On August 1st, Baidu E-commerce held the Nanyang Jewelry Live Streaming Base Investment Summit in Zhenping County, Nanyang City, attracting local high-quality merchants to join Baidu E-commerce.
Baidu, which is once again fighting against e-commerce, regards the jewelry category as one of its important focuses. Last summer, Baidu E-commerce established an intelligent e-commerce base in Sihui Jewelry and Jade Base, Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province.
Faced with the extremely high maturity of the Zhenping jewelry e-commerce live streaming industry, Baidu E-commerce has a very clear positioning for itself: with a customer base that is different from other platforms and a relatively healthy refund rate, Baidu E-commerce hopes that merchants will use itself as an incremental platform for future business.
Baidu E-commerce settles in Zhenping, Nanyang
Baidu e-commerce has made new moves in Henan. On the afternoon of August 1st, Baidu E-commerce held the Nanyang Jewelry Live Streaming Base Investment Summit in Zhenping County, Nanyang City, inviting local high-quality merchants to settle in. At the same time, digital human anchors, intelligent management platforms, etc. will help industrial belt merchants transform into intelligent ones.
Although many people are familiar with Baidu, its popularity is still slightly inferior compared to mainstream e-commerce platforms. In fact, since 2007, Baidu has been catching up with the e-commerce trend. Baidu has user traffic and brand influence, coupled with users' demand for shopping while searching for information, which provides a natural advantage for it to enter the e-commerce market.
In May 2023, Baidu held the 2023 Wanxiang Conference, proposing to reconstruct the Baidu mobile ecosystem with AI native thinking. When it comes to e-commerce business, it proposed a new brand "Baidu Youxuan", which focuses on intelligent e-commerce. Baidu applies the big model to its own e-commerce business, providing a series of technologies and business management solutions such as AI shopping assistants, e-commerce AI anchors, and merchant intelligent management platforms.
Jewelry is currently one of the important drivers of Baidu's e-commerce development.
Compared to women's clothing, furniture, and 3C products, which have already had a high e-commerce rate in the era of graphic and text e-commerce, jewelry and cultural toys had a relatively low online transaction rate before the emergence of live streaming. "Niu Jianxiong, the head of Baidu's e-commerce jewelry and cultural toys, told Dahe Caili reporters that it was the rise of live streaming e-commerce that allowed jewelry products to enter the e-commerce trading platform.
The general perception of the jewelry industry is that information is not transparent enough and profits are high. In fact, products in the jewelry industry can usually be divided into two categories: standard and non-standard. Niu Jianxiong said that the former is represented by gold, diamonds, and branded jewelry products, while the latter mainly consists of jade, gemstones, pearls, etc., priced at one piece, which is more suitable for display and sales in live streaming rooms.
Last August, Baidu E-commerce built its first intelligent e-commerce base in Sihui City, Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province. After operating locally for six months, the GMV of the jewelry industry increased by more than three times. The growth of Sihui City has led Baidu E-commerce to explore live streaming of jewelry e-commerce from different categories in places such as Songgang Amber Cultural Industry Park in Bao'an District, Shenzhen.
In Niu Jianxiong's opinion, choosing Nanyang Zhenping this time is because it is a battleground for the jewelry industry.
"The two largest categories in the gemstone industry, Hotan Jade and jadeite, when it comes to jadeite, people will think of Guangdong Zhaoqing and Yunnan Ruili, but if Hotan Jade is involved in the transaction, Zhenping cannot be bypassed in any way," he said.
Although Shifosi Town in Zhenping County does not produce jade, it is a jade distribution and processing center. In this small town with an area of less than 90 square kilometers and a permanent population of only about 150000 people, there are raw stones from Xinjiang, Qinghai, and even Russia that are processed and sold outside every day.
Why does Baidu e-commerce share a share of the market in the town
However, the maturity of Zhenping jewelry e-commerce live streaming is also very high. In major jade markets in the local area, you can see individual anchors who "go live" everywhere, and there are also a large number of e-commerce live streaming companies with fixed venues and stable sources of goods in the area.
As early as 2016, Zhenping County has made great efforts to build an e-commerce incubation base, and has successively reached cooperation with platforms such as Taobao, Kwai, Tiktok, Pinduoduo, etc., which has already formed a development pattern of online broadcast, online sales, self built platforms, platform industry belt and other e-commerce formats in the local area.
In this situation, how can Baidu E-commerce still get a share of the pie?
Baidu E-commerce positions itself as an incremental platform for merchants, after all, few merchants would bet all their business on one platform. Having an additional channel can also increase sales and cover more consumers, "said Niu Jianxiong. Currently, Baidu E-commerce's strategy in Zhenping is to invite merchants who have already done jewelry live streaming on other platforms to join, and the selection criteria are generally mature supply chains and merchants with high credit ratings to ensure the quality of products sold on the platform. If it is a top merchant on other platforms, Baidu e-commerce assistant can provide one-on-one guidance and offer traffic support.
In Niu Jianxiong's view, the main factors that attract merchants to Baidu e-commerce are customer base, return rate, and promotion costs.
"Tiktok's customer base depends on the pallet. The customer base of Kwai, Pinduoduo and other platforms is relatively sinking. Our portrait of Baidu's e-commerce customer base is relatively concentrated in the first tier cities, aged 35 to 52, with stronger consumption capacity, higher customer price and certain complementarity with other platforms," said Niu Jianxiong.
Due to the particularity of the jewelry industry, its return rate is also high, with some e-commerce platforms having a return rate as high as 80%. Baidu E-commerce currently has a relatively healthy return rate, which also means lower operating costs for merchants.
In addition, AI digital humans are also an important means of empowering merchants for Baidu e-commerce. Merchants can place products with relatively large inventory on Baidu's shelf e-commerce or use digital people to promote sales to increase sales.
However, Baidu, which has regained the e-commerce industry, not only has to face e-commerce giants such as Taobao, Jingdong and Pinduoduo who have worked hard for many years, but also a number of newcomers such as Tiktok, Kwai and Xiaohongshu who have successfully broken through. Even the AI e-commerce that Baidu has made great efforts after its return, actually has many players.
Currently, the rapid growth of Baidu's e-commerce GMV is inseparable from the fact that the business is still in its infancy. Even if Baidu wants to establish a foothold in the jewelry industry, in the future, it not only needs to find differentiated market positioning among experienced and strong new and old players, but also needs to build a complete supply chain and logistics system. There is still a lot of work to be done.
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