How POPMART Leverages Livestreaming Without Discounting
E-commerce livestreaming was a huge trend in China in 2020 and nearly every brand imaginable is using it to sell their products. However the vast majority of them rely on heavy discounting to drive sales. So how has toy maker POPMART successfully incorporated livestreaming into its online sales strategy without ever offering discounts? Keep reading to find out!
POPMART Didn’t Offer Discounts From the Beginning
POPMART creates collectible pop art toys. Its main consumers are not children, but Gen Z and millennials between ages 18 to 35. They are mostly white collar workers and 70% of them are females. Its consumers match with Taobao’s livestream audience.
In May 2019, POPMART started testing out the waters, running a livestream itself, not with KOLs. While livestreaming truly became mainstream in 2020, it was already quite popular in 2020 and many brands were using the format as the main way to drive sales.
During POPMART’s first livestream, unlike other brands that offer discounts, the prices remained the same at 59 RMB. But even though it didn’t offer discounts, POPMART’s first livestream went well. In less than 2 hours sales reached nearly 70k RMB.
The brand was able to achieve this because of its fans’ loyalty. People who don’t like blind box toys just don’t like it. And for those who like it, they love it. Collecting pop toys is a niche hobby, and people who collect them feel like part of a community. This character makes them loyal to the brand. So even without lowering the price, people will still buy POPMART products.
Singles Day 2019
Even with this initial success, POPMART didn’t have a regular live streaming schedule in 2019. But then Single’s Day hit and during the shopping festival POPMART held 4 livestreams. Together the streams achieved nearly 7 million RMB in sales. In half a year POPMART went from being able to sell 70K RMB in one stream to over 1.5 million RMB of toys in one stream.
Following 2019, like every other brand, POPMART realized the importance of livestreaming. What’s more, COVID 19 hit and consumers couldn’t visit POPMART’s offline stores and vending machines. Since March 2020, the brand started regularly holding livestreams on Taobao Live.
The goal of the livestreams is not only to drive sales, but to cultivate old customers’ brand loyalty and introduce the brand to new customers.
If There are No Discounts, What Do They Livestream About?
Wang Ning (王宁), the CEO of POPMART knows that by maintaining the same price on livestream it will be harder to drive sales. So he thinks of another way to save this: telling stories and introducing POPMART’s various IPs so that people understand them better and learn more about new IPs. Wang knows if there are 100 people, there will be 100 reasons for them to buy POPMART. Different toys attract different people and everyone has a different reason for a POPMART order.
POPMART also livestreams the unboxing process. This is exciting for people who love blind boxes. Just watch our unboxing video to see for yourself.
The brand also livestreams about its rules for shopping festivals. Even though its product price remains the same, it gives bonus gifts to consumers during festivals and the gifts change depending on how much they spend.
Livestream Campaign to Support a Wuhan Nurse
On March 6, POPMART held an unboxing livestream for a nurse who went to Wuhan to help. The nurse was a fan of POPMART and always had a dream of getting one of the hidden special edition boxes.
So POPMART livestreamed its employees unboxing numerous boxes. In the end, they had found 7 hidden editions and they gave those to the nurse. They held lucky draws and gave away the rest of the opened toys to viewers of the stream. The livestream attracted 100k views which is quite high for a brand-run livestream.
Read more:
The Chinese Toy Brand That Surpassing Disney and Lego? Come and Meet Pop Mart!
