Livestream shopping: A Chinese woman makes $14 million a week with a simple sales idea

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She presents shirts, socks and hangers in record time and makes millions from it. Chinese influencer Zheng Xiangxiang sells countless different items every second. With this method she earns approximately 14 million dollars (12.5 million francs) per week.

The whole thing goes like this: the young woman has her assistant push a lot of boxes in front of the camera. It contains different products. Xiangxiang opens the box, holds the contents in the camera for a moment, says the price and pushes the box out of view.

The stream will be released directly to Xiangxiang’s social media channel on the Douyin platform. Users have access to the displayed products in real time via a direct shopping function. Xiangxiang has about five million followers on the platform. Interested parties rarely learn more about the products than the price, but this is how most Chinese people seem to shop these days. All livestreams that Xiangxiang hosts take place in a warehouse filled with tens of thousands of boxes and products.

Sausages or toy cars for sale

The ‘live shopping’ phenomenon is currently booming in China. Although customers only see clothing and accessories for a short time, the market has been growing steadily for about eight years. A wide range of products are sold through the shopping channels. Especially during the Corona pandemic, livestreams in China were often the easiest way to exchange ideas with other people.

All kinds of products can be found on the platforms. For example, a Chinese woman regularly fries sausages on the Wechat platform, which she then sells online. Another user offers toy cars for sale on the same platform.

One in three Chinese shops lives there

For many Chinese influencers, running a shopping livestream is their main source of income. Some are employed by e-commerce livestreaming companies, while others operate independently. According to the “China Live Streaming E-Commerce Market Data Report,” there are now an estimated 500 million live shopping users shopping online in the People’s Republic – more than one in three in China.

Xiangxiang is now causing a stir outside China with her videos. However, not all viewers in the comments are happy with the idea. “Who buys things like that?” reads the caption on a YouTube video of the influencer at work. Another user commented: “Why are you doing that? You don’t even see the products.”

The Douyin platform was not particularly enthusiastic about Xiangxiang’s success and blocked her because it does not allow advertising of products with little or no information. The influencer simply switched to another platform with her second sales method. (An)

Source: Blick