Kuaishou doesn’t need Simba as much anymore

Original, all-weather technology, all-weather technology

Everyone needs to transform.

Author | Liu Baodan, Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

Super live streaming host has the voice over the weakening, so that their relationship with the platform, become more subtle.

On April 20, Simba angrily attacked Kuaishou during the live broadcast. On that day, Kuaishou banned Simba’s personal account for a month. This is the longest time Kuaishou has banned Simba in the past three years.

Simba, who frequently makes outrageous remarks about Kuaishou, has traffic anxiety, while Kuaishou e-commerce is shifting from super live streaming host to shelf mode, and its dependence on super live streaming hosts such as Simba is decreasing.

To some extent, this is the manifestation of the contradiction between super live streaming hosts and fast-growing platforms. Simba is undoubtedly emotional, and he did contribute to the early development of Kuaishou e-commerce, but this relationship must return to business logic to continue.

Kuaishou, who transforms shelf e-commerce, of course wants to get rid of his dependence on super live streaming hosts. The severe punishment of Simba is the need for platform ecological governance and the need to seek business model breakthroughs.

Content-based e-commerce is integrating with shelf-based e-commerce, and the golden age of super live streaming hosts is finally over. As a trillion-dollar e-commerce platform, Kuaishou is no longer the Kuaishou of yesterday, it is moving towards a new journey.

1

shot

"Brother Kuaishou" Simba once again staged a familiar scene.

In the live broadcast on the evening of April 20, Simba said fiercely that he was programmed into the script by other live streaming hosts. He also angrily claimed that if all his live streaming hosts were blocked, he would dare to sue the platform for no cash flow.

Afterwards, Kuaishou’s reaction could be described as "fast, accurate and ruthless". According to the live broadcast ban instructions, Simba’s live broadcast permission will be lifted on May 20, 2024, and the ban period will last for one month.

This is not the first time Simba has been banned by Kuaishou, but the intensity is far greater than before.

In the past, Simba has never been banned for a long time for simply shelling Kuaishou. Last March, Simba publicly accused the platform of fraudulent popularity in a live broadcast and was banned by the platform for 48 hours. Earlier, Simba also had some fierce remarks, but was only banned for a week.

Simba was obviously not convinced by this ban. The live streaming host of Xinxuan Group began to suspend the broadcast indefinitely in protest.

Simba raged against Kuaishou and had his own traffic anxiety. The super live streaming host platform is very conflicting and can bring traffic, and Simba has tried it well in the past. Even after each Simba rebroadcast, the traffic can be higher than before. This also makes Simba suffer a week-long ban in the past, but it has little impact on Simba.

A person close to Kuaishou told Wall Street that Simba has deep traffic anxiety and wants to do something.

It was understood that Simba’s live broadcast that night was a special one for Good Kids, with sales of less than 100 million yuan. This was Simba’s first live broadcast in April, and it had been more than a month since the last live broadcast, and such results obviously did not meet expectations.

This time, both sides still have room. Simba’s unblocking time is before the 618 promotion, and his live streaming host can also re-enter the battle at any time.

Looking back at Simba’s past complaints, it can be found that another point that made him emotional and complaining was that he believed that Kuaishou tended to lose his traffic resources.

Getting rid of the over-reliance on a single live streaming host is an inevitable step in the development of the platform, and the resulting contradictions are almost doomed. In fact, while the Kuaishou e-commerce plate continues to grow, the Simba family’s GMV share in Kuaishou is not as good as before.

In 2019, the annual gross merchandise volume of Kuaishou e-commerce was 59.60 billion yuan, of which Simba contributed 15 billion yuan, accounting for a quarter. Today, Simba’s contribution has dropped significantly. According to Zhuang Shuai, a retail e-commerce industry expert and founder of Bailian Consulting, Simba’s GMV will only account for about one-twentieth of Kuaishou’s e-commerce GMV in 2022.

Zhuang Shuai believes that Simba is no longer so important to Kuaishou. More and more brand merchants are choosing to open flagship stores in Kuaishou, and new forces are rising rapidly. Their product selection capabilities and platform operation capabilities are stronger, and they are more in line with the requirements of the new Kuaishou e-commerce ecosystem.

Zhuang Shuai bluntly said that Simba’s unstable state of mood swings and the practice of creating various emergencies conflict with the current consumer mentality of pursuing cost performance and good service, which has caused negative public opinion on the platform, and will affect Kuaishou’s stock price and normal operation in serious cases.

For Simba, after experiencing the brutal growth of live streaming e-commerce, it is particularly crucial to be able to adapt to the new industry rules and make changes. Perhaps this ban is just a reminder that even as a super live streaming host, you must return to the business itself in the future.

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transformation

Simba’s embarrassing situation reflects the current situation of the live streaming e-commerce industry, that is, the super live streaming host has the voice over weakening.

The reality is that Internet user growth has peaked, and the powder absorption capacity of super live streaming hosts is also on the verge of the ceiling. From a platform perspective, the birth of super live streaming hosts has become increasingly difficult.

The industry logic has changed. In the past few years, super live streaming hosts have easily gained product selection and low-price advantages by relying on fan effects, and achieved hundreds of millions or even billions of sales. However, as a sales channel, the commissions and pit fees of super live streaming hosts often exacerbate the cost burden of enterprises.

In the past two years, Douyin, Kuaishou, Taobao, etc. have been vigorously supporting store broadcasts. Super live streaming hosts have gradually lost their price advantage, and the low-price ability has been transferred to the platform. The platform provides low-priced goods through traffic support and subsidies.

Taking Kuaishou as an example, recently, Kuaishou e-commerce officially launched the "Kuaishou Preferred" project. The products selected in the project are selected by Kuaishou e-commerce, covering various categories of popular goods, and achieving low prices on the whole network through official subsidies, big data pricing and other means.

Since 2016, content-based e-commerce has been making great progress. Douyin and Kuaishou have risen rapidly in this context and have become trillion-dollar e-commerce platforms. Viya, Li Jiaqi, Simba, and Brother Yang have quickly become famous and achieved wealth freedom. Luo Yonghao has also paid off his debts.

Nowadays, the growth rate of live e-commerce is gradually slowing down. For live platforms, shifting their strategic focus to shelf e-commerce is an inevitable choice to open up incremental space. The integration of live e-commerce and shelf e-commerce is the trend of the times.

A year ago, Kuaishou e-commerce first proposed the concept of "global operation", and regarded the content market and the "pan-shelf" market as the two major directions for future development. After more than a year of development, Kuaishou has made good progress in shelf e-commerce.

According to the financial report, in the fourth quarter of 2023, Kuaishou’s pan-shelf super-market growth, gross merchandise volume accounted for more than 20%, and users’ e-commerce search mentality is also increasing.

For Kuaishou, the current focus is to improve the efficiency of purchase conversion through the synergistic linkage between the content market and the shelf market, especially in the construction of shopping malls. Kuaishou still has a lot of infrastructure work to be continuously optimized.

As for Daren, it is just a part of Kuaishou’s e-commerce ecosystem. In Kuaishou’s global operation, Daren undertakes the distribution function. Kuaishou hopes that distribution, self-broadcast and shelves can form a joint force to do in-depth operation.

Compared with a single large live streaming host, Kuaishou hopes to grow more diverse talents from the platform. At the Attractive Force Conference in August last year, Kuaishou announced that it will invest in 400 billion traffic support for creators in the next year, which is expected to help creators realize over 100 billion monetization.

Kuaishou e-commerce has finally crossed the threshold of trillion e-commerce in five years. Standing at a new stage of development, Kuaishou needs to release more energy, provided that there is a healthy and diverse platform ecosystem. Banning Simba may be a good start.

Simba’s complaints are emotional, but the competition in e-commerce is brutal, and the gradual decline of the super live streaming hosting model is inevitable; Kuaishou and other e-commerce platforms also need to step out of their comfort zone and move towards more ambitious goals.

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