By Casey Hall and Sophie Yu
SHANGHAI (Portal) – When Alibaba launches its Singles Day extravaganza on Monday, it won’t be led by its two mega-selling stars for the first time in years, eclipsing China’s biggest shopping event and leaving brands guessing how well they’re doing will do.
The event, which the e-commerce giant has built from a one-day sale on Nov. 11 to a nearly two-week festival, kicks off seven days of advance sales to allow shoppers on its Taobao and Tmall marketplaces to deposit to secure merchandise later at a discounted price.
In recent years, pre-sales have been led by Li Jiaqi and Viya, known as China’s live streaming sales king and queen, respectively, selling everything from lipstick to rocket launchers on Taobao Live, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s live streaming channel.
Last year, they pre-sold products worth a total of 18.9 billion yuan (US$2.61 billion) on the opening day, accounting for about 3.5% of the total event’s revenue of 540.3 billion yuan.
But this year there will be no Viya. She has remained offline since she was fined for tax evasion in December. Li, also known as Austin, has been absent from Alibaba’s Singles Day marketing after he went missing for three months and netizens speculated one of his live streams violated Chinese censorship. Alibaba declined to comment on its participation in this year’s event.
Li returned to screens last month but remains more reserved than before his disappearance. People close to Li told Portal that cosmetic products will make up just 30% of his range this Singles’ Day, down from 40% last year, with more everyday items and Chinese brands being featured.
While there are still thousands of people hawking products on Taobao Live in China, the two have made up the lion’s share of traffic, industry executives said.
“Before, you could only get away with Austin, which was kind of nice — it was expensive, but you’ll sell out quickly and you’ll get the massive boost,” said Josh Gardner, chief executive of e-commerce partner for China market Kung Fu Data , which manages online stores for over a dozen global brands, including denim maker G-Star Raw.
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“We no longer have anyone on the market who can move so much so quickly.”
Most brands, he said, are experimenting with a “portfolio approach” that taps into different anchors — but doesn’t expect the same results.
Lexie Morris, vice president of Sweaty Betty China, told Portal that the activewear brand would only deploy “one or two” livestream hosts this Singles Day season and that it was starting out with much smaller and more sports-focused ones oriented live streamers to work with.
However, live streaming will be less important as a sales driver in the future and working with superhosts also has its downsides.
“Offering discounted products through Li Jiaqi brings in a lot of customers, but it’s not necessarily your typical customer profile. This stores data and can confuse the traffic algorithms of the Tmall platform.”
Analysts expect another year of overall declining sales this Singles Day, dampened by a slowing economy and China’s zero-COVID-19 policy. Last year, Alibaba, which has toned down the event’s marketing hype amid regulatory scrutiny, posted 8.5% revenue growth, its slowest ever.
In June, Alibaba rival JD.com Inc also posted its slowest-ever sales growth for 618, China’s second-largest shopping festival after Singles Day.
In place of Li and Viya this year, Alibaba is promoting Singles Day performances by tech entrepreneur Luo Yonghao and Yu Minhong, founders of New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc, who have chosen to live stream popular sales shows on ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese , to host equivalent to TikTok.
Lu Zhenwang, an independent e-commerce expert and founder of a Shanghai-based firm that manages influencers, said the sudden change in circumstances surrounding Li and Viya has made Taobao Live and Superhosts less attractive to brands from a purely traffic perspective.
More are now heading to Douyin, where there are many niche live streamers with their own followers.
“Taobao Live’s daily traffic has peaked,” he said.
In a statement to Portal, Alibaba dismissed the traffic concerns. “Instead of a traffic-driven model, Taobao Live helps merchants grow their businesses sustainably,” it said.
($1 = 7.2460 Chinese renminbi yuan)
(Reporting by Casey Hall and Sophie Yu; Editing by Christopher Cushing)