Douyin E-Commerce Increases Investment in Online Mall and Brand Building
Tech Planet reported on August 15 that TikTok’s Chinese version, Douyin, has decided to adjust its e-commerce business. The platform recently announced internally that some mid-tier businesses will be handed over to its e-commerce service provider team, and its industry operations will be divided into two business lines, namely content and shelves. In the future, Douyin E-Commerce will focus on online shopping malls and brands.
Industry analysts told Tech Planet that the previous efforts of Douyin E-Commerce were mainly in the content field, that is, promoting goods through short videos and livestreaming channels to help raise users’ shopping habits, which is called the “interest e-commerce” mode by Douyin. But the team now thinks that this part of its business has matured, and it is necessary to open up more positions to not just rely on content. The Online Mall and livestreamers’ self operated online stores will be connected. For instance, after users join the store members in a livestreaming channel, they can go to the page of the livestreamer’s store whenever they want. In this way, the order transaction and repurchase rate will be raised, and the transaction amount in this part will be significant.
Some insiders have said that a series of adjustments and changes to Douyin E-Commerce may have caused Li Tian, the former head of content creation and goods operations at Douyin E-Commerce, quit her job in June this year. She used to be in charge of Douyin operations. In May 2021, Li joined the e-commerce department of ByteDance and participated in Douyin E-Commerce operations, including livestreaming operations and host management. Nowadays, the “content” and “goods” of Douyin E-Commerce are gradually diverted, which means that Li Tian’s responsibilities are also divided.
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On May 31 this year, Wei Wenwen, President of Douyin E-Commerce, announced that the company would upgrade “interest e-commerce” to “universal interested e-commerce” and would carry out a series of business layouts. In the past year, the gross merchandise volume of Douyin E-Commerce was 3.2 times that of the same period, and over 10 billion items were sold.
In the past year, in addition to online shopping malls, the areas involved in Douyin business include second-hand recycling, self-operated drinks, Douyin related goods, the trendy e-commerce platform “Douyin Box,” and recommendation app “Kesong.” Among them, Kesong has been focused on by the industry since its launch, and is regarded as the Douyin version of “Xiaohongshu.” However, the app was found on July 25 to have been removed from various app stores.
