Double 11 has entered its 14th year, and compared with previous years, there are some differences. As early as September, merchants had already begun actively stocking up, especially beauty and apparel merchants, who became the main force of the September stocking-up wave. Around October 20, top livestreamer teams such as Luo Yonghao and Yu Minhong suddenly announced their entry into Taobao, firing the opening salvo of Double 11 ahead of schedule. Behind the collectively high enthusiasm of businesspeople are the challenges facing this year's consumer sector. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first nine months of this year, online retail sales growth was below 5% in six of those months. The consumer sector is experiencing temporary difficulties, making merchants place even more importance on Double 11 as a more certain growth opportunity. As the most important promotion of the second half of the year and one of the most significant consumption indicators this year, no merchant wants to miss this Double 11. Although the era of rough growth has long passed, this year's Double 11 still brought surprises to the industry. According to Tmall's official statistics, within one hour after presales began, more than 3,000 brands saw double-digit growth compared with the same period last year, and 102 brands exceeded 100 million yuan in transaction value; within four hours, Tmall Double 11 presales on Taobao Live generated 130 livestream rooms with presale amounts exceeding 10 million yuan. On November 1, 82 brands achieved over 100 million yuan in sales from brand members. As of November 3, brands had gained more than 66 million new members. Behind these numbers is the sustainable and steady long-term business opportunity Tmall brings to merchants, with more and more mid-tier merchants steadily moving upward—perhaps not as eye-catching as the rapidly rising sales figures of previous years, but in this year's context, the overall improvement in the ecosystem is genuinely helpful to the industry. Over the years, Double 11 has never been just about selling goods; it also points the way for the industry. As the industry becomes less impetuous and gradually returns to rationality, pursuing high-quality growth, the overall market is also returning to a track of steady growth. Behind this lively Double 11 is a counterattack by the entire industry. 01 Where is the Incremental Space? As rational growth replaces rough growth, the industry has begun to realize that quality and whether products are truly useful in daily life have become the new consumption standards. This also determines that merchants must return to the essence of business, pay more attention to consumer needs, and refine product strength. According to data from iiMedia Research's "2022 China Interest Consumption Trend Insight White Paper," "good-looking, fun, and practical" have become the three major criteria for the Z-generation consumer group, with over 60% of young people focusing on self-pleasure and enhancing happiness as their consumption core, and interest consumption accounting for an average of 27.6% of monthly spending. With changing consumption concepts, Double 11 has also entered a new stage. According to Tmall's official report, pets, toys, sports and outdoor, and jewelry have become the new "Four King Kongs," with impressive consumption growth, becoming new sources of business growth for this year's Double 11. Image source: iiMedia Research "2022 China Interest Consumption Trend Insight White Paper" The continuous expansion of the pet industry market is a microcosm of the new rigid demand in consumption. As consumers' demand for pets increases, subcategories around pets in clothing, food, housing, and transportation are constantly being developed. From pet daily necessities, toys, and health products to lifestyle services, the "it economy" consumption demand is rising comprehensively. For example, the pet medicine category alone exceeded last year's first-day full-day sales within 40 minutes of the sale starting. Another aspect of new rigid demand is emotional needs. According to data released by iiMedia Research, the market size of high emotional value-added products is growing rapidly, with the building block industry market size expected to reach 26.19 billion yuan, becoming a "potential stock." The explosive performance of the building block industry during Double 11 confirms young people's emotional need to "play with toys when they grow up." Data shows that building block brands' transaction value within less than 10 minutes of the sale starting exceeded the entire Double 11 cycle last year. Another emerging rigid demand industry is the outdoor sports category. Since 2021, camping, skateboarding, surfing, and fishing have become the four new popular outdoor sports. Especially the camping category, after a year of rapid development, the industry as a whole has moved from a single outdoor experience to a new development stage of "refined camping," with market demand surging. Exploring the joy of nature around the city and developing new social interactions have become the new lifestyle that young people aspire to. Among these, in addition to basic living items like tents and sleeping bags, oil lamps with simple and elegant shapes, daily coffee, compact and practical barbecue supplies and pots, frisbees and portable gaming devices that meet outdoor entertainment needs have all become new rigid demands, driving the development of related markets. During this year's Double 11, emerging sports categories such as camping, skateboarding, and fishing saw growth of over 100% in the first hour of sales, driving the explosive growth of multiple outdoor brands including Black Dog, Naturehike, and Mobi Garden. In addition to "good-looking, fun, and practical," for the current mainstream consumer group, another rigid demand is "self-pleasure and value preservation." According to Tmall official data, this year, gold derivatives and IP co-branded products have become new jewelry products favored by consumers. Within less than two days after the sale started, six brands had sales exceeding 100 million yuan, with the gold category growing over 30% year-on-year. Among them, the time-honored gold brand Laomiao Gold has a unique understanding of the new mainstream of gold jewelry with ancient Chinese charm. Since 2021, its multiple series have carried a strong oriental ancient charm, targeting trendy people who prefer such gold jewelry. Since the Double 11 sale began, national trend gold jewelry has grown rapidly, with Laomiao Gold's store sales nearly doubling. It is not difficult to see that the Double 11 data reflects a trend: the market's consumption resilience is still recovering, and consumers' shopping needs have not disappeared but are constantly evolving. Judging from this year's overall market response, impulsive shopping based solely on low prices has become a thing of the past, and consumers have become more rational, forcing merchants to capture consumer needs more carefully. As an important node leading consumption trends, Double 11 is also guiding merchants to discover opportunities in segmented markets. 02 Double 11 Has Changed But this counterattack is not limited to this. The emergence of new growth points essentially comes from exploration and transformation on the industry side. People have noticed that the once-popular traffic gameplay is gradually declining in this process, and letting operations return to operations and business return to business has become a common call from the industry side this Double 11. An obvious change is that this year's Double 11, most merchants can no longer bet on simple and crude methods of acquiring new customers, such as pushing short-term bestsellers, brushing traffic, and lowering prices. This is largely related to the industry trend. On the one hand, merchants have generally reduced marketing budgets, requiring them to spend every penny wisely and not blindly invest without considering traffic conversion. More importantly, after the industry returns to rationality, there is more space for merchants to think about operational issues themselves. Selling goods is an operational logic, and traffic must be "retained"—if merchants cannot tap into consumer needs, even if they attract traffic, they cannot convert users into consumers, let alone talk about repeat purchases and brand accumulation. Especially at important nodes like Double 11, merchants need to start from core operational data such as traffic retention, repeat purchase rate, and ROI to improve conversion rates, so as to truly protect cash flow and profits—these are also the most valued indicators in the market this year. This transformation has already begun to happen, and paying more attention to stocking up and presales than in previous years has become a major feature of this year's Double 11. From an operational perspective, from early stocking up to the first wave of presales and finally to the end of Double 11, with reasonable planning, merchants can sell two waves of goods while producing and replenishing in a timely manner. Such a high degree of certainty can ensure that merchants do not over-stock or over-accumulate, thereby maximizing profits. A more orderly rhythm also gives merchants the confidence to stock more and prepare more. Taking the apparel category as an example, as a top consumer category for Double 11, preparations start especially early. Reports show that in Suzhou, which gathers nearly 20,000 apparel companies, merchants have elevated Double 11 to the highest operational priority, starting stocking up as early as two months ago, "paying more attention to Double 11 than to the Spring Festival." In addition, similar to apparel, established merchants in FMCG, consumer electronics, and beauty categories are also expanding warehouses to prepare for Double 11. Many merchants started stocking up in August, with initial stocking quantities of at least 100,000 units. Among them, domestic beauty brands represented by Bee & Flower and Kean stocked up 3-5 times the usual amount, hoping to sweep away the industry's gloom from the first half of the year and regain confidence through Double 11. "Tmall Double 11 is the period with the strongest consumer mindset of the year and the peak sales period for brands. Tmall is not only a sales channel but also a window to showcase brands. We will put more brand-oriented resources on Tmall," said Liu Hong, e-commerce operations head of the emerging skincare brand Gudu. In addition to the traditional four major consumption areas, new trend categories are also actively exploring the possibilities of Double 11. The cultural and creative industry, favored by young consumers, has shown more enthusiasm in this year's Double 11 preparations. According to Tmall's official introduction, many museum flagship stores, including Sanxingdui Museum, Gansu Provincial Museum, and Dunhuang Research Academy, have completed their Double 11 stocking work. Among the treasures displayed by each museum, their "divine beasts" are also quite eye-catching, with related product stocking exceeding 1 million units. Besides changes in sales rhythm, merchants' key operational indicators have also changed this Double 11. Since this year, compared with the previous emphasis on acquiring new customers, merchants have begun to pay more attention to repeat purchase rates of old customers, giving rise to new explorations of Tmall's membership system, which has also become a key factor in achieving steady growth this Double 11. According to the well-known consulting firm Bain's "2022 Double 11: Improving Loyalty Matters More Than Breaking the Trillion Mark," it states: "The industry's development focus needs to shift from promotional discounts to consumer loyalty, also known as 'consumer stickiness.' In the trend of multi-platform shopping, consumers are more willing to stay on which platform, which becomes the driving force for that platform to provide long-term value to merchants. Consumer stickiness is an opportunity for merchants. When Double 11 develops to its 14th year, it must shift from high-speed growth to retaining consumers. Platforms that can retain consumers will create lasting and differentiated value for merchants." Before this year's Double 11 began, using membership layout to increase user stickiness and improve established growth and operational efficiency has become the focus of merchants' online operational layout. The high ROI potential of Tmall's membership system has been recognized by brands, driving active participation from brands like Nike and Unilever, sparking a new trend of "member GMV." "Tmall now has 42 brands with over 10 million members and 600 brands with over 1 million members, with most brands' member-driven sales exceeding 40% of their total sales. It can be said that Tmall is the preferred platform for brands' DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) model and the first battlefield for brands to achieve certain business growth. Based on comprehensive digitalization, Taobao and Tmall will insist on letting merchants directly face consumers, helping merchants build a positive cycle of accumulating consumer assets," said Chui Xue, President of Alibaba's Taobao Tmall Industry Development and Operations Center. It is worth mentioning that as the platform, Taobao and Tmall have not been absent from this series of operational explorations. To help merchants improve repeat purchases and build brand accumulation, Taobao and Tmall have also made a series of upgrades in consumer experience. It is reported that during this year's Double 11, on the user side, Taobao and Tmall expanded the shopping cart and added multiple smart functions, including full price protection, multi-address ordering, and senior customer service, to improve the consumer shopping experience. On the merchant side, Tmall's policies and functional support, such as 20% off return shipping insurance and 3D try-on, have resolved merchants' worries. This series of infrastructure improvements gives merchants the opportunity to gain more long-term operational assets this Double 11 and achieve a transition to a stage of steady growth. For merchants, whether it is turning their attention back to user stickiness, or paying more attention to operational efficiency through data orientation, valuing the platform's assistance, and valuing indicators like ROI, these are all key to cultivating internal strength and maintaining long-term growth; and to fight a beautiful turnaround battle in Double 11 and restore the industry's overall vitality, the key also lies here. 03 New "Businesspeople" The trend of returning to the essence of business is gradually taking shape, and this year's Double 11 has become the concentrated node for this trend to erupt. When the entire industry begins to return to the essence of business, Taobao and Tmall, with more complete infrastructure, higher conversion rates, and more comprehensive supply, have also become the center of the vortex. On the eve of this year's Double 11, top livestreamers such as Luo Yonghao, Yu Minhong, and Liu Genghong successively announced their entry into Taobao, making the outside world increasingly aware of another round of transformation in the industry. The new generation of businesspeople has also gathered on the Taobao and Tmall platform. According to Tmall official data, in the past year, Taobao and Tmall added a total of 1.2 million new merchants, and Taobao Live added more than 500,000 new livestreamers. "Friends, Yaowang Network, Wuyou Media, and the Oriental Selection behind New Oriental—the TOP4 livestream MCN institutions have either entered Taobao or are on the way," said a person in charge of an MCN institution familiar with the livestream industry. Luo Yonghao and Yaowang Network entered Taobao Live Where the business market is, there are businesspeople, and there are livestreamers. It is not surprising that livestreamers are concentrated in Taobao. In 36Kr's previous exclusive report, there was such statistical data: from May to September 2022, the monthly GMV of Taobao's mid-tier livestreamers maintained a year-on-year growth of over 50%. In addition, from October 1 to 9, with the superimposed consumption enthusiasm of Li Jiaqi's return, the GMV of mid-tier livestreamers even achieved triple-digit growth. In another statistic from Taobao and Tmall, before the start of Tmall Double 11, the platform already had nearly 1 million post-00s merchants, most of whom were participating in Tmall Double 11 for the first time. As Taobao's original residents, from birth to starting their own businesses, Taobao has been an indispensable part of their lives. It has been reported that post-00s Taobao entrepreneurs treat their interests as business, and in product selection, they "sell whatever they want to buy." Most entrepreneurs like to deeply explore niche needs, do customized business, and value copyright. They rely on Taobao's complete infrastructure and strong public domain traffic pool to take their first step as businesspeople. Similar to post-00s creators, new businesspeople who are good at content creation are also constantly moving closer to Tmall and Taobao. Wu Nan, the owner of the store "Uncle Wu in High Heels," is a top livestreamer for video content sales. Since participating in Double 11 this year, he has shifted his focus to a new output model of content seeding, while receiving platform support. According to internal introductions from Tmall and Taobao, although video Taobao stores are still in the incubation stage, new businesspeople who are good at content output can seize this opportunity to gain more. "There is a seven- or eight-year-old Taobao women's clothing store in Hangzhou that used to sell only a hundred thousand yuan a year. After fully transforming into a video store, it did over 20 million." Wu Nan's video of trying on high heels in his Taobao video store In addition to innovation in sales models, many new energy vehicle brands, as representatives of new businesspeople in new trends, also flocked to Tmall before Double 11. XPeng's G9 new car debut, Zeekr's Tmall flagship store, and the new interactions between emerging electric vehicle brands like Polestar and Avatr with consumers on Tmall all carry the expectations of new businesspeople for Double 11 and new growth opportunities. "The new generation of businesspeople are all on Taobao and Tmall," Chui Xue concluded at the Tmall Double 11 presale launch meeting. In the tide of returning to the essence of business, such a result is not surprising. 04 Conclusion Double 11 has never been just a place to sell goods. From helping e-commerce enter thousands of households in the early days to leading merchants through cycles today, over the past 14 years, Tmall Double 11 has been advancing amid change and constancy. What changes is the broader categories, comprehensive services, and stronger support for merchants; what remains unchanged is the adherence to the essence of operations. Especially this year, when the consumer sector is undergoing transformation, Tmall Double 11 once again proves a truth: only by returning to the essence of operations and valuing operational efficiency can one seize new development opportunities in this round of reshuffling. This is also a serious topic beneath the liveliness of Double 11. Source: 36Kr Future Consumption (ID: lslb168)