Chinese short-video platform Kuaishou reported impressive growth in home appliance sales on the platform as China’s mid-year 618 shopping festival gets underway. Kuaishou saw single-day GMV of home appliances on June 1 top RMB 100 million ($14 million), a 42-fold increase compared to last year, data from the company showed.
Why it matters: Kuaishou is seeing results from the continued expansion e-commerce on the platform. In 2022, the Chinese short video platform generated over RMB 900 billion from its livestream commerce business.
- Chinese content platforms, whether short video apps such as Douyin and Kuaishou or social content apps like Xiaohongshu, are increasingly looking at e-commerce as a way to commercialize their popularity.
Details: In the first three days of June, the GMV growth rate of household appliances that have high unit prices on Kuaishou increased by nearly 500% from a year earlier, making it the category with the largest increase, according to data released by the firm.
- On June 1, 15 merchants selling home appliances saw their total sales exceed RMB 1 million. Chinese brands TCL, Haier, and Aucma were the top three brands in terms of sales volume.
- Taking the Haier 470L refrigerator as an example, users can purchase it for RMB 3,599 in Haier’s official store on Kuaishou. This price is consistent with the flagship Taobao store of the brand. But users can earn cashback of RMB 300 after they complete their order on Kuaishou. However, the same refrigerator is priced at RMB 3,099 on value-oriented platform Pinduoduo.
- In 2022, the repurchase rate of Kuaishou’s e-commerce business was basically stable at 70%, according to data compiled by Southwest Securities. Meanwhile, Kuaishou recorded over 100 million monthly active paying e-commerce users in the third quarter of 2022; it did not update these figures in its latest earnings report.
- The Douyin rival launched the “Stream Initiative” program this January, which aims to help merchants identify their target customer base through KOL (influencer) distribution and accurately recommend merchants’ self-operated livestreams to potential clients.
- Since the first quarter of 2023, Kuaishou has started to charge commission revenue from influencer distribution.
Context: Categories with higher unit prices, such as home appliances and consumer electronics, are currently showing more growth on Chinese mainstream live-commerce platforms, although the timeframe of the statistics differs from platform to platform.
- TikTok sister app Douyin saw GMV generated from the home appliance industry increase 808% compared to the same period last year during this year’s 618 pre-sale period, which started from May 25 and lasted five days. Douyin saw seven home appliance brands surpass RMB 50 million in sales on the platform.