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although us one entered the market later, which is equivalent to catching up with the last cross-border train of leading e-commerce companies, it is still far from falling behind. after all, other players have only begun to gradually expand overseas markets in the past two years, and their current market shares are not yet significant.

original@new entropy author丨xiaoyi editor丨fern shadow

recently, li jiaqi has been a little busy. after live broadcasting, he did not forget to go on hunan tv's variety show to overcome obstacles. after finally surviving until wu gong was eliminated, he turned around and embarked on a journey to the sea again.

the cause of the incident is that the official website of mei one, li jiaqi's company, has recently added a number of international development-related recruitment positions, including content operation, live broadcast control, product operation, tiktok account operation, etc. among them, the live broadcast central control position is also specifically marked to be able to speak indonesian and be able to accept the frequency of 1 to 2 overseas business trips within 3 months. this can not help but remind people that one is planning overseas business, and the first stop may be southeast asia. market.

in fact, at a time when the growth rate of the domestic live broadcast e-commerce industry is slowing down and the market is approaching saturation, it is nothing new for leading anchors to bet on overseas markets. as early as 2021, i made a friend and set up an overseas company in indonesia; in may last year, simba's xinxuan group launched an international overseas plan, and chose to land in thailand as the first stop; as for crazy little yang, he also tried the overseas business last year, and in january this year, we teamed up with local experts in singapore to launch the first live broadcast of goods on tiktok.

from this point of view, li jiaqi’s company, mei one, has been a little slow in its overseas deployment.

although compared with the domestic market, the overseas live streaming market is indeed still a blue ocean. however, in the past, friends and businessmen rushed to go overseas. later, they faced challenges such as cultural differences, legal compliance, and competition from local companies. it is possible for us one to carve out a world overseas. how big is sex?

li jiaqi, a beautiful one cannot be achieved alone

going overseas at this time is an accident to the outside world, but it may be a long-awaited necessity for one.

the intersection between beauty one and li jiaqi began in 2016. it was a typical drama between bole and qianli circus. li jiaqi, who was still an amateur at the time, was signed by beauty one and was highly praised by all in resources. li jiaqi lived up to expectations step by step. ascend to the throne of "lipstick brother".

backed by li jiaqi's cash cow, mei one has become a leading company in the industry. according to the annual sales data of live broadcast agencies published by a third-party data platform, one topped the list with a gmv (gross merchandise transaction) of over 65 billion yuan in 2022, which accounted for nearly 10% of the overall gmv of taobao live that year. among them, li jiaqi indispensable, the first-day live broadcast of double eleven alone contributed 21.5 billion yuan in sales.

to this day, li jiaqi is still the most indispensable soul figure of mei one. the company's core business almost revolves around li jiaqi, whether it is li jiaqi's live broadcast room, small classroom, or li jiaqi's pet dog ip "nawa family".

this strategy of “focusing on one person” allowed beauty one to take off quickly in the past, but it has also restricted the development of beauty one today, especially after the li jiaqi eyebrow pencil incident that occurred in september last year.

at that time, during a live broadcast, li jiaqi angrily criticized netizens who questioned whether the products he was selling were too expensive, asking netizens to "find their own reasons." as soon as these remarks came out, they aroused public outrage, and li jiaqi's reputation quickly collapsed. the most intuitive reflection is the sharp drop in sales. on the first day of double eleven in 2023, the sales of li jiaqi's live broadcast room dropped to 9.5 billion yuan, down nearly half from last year.

now, one year has passed since this incident, but its negative impact on li jiaqi and mei one is far from subsided. according to qingyan intelligence data, the gmv of li jiaqi’s beauty live broadcast on the first day of this year’s 618 pre-sale was approximately 2.7 billion yuan, down 46% from the same period last year. when li jiaqi appeared in a variety show recently, she was boycotted by many netizens, saying, "i don't work hard enough, can i watch the show?"

generally speaking, after the top anchors become famous, most of them will choose to slowly fade out of the live broadcast room, transition to working behind the scenes, and develop more diversified businesses. it is indeed rare to be like li jiaqi who has been struggling in the front line of the live broadcast room. after all, no matter how good the individual is, it cannot always support the company's revenue. after all, internet celebrities have a life cycle, and if a company wants to develop in a healthy way, it must put its eggs in multiple baskets, but mei one does not have one, so it is easily affected by the instability of personal ip. impact on the company's viability.

in addition to changes in personal reputation, the iteration of the external environment and new businesses that have never shown improvement are also important reasons for driving mei one to move overseas.

on the one hand, in recent years, the beauty and live-streaming e-commerce industries that beauty one focuses on have both faced bottlenecks. from january to july this year, the total retail sales of cosmetics in my country only increased slightly by 0.3% year-on-year. in addition, according to iimedia research, the growth rate of china’s live streaming e-commerce market has continued to decline in recent years, from 600% in 2018 to only 15% expected in 2024.

on the other hand, in the past few years, one has also been working hard to "de-li jiaqi", such as selecting new anchors for variety shows, vigorously supporting wangwang, qingzi and other anchors to "move to the top", and launching "all girls" and "all girls clothes" "cube" two new live broadcast rooms, and also deployed its own brand this year, the results are difficult to match li jiaqi's. even the second most popular us one wangwang, weibo and xiaohongshu fans are only one-tenth of li jiaqi's fans. about one.

internet industry analyst zhang shule pointed out that mei one's future development path is estimated to be threefold: first, to build its own brand and control pricing power; second, to attract customers with professional knowledge rather than low prices; third, to expand overseas markets to increase sales.

"but the difficulty is that mcn organizations are often start-up teams with low modern enterprise management standards. they are often prone to overturning in the difficult project of controlling the industrial chain. in addition, judging from the current domestic live broadcast delivery environment, those with professional knowledge the training cycle of anchors is long, and the chance of success is small. the last one is more feasible, after all, the success rate is higher due to dimensionality reduction." zhang shule said.

america one is trying the first two, but with little success. since it’s hard to get along domestically, what about overseas markets?

involved overseas, localization problems need to be solved

different from one’s hindsight, as the domestic live streaming market is becoming increasingly saturated and competition is fierce, top anchors such as simba, wei ya, xiao yang ge, and make a friend have already set their sights on overseas markets. in the words of wang si, senior vice president of qianxun holdings, “it is better to do business overseas than to do it domestically.”

after all, compared with the domestic market ceiling that is gradually reaching its peak, the growth rate of the foreign live broadcast delivery market is indeed astonishing. taking the southeast asian e-commerce market as an example, data from the crowley index research institute shows that between 2017 and 2022, the gmv of southeast asian e-commerce will grow from us$10.9 billion to us$131 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 64%.

the first thing that tempted me was to make a friend. in 2021, he began to decide to expand overseas business and register related companies. the following year, he established two departments, the overseas business department and the overseas e-commerce academy, to officially launch efforts.

by 2023, major mcn institutions have stepped up their overseas business. data from crowley index research institute shows that nearly 30% of domestic mcn institutions are involved in going overseas, 26.6% of mcn institutions are entering the market and trying to go overseas, and 14.9% are making preparations. for example, simba directly led the team to sell goods live in bangkok, thailand, three sheep established an overseas mcn organization and formed an overseas team, and qianxun revealed the "ai digital human live broadcast zero overseas plan" and so on.

with the support of friends and businessmen, it seems that mei one is just starting to talk about going overseas now, which seems a bit slow. after all, like make a friend and three sheep have already officially launched business overseas and achieved certain results.

however, from the perspective of amber, who has been engaged in cross-border e-commerce for more than five years, it is indeed a bit late for us one to enter the game at this time. it is the last train to board the leading e-commerce cross-border overseas, but it will not fall behind. after all, the rest of the " "super players" have only begun to gradually expand overseas in the past two years, and their current market share is not high.

unlike competitors who either directly build overseas teams or use ai technology to go overseas, judging from the recruitment requirements for overseas positions announced on the official website of us one, us one seems to be more inclined to test the overseas live broadcast business at low domestic costs first, because the working locations of these positions are all in shanghai. only the "live broadcast central control" position that requires knowledge of indonesian requires overseas business trips, and the frequency is not high, only 1 to 2 times in three months.

▲ picture/screenshot of boss direct recruitment

an insider within mei one revealed to xin entropy that mei one has always been cautious and slow in developing new businesses. although mei one plans to expand its overseas business this time, it has not formally contacted tiktok. it is at best a small attempt.

although the attempt is small, the decision-making is not hasty.

amber told new entropy that from the perspective of a cross-border person, it is very smart for us one to choose this node to recruit troops, because intensive holidays will soon follow, such as halloween, thanksgiving, black friday, christmas, etc., " during the festival, consumers in southeast asian markets are enthusiastic about shopping, and there is great sales potential for cross-border e-commerce.”

another advantage of beauty one in cross-border live streaming is that the supply chain of domestic and foreign brands accumulated by beauty one, which has previously focused on the beauty field, can be directly reused for live streaming overseas.

but at the same time, one also faces more challenges when going overseas, especially in the context that the leading domestic mcn has not really opened up or effectively incubated the overseas live broadcast market.

amber recalled that when she first started doing cross-border business, the three major problems she encountered were localization, legal compliance and logistics and distribution. “southeast asia seems to be a big market, but in fact it is very scattered. there are 11 different countries with different religious beliefs and cultural differences,” amber said. “the laws and regulations of each country are different, and the compliance costs are also very high, and logistics is different from domestic logistics. it’s not the same level, last mile delivery is a challenge.”

not only that, although li jiaqi is famous in china, it is different when he goes overseas. re-cultivating influential anchors overseas requires both "luck" and strength.

this strength includes the understanding of local users. zhang shule further added that overseas markets cannot be opened only by relying on domestic products to compete with the lowest prices on the entire network. they need to combine local characteristics to explore differentiated products and local brands. it is very difficult to establish cooperation and implement timely live broadcast content, which is what mei one lacks today.

from this point of view, mei one has broad prospects for overseas development, but there are many challenges. what are its chances of winning?

it is not easy to go overseas, and globalization capabilities may be lacking.

although for us one, this test of overseas business may be just a "trial". it is a bit premature to talk about whether to officially enter the game and whether it can gain a foothold overseas. however, from the perspective of the outside world, it is based on in shanghai, it is almost impossible to bring goods to southeast asia via live broadcast.

after all, although the overseas e-commerce market is a blue ocean, it is not easy to make money by bending down. in zhang shule’s view, if mei one’s mcn play style cannot be adapted locally, it will be difficult to break the ice.

zhang yi, chief analyst of iimedia consulting, is not very optimistic about one’s overseas expansion. in fact, his attitude toward all domestic top anchors’ overseas markets is more worrying.

"first, southeast asia seems to have a large population, but the population of a single country is small, so it is difficult to disagree; second, the acceptance of overseas live broadcast users is not as high as in china, and institutions are destined to bear huge costs of time, energy and money when going overseas; third, overseas users can whether domestic internet celebrities will be accepted is unknown," zhang yi said.

compared with real internet celebrities going overseas, zhang yi is more optimistic about the live broadcast e-commerce of virtual digital people based on ai, because it has more opportunities to adapt to the tastes of overseas users with different cultures and religious beliefs, and is tireless.

in addition to the factors mentioned above, new entropy privately believes that mei one's own cautious decision-making and company organizational management capabilities may also be important factors hindering its overseas development. after all, shopping malls are like battlefields, and competitors have already entered the game and done several things. when one's own advantages are not so obvious, it will be more difficult for latecomers to take over.

huang yuanpu, founding partner of equalocean, pointed out that the biggest bottleneck currently encountered by chinese companies going global is the lack of global talents and weak global organizational capabilities. this sentence is still applicable when mcn organizations go overseas, because the talents who understand the local market best are the local people. if you want to rely solely on chinese people to achieve overseas expansion, it will be more difficult than reaching the sun and the moon in the sky.

going overseas is just a small pawn in the huge business map of us one. in addition to going overseas, mei one is also testing more businesses, such as its own brand, ai digital human live broadcast, and bringing sales to offline physical stores. there are many ways to expand revenue.

qi zhenbo, the founder of meione, once said in a recent interview with the media: "in the future, 'li jiaqi' will not only be a live broadcast room, but also a content-driven channel brand, becoming a century-old brand like quanjude, tongrentang, and lao fengxiang." "old store', build a time-honored brand."

ran however, zhang shule said that in order to become a century-old store, the premise is that the product must have a secret recipe, that is, a unique experience that is not easy to copy. obviously, the brutal growth of live streaming and the pioneering industrial chain or private brands are only limited to cost-effectiveness and distance. there is still a big gap between the quality-price ratio and even the exclusive use of secret recipes. the idea of ​​building a century-old store is just to encourage and gilt yourself.

in the final analysis, whether it goes overseas or not, standardization and professionalization capabilities are the foundation for a company's sustainable development.