's impression, about 70% of customers do not have clear goals and need the anchor to make recommendations based on their specific needs.

at the same time, the most important thing for wig sales is to show the wearing effect, and real-time video is more intuitive. "the anchor wears and explains on the spot in the live broadcast room, which allows customers to see the difference before and after wearing the product." huang yiding said.

live broadcast room, the new generation of wig track

"pull it straight and stand it up, then push it in and buckle it down gently. don't scratch your scalp too hard..."

in a room of about 20 square meters, at about noon, the anchor was facing the screen, holding various wigs on his head and explaining them at the same time. this is huang yiding's wig live broadcast room.

〓 the barber is taking care of the wig in the live broadcast room

huang yiding, born in the 1990s, is from xuchang and is the third-generation wig inheritor in the family.

in 1997, my grandmother’s generation first came into contact with wigs. in rural henan, most people make a living by farming. after the autumn harvest, farmers can breathe a sigh of relief. it is not realistic to find a job outside the village, so my grandmother would gather a group of uncles and aunts in the village to braid hair by hand to supplement the family income.

for a long time, almost every household in the village was engaged in the hair business, and hair was piled up in front of and behind the houses and even on the roadside. xuchang wigs were well-known, and even foreigners would come to the village to buy wigs.

wigs of all kinds have been a common sight in huang yiding's life since he was a child. after school, he would often see his grandmother and the adults in the village sitting in the room braiding hair by hand, while he would do his homework beside them. sometimes he would help with the hard work, putting a whole bunch of braided hair into the styling cabinet to set it.

the wig market gradually developed. in 2000, the family's small workshop was expanded into a 1,000-square-meter factory building, and workers were recruited, and the prototype of the factory appeared. although it was still built in the village, the factory upgraded from manual to machine equipment. later, braiding, shaping, perming, dyeing and other processes were gradually added. at that time, in addition to oem, the factory began to do foreign trade and had a stable sales channel by relying on orders from relatives in south africa. ten years later, the factory moved from the village to the industrial park.

〓 inside the factory of huang yiding company

for huang yiding's generation of wig inheritors, the internet has become a necessary channel for development. "if a company wants to form a brand effect, online promotion must be much stronger than offline promotion."

in 2023, huang yiding found that many local wig brands were flocking to online live streaming. he keenly realized that this was a development direction that would inject vitality into the company. "at that time, i saw that douyin had a lot of traffic and a lot of customer demand." so he quickly formed a live streaming team and started live streaming to sell goods.

a year earlier, zhou peiye's wig company decided to join the live streaming sales track again. he analyzed that at that time, the top wig brands basically controlled 40% of the traffic in the taobao category. in order to break through, the company must continue to try douyin live streaming.

at the 2023 zhengzhou fashion hair products exhibition, many exhibitors have already put up signs of "exclusively for douyin" and "douyin hot selling". almost at the same time, wigs were upgraded to a first-level category on douyin e-commerce and no longer belonged to the "personal care" category.

it is reported that after aliexpress, amazon and tmall, douyin e-commerce has become the e-commerce platform with the highest attention among wig merchants. many well-known wig brands in xuchang have entered this new track. for example, in 2021, rebecca, a listed company in the wig industry, set up its own team to broadcast on douyin.

zhou peiye remembers that, initially, most of the anchors in the live broadcast room were transferred from within the company. "the training method was very rough - they gave you a room, a mobile phone, turned on the air conditioner, wrote down the script, memorized it, and then spoke to the screen."

this process will last for half a month to a month, and some anchors who can't hold on will choose to change careers.

the rapid turnover of personnel continued for a while. "we have been recruiting people non-stop, and finally found that most of those who stayed had experience in real estate sales," zhou peiye said. on the one hand, the real estate industry is in a downturn, and many people are looking for better opportunities. live streaming has become a new blue ocean. on the other hand, "these people have made a lot of money" and can adapt to the fast sales pace of live streaming.

for the company, working capital is like blood vessels, which means the company's vitality. the real-time traffic brought by live e-commerce has driven capital turnover and accelerated the operation of the entire company. compared with the previous reliance on foreign trade and physical stores, the company now has an additional strong support point.

〓 at the entrance of the wig company factory

however, there is an unavoidable dilemma in the online sales of wigs - high return rate. as a product with very high requirements for the use effect, wigs are prone to poor use effects due to user needs, inconsistent head shapes, improper wearing and care methods, and thus choose to return the products.

zhou peiye thought of many ways to solve the problem, such as providing offline after-sales service for online customers.

the company sent five people to spend half a year to cooperate with local wig stores in beijing, shanghai and hangzhou, three regions with relatively concentrated customer bases. anyone who buys the company's wig products online can scan the qr code on the trademark and enter the store to enjoy relevant after-sales services.

it is not easy to provide good after-sales service. the expenses are high, and the highest monthly expenditure was 300,000 yuan. in order to recover the cost, some products are also placed in cooperative stores for sale.

the company also cooperates with offline barbershops. with the customer's location as the center, it looks for a barbershop within a five-kilometer radius to help the customer wear and care for the wig. then, through the live broadcast room, these after-sales services are spread to increase the company's competitiveness. "the benefits are minimal, but it can directly reduce the return rate."

live broadcast changes life

after starting to live stream on tiktok, the first thing that changed was my work and rest schedule.

at huang yiding's company, the live broadcast team started broadcasting at 7 a.m. and continued broadcasting until 1 a.m. the next day. four anchors took turns, and huang yiding followed the entire process. after three months of "day and night", the three live broadcast rooms survived and the data is currently stable, "millions a day when the traffic is high."

the traffic brought by the live broadcast room is getting more and more impressive. in october last year, it even experienced a round of explosive orders, and sales tripled. in the future, huang yiding also plans to differentiate the products and replicate new live broadcast rooms, "just like opening a branch store, to expand the volume."

in order to keep pace with the live broadcast, zhou peiye invested more time and energy. after going to work at 8:30 in the morning, he called on his colleagues in the department to take ten minutes to think about their daily work. he also regularly organizes employee training, "only by enriching everyone's e-commerce thinking can the company go further on the road of live broadcast."

〓 zhou peiye's team reviewed the live broadcast

at present, in zhou peiye’s company, douyin live broadcast room accounts for 80% of the traffic compared with other platforms.

he thinks this path has a future. in the live broadcast room, "i will no longer over-promote some basic things, such as wigs can cover gray hair. i can directly tell users how to create a good look and let everyone focus on aesthetics."

for 38-year-old wei yilin, the revenue from douyin live streaming directly revitalized his factory.

wei yilin's wig business originated in 2004. his father's generation slowly built up a small workshop into a factory that accepts foreign trade orders and sells wigs on its own. in the years when traditional e-commerce platforms such as taobao were on the rise, because "my family members were all from rural areas and didn't know much about modern e-commerce", the family business failed to catch up with the express train, but it was stable.

no one expected that the epidemic would hang over the market like a dark cloud in early 2020, and the factory did not receive any orders for more than half a year.

what should he do next? his friends encouraged him to choose live streaming, saying, "others can do it, so let's give it a try." for a week in a row, he clicked into other people's live streaming rooms on time to observe the sales figures and saw with his own eyes that the other party sold tens of thousands of orders.

at that time, the factory was on the verge of bankruptcy and had laid off most of the workers. "it had no other choice," so he decided to bet on live streaming to sell goods.

this time he made the right choice. after a three-month plateau period, the live broadcast room can sell an average of tens of thousands of orders per month, which is several times more than before. the workers who were laid off before were also recalled one after another. now, the company has two anchors, four professional hairstylists, six general workers who do packaging, and 30 to 40 workers in the factory. most of the workers were recruited from nearby villages. wei yilin sighed that live broadcasting has also solved the jobs of many people.

the wig live broadcast room has also updated users' cognition. more and more young people are choosing wigs.

〓 huang yiding company product display area

chun xia, a 23-year-old girl, is tall and pretty, but she had her first anxiety about her appearance when she was doing an internship after graduation last year. at that time, she went to work at an mcn agency in hangzhou, and her colleagues were almost all young and beautiful girls, "especially delicate, and going to work every day was like walking on a catwalk." chun xia suddenly became unconfident, "like a rustic little girl who accidentally entered the fashion stage."

she thought that if she could make some changes, she would have more confidence. she first decided to change her hair. she felt that her head was not high enough and her face looked big in photos. she searched for reviews online and returned all four or five wigs she bought. "wigs are different from cosmetics. you need to try them on to know if they are suitable for you."

later, she came across a douyin live broadcast room and found that a host had a very good effect wearing it, so she decided to buy it again and try it. this time, she finally realized her imagination of a high forehead.

this wig has accompanied her through some important occasions in her life, such as attending academic conferences, friends’ birthday parties, and taking graduation photos. “when there is a need to be on camera or to make myself look more generous, i will choose to wear it, which will give me some confidence.”

the "secret" of wearing a wig was not noticed by her friends. until one christmas trip, she and her friend took photos and were sitting in the car retouching them. the friend told her that she was actually wearing a wig and asked her if she could tell. chunxia was a little surprised. for the first time, she and her friend talked happily about the topic of wigs.

rather than saying that the existence of wigs is to "cover up ugliness", it is better to say that they are the pursuit of beauty by more and more people.

〓 wig product effect picture

dong yueru, 43, has been using wigs for almost two years and wears them almost every time she goes out. after turning 40, hair loss becomes a problem every time the season changes. "i can't help it." hair is getting more and more fragile, and any external force can cause hair loss: washing, combing, or even just tidying up your hair can cause a few strands to fall out. with less hair, the top of your head tends to collapse, making you look listless.

it wasn't until dong yueru was "planted with grass" by a friend that she was interested in wigs. she followed her friend's advice, went to the douyin live broadcast room to buy them, and bought a wig that suited her.

wearing wigs every day, she became more and more skilled, and she could finish wearing wigs and combing hair in just a few minutes. she chose wigs made of real hair. in order to maintain the hair quality, she strictly followed the customer service's advice and chose to dry them naturally. for this reason, she bought two wigs and used them in rotation. friends think she is more beautiful, but they can't tell where the changes are specifically. over time, the wigs seem to be integrated with the original hair, and dong yueru often forgets their existence.

〓 dong yueru hangs her wig at home

the "wig capital" enters the live broadcast room

according to huang yiding's observation, there are currently at least thousands of wig live broadcast rooms on the platform, of which about 60% of the brands are from xuchang.

xuchang, located in the central part of henan province, was called xuzhou in ancient times and lotus city in other words. today, it is also known as the "capital of wigs". "collect hair, collect long hair", this cry has accompanied a generation of people growing up, and a considerable part of the collected hair was sent to xuchang.

the wig business in xuchang began hundreds of years ago. according to the "xuchang county chronicles", as early as the jiajing period of the ming dynasty, people in xuchang tried to make some wig props for use in theatrical performances.

in the early 20th century, bai xihe from quandian village in xuchang city met a german businessman and worked together to process the hair they bought from the streets and sold it to europe. in the following years, villagers from quandian village, xiaogong village and other places gradually entered the hair products industry.

next to the xuchang high-speed railway station, the signboard of "wig street" is prominent. walking into the underground passage, you can see wig shops spread out for about 100 meters, and the models in front of the shops have different hairstyles. many out-of-town customers come here because of its reputation. during holidays, a boss described the busyness, "the takeaway ordered at noon is not eaten until the afternoon."

〓 at the entrance of "wig street" in xuchang city

at present, xuchang has more than 4,000 hair products-related enterprises, and more than 3,000 products are sold to more than 120 countries and regions, accounting for more than 60% of the global market share. "at the peak, there were more than 20,000 hair purchasers in xuchang. they were like porters, gathering hair from all over the world to different villages in xuchang, and then processing it into wigs and selling them all over the world," said wang xixiang, secretary general of the xuchang hair products association.

like huang yiding, there are many people in xuchang who have been rooted in the wig industry for generations. from oem to foreign trade, from traditional e-commerce to live streaming, xuchang's wig business is constantly changing.

according to the data, as of 2023, the permanent population of xuchang city is about 4.38 million, and the number of people directly employed in the hair products industry exceeds 300,000, with an average of one in every 15 people engaged in the hair products industry.

in the new round of development trend, more and more wig companies in xuchang choose live streaming to sell goods.

in 2020, xuchang city launched a three-year action plan for the development of live e-commerce, and took measures such as building bases, establishing platforms, attracting projects, cultivating internet celebrities, launching live broadcasts, promoting integration, and expanding channels to build a new live e-commerce development system of "characteristic bases + internet celebrity-led + policy guidance", forming a live e-commerce development model with xuchang characteristics.

〓 xuchang development expo city, creating "industrial belt + market + e-commerce + cultural tourism"

according to the data report "2023 douyin e-commerce industrial belt development in one year", by the end of 2023, douyin e-commerce has covered 684 characteristic industrial belts across the country, of which zhejiang has the largest number of industrial belt cities, and henan ranks sixth. in terms of the growth rate of platform merchants, three industrial belt cities in henan, including xuchang, shangqiu, and luoyang, ranked in the top ten, with xuchang ranking first.

cross-border live streaming also helps xuchang wigs reach the international market. data shows that on the aliexpress live streaming platform, one out of every 10 live streaming is a wig live streaming.

at present, xuchang has established the world's first cross-border live broadcast base, and more than 90% of hair product companies have used cross-border e-commerce to explore the international market. it is reported that 6 out of every 10 wigs in the world come from here, and a xuchang hair product is traded every 2 seconds on the cross-border e-commerce platform.

however, it is not as easy as imagined to digest online traffic. zhou peiye and the company have to take some detours.

when we first started live streaming in 2020, we "met the wrong person". the company found a person who claimed to be an operation expert. he used the emotional live streaming method in the past to attract fans, but the conversion rate of goods was very low. after supporting for more than half a year, we had to disband the team.

it was not until zhou peiye’s company set up its own account and started live streaming to sell goods on douyin that it found its development direction.

now, the company has three live broadcast rooms in china. when the performance is good, the sales of one live broadcast room can reach 3 million. "compared with the traditional e-commerce period, the sales performance has increased by about 500%."

zhou peiye has an idea for making wigs over the years - to use douyin live broadcast, a "larger exposure channel", to increase the awareness of wigs among more people and break the stereotype of wigs. "it's not only sick people who use wigs." he explained that in europe and the united states, wigs may be sold at a small roadside stall.

wig merchants in xuchang have similar visions for the future of wigs. huang yiding hopes that one day, "buying a wig will be as easy as buying clothes, just like in other countries." everyone can change their hairstyle as they like, and by then, wearing a wig will become a lifestyle.

(at the request of the interviewees, zhou peiye, wei yilin, chun xia, and dong yueru are pseudonyms)