Douyin Offers Flagship Stores for Brands

By launching flagship stores for brand accounts, Douyin proves once again that it is much more than just a short-video platform.

Over the past few years, luxury brands like Gucci, Prada, and Dior have hopped on the popular Gen Z platform — albeit to varying degrees of success. Now, global players that weren’t convinced to join before have another reason to consider China’s TikTok counterpart.

For one, these flagship stores will help brands increase their product exposure. Not only will the ratio of product views to total page views from the account’s homepage jump from 17 percent to 80 percent, but the click-through rate will also rise 250 percent month-on-month, Douyin predicted. Moreover, conversion rates are set to increase, with Douyin’s brand vouchers, attained from the flagship stores, redeemable both online and offline.

Brands should note, however, that there are plenty of Chinese sites already offering store features like Tmall, Little Red Book, and WeChat. As such, they should tailor their content to Douyin, capitalizing on its unique features and youthful vibe to resonate with its 600 million daily users. Here, brands can take a page from Cartier, which recently saw success on the platform with its user-generated content campaign, bringing in over one billion views.

Besides benefiting brands, the new service should also help close Douyin’s e-commerce loop, something the Bytedance app has increasingly focused on, from cutting links to third-party websites like Taobao and launching Douyin Pay in January. Ultimately, this e-commerce expansion better positions Douyin to take on domestic rivals such as Kuaishou, which teamed up with JD Retail last year to enhance its livestreaming ecosystem, as well as to potentially list overseas.

The Jing Take reports on a piece of the leading news and presents our editorial team’s analysis of the key implications for the luxury industry. In the recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debate sprouting on Chinese social media. Read the full article here