GMV of Douyin Local Life Business Tops $3.28 Billion

In the first half of this year, the gross merchandise volume (GMV) of Douyin’s local life business totaled about 22 billion yuan ($3.28 billion). Among them, the GMV exceeded 10 billion yuan in the first quarter and 10-12 billion yuan in the second quarter, 36 Kr reported on July 11.

The GMV of Douyin’s local life business in May was about 4.5 billion yuan, but declined in June. According to a person familiar with the matter, the decline has nothing to do with the service fees for merchants started in June, but more because the marketing peak in June started from the middle of the month and advanced relatively slowly.

In addition, in the first half of this year, the GMV in several benchmark provinces covered by Douyin’s local life business broke revenue records. The GMV in Hubei and Henan Province exceeded 300 million yuan and 200 million yuan respectively in June.

The person in charge of Douyin’s local life business responded that the data was inaccurate, but the platform can’t disclose more details.

In January this year, Douyin set a target of 40 billion of GMV for its local life businesses, which was raised to 50 billion in February. People close to ByteDance said that from the current momentum, it is not a big problem to meet the annual target. In the third quarter, the internal goal is to generate at least 5 billion of GMV every month.

After nearly two years of exploring the channel, this year’s local life business has begun to mature. This year, Douyin’s group buying business is paying more attention to the contribution rate of live-streaming to GMV, and strongly encourages merchants to take to live-streaming themselves.

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In addition, the coverage of local life business is not limited to the in-store service of eating, drinking and other entertainments, but also includes the sales of pre-cooked dishes and products related to e-commerce. The GMV brought in by these products mainly depends on the live-streaming teams created for various regions and the skill of live-streaming merchants themselves. In June this year, Douyin established its first local life live-streaming base in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. As of June, the local life business in Douyin has expanded to 33 cities, 22 less than its annual plan.