Alibaba scores a gain with Taobao debut of China’s ‘most famous teacher’ as stay-streaming e-commerce race heats up

Dong Yuhui, who experienced been a single of New Oriental’s English-language tutors, joined the company’s freshly shaped e-commerce live-streaming crew and started out pitching a array of goods on TikTok’s Chinese sibling Douyin.

Viewers soon turned drawn to Dong’s distinctive pitching design and style, which requires reciting poems, English phrases and musical accompaniment although making an attempt to sell guides, cooking pans, steaks, shrimp and much more.

Throughout their debut dwell stream on Taobao, Dong, Yu and some others pitched a range of solutions such as smartphones, skincare, make-up, shoes and house decorations. Their stay-streaming channel, which started functions at 8am on Tuesday, gathered a million followers by 5pm, Dongfangzhenxuan mentioned.

Dongfangzhenxuan’s start on Taobao marks a person of its most vital techniques to diversify its access. Earlier this thirty day period, the brand name performed its 1st live-streaming session on Tencent Holdings’ WeChat.

That arrived just after Douyin blocked Dongfangzhenxuan from streaming on the app for a few days in July, citing violations of system guidelines. The brand’s Douyin site visitors experienced been on the drop even just before that incident, with viewership falling 30 for each cent in May well from the former month, according to details offered by study organization Baiguan.

Dongfangzhenxuan finished up conducting a product sales party on its personal app all through that month.

While Douyin remains Dongfangzhenxuan’s biggest supply of website traffic and a well known gross sales channel for fresh groceries, snacks and area specialities, “the achievements of [the brand’s] stand-by yourself application and its [debut on] Taobao Live underscore its diminishing reliance on Douyin”, explained a exploration report by Huafu Securities on Tuesday.

Having said that, Dongfangzhenxuan’s Taobao debut came with a hiccup: a laptop bug resulted in buyers acquiring a 25 yuan rebate for a 23 yuan product, prompting countless numbers of customers to place in an order. That item was delisted as soon as the corporation identified the loophole, numerous regional media shops noted.