Livestreaming－business boon for users

Behind the blockbuster sales, there are hectic days and sleepless nights, especially for full-time livestreamers like Huang and Li, who built their reputations from the ground up.

In the past 30 days, both have hosted 25 streaming sessions, according to Pangqiu, a website that collects livestream e-commerce data.

Huang's job has turned her voice hoarse, but she couldn't afford pausing work for treatment. Li got severe bronchitis from a combination of staying up late as well as eating and resting irregularly.

Li said in an interview that if he stopped livestreaming today, he'd probably lose his fans to thousands of other livestreams, and they'd stop watching him from the following day.

Behind Huang, there is a team of 300 people, rigorously testing and filtering products to feature in their livestreams. Every day, she'd personally spend four hours reviewing all the products before going on air, according to Zhang Fei from Huang's publicity team.

Huang considers herself an anchor who entered the industry earlier and understands consumers' needs for products and services better: "I think that for an e-commerce anchor to gain a foothold in the industry, fan base and click rate is not the necessary condition, but more of a result. Allowing fans and consumers to fully understand a product and its value through their mobile phone screen is the core competitiveness of a professional e-commerce anchor."

Lu Min, an internet celebrity, who now works for a livestreaming anchor agency Ziyi, has more than one million fans on Douyin. She tried e-commerce livestreaming for the first time on Chinese Valentine's Day on Aug 25. She sold 30,000-yuan products in four hours, a result satisfying both to her and Zhao Yingzi, a co-founder of the company.

Before the livestream, Lu and four teammates spent a week selecting products to feature and predicting what problems might occur. They worked till early in the morning for the entire week.

During livestreaming, Zhao set up some challenges to test Lu's ability to make immediate responses, including setting a wrong selling price and the wrong amount of goods in the inventory.

"Professional e-commerce livestreamers must go through a rough time to realize that one's glory is a result of team effort," Zhao says.

Zhang Dandan says normally professional anchors who started from "nobody" have bigger ambitions for success, which drives them to spend more time and energy studying and discovering quality products to feature through livestreaming.

Zhang Dandan and Huang both agree that celebrities entering the field don't completely displace professional practitioners. She says that it promotes the influence of livestreaming e-commerce and develops people's consumption habits. Huang claims that healthy competition under the premise of legal compliance is necessary because it boosts the development of the industry and makes consumers the biggest beneficiaries.

Regulations

From July 28 to 31, the 22nd meeting of the 13th standing committee of the national people's congress of Zhejiang province was held in Hangzhou. During the meeting, the newly revised Regulations on the Administration of Advertising in the province was passed. The regulation implementation started from Sept 1.

Article 20 of the new regulation stipulates: "While promoting goods or service in the form of livestream and short videos on television, internet and other media platforms, false or misleading commercial propaganda shall not be carried out."

According to Zhang Dandan and Zhao, e-commerce livestream anchors are no longer allowed to mention "a minimum price guarantee" to attract consumers' attention and promote sales, and all promotion copywriting must stick to the products' official introduction to avoid exaggerated and misleading promotions.

"There is a lot of room for imagination in content and service innovation, and technological improvement of e-commerce livestreaming," Huang says. "At the same time, it is indispensable that the industry has a more complete set of rules to give all practitioners correct guidance."