Chinese beauty brand HEXSE ranked first in the platform brand self-streaming list in China’s mainstream live streaming platform Kwai e-commerce for the fourth consecutive month. HEXSE entered Kwai in 2020 with its brand founder Wang Ni starting live streaming in person for promoting good sales. In merely about a year, the number of her followers on Kwai has exceeded 10 million. During the “2021 Kwai 116 Super Brand Day” event, HEXSE’s total sales exceeded 50 million yuan (about $7.45 million).
Recently, China’s mainstream live streaming platform Kwai E-commerce released the brand live streaming list in April and Chinese beauty brand HEXSE once again reached the top, which is the fourth consecutive month since 2022, HEXSE ranked first on the brand self-streaming list.
Founded in 2012, HEXSE is a beauty brand under Guangzhou Angtai International Trade Co., Ltd. (former name: Guangzhou Angtai Electronics Co., Ltd.), with the main products covering cushion compact, lip balm, pressed powder, toning cream, and other makeup products.
In 2013, HEXSE entered Tmall and became the leading brand in the sales ranking of Taobao and Tmall in just six months, of which the monthly sales volume of HEXSE lipstick, pressed powder and eyeliner exceeded 60,000, becoming the highest-selling product on online platforms. It also owns more than 4.8 praise and 88% of the return rate of old customers, becoming one of the top ten outstanding brands of makeup cosmetics in China.
With the rise of live streaming, HEXSE also chose to follow the trend. In 2019, HEXSE invested hundreds of millions of yuan (more than $14.89 million) to attract traffic on Tmall and invested 2 million yuan (about $300,000) in early 2020 for live streaming, but neither of them achieved satisfactory results.
At the end of 2020, HEXSE decided to settle in Kwai due to the discovery of the high participation, loyalty, and repurchase rate of Kwai users in live streaming.
In the early days of entering Kwai, HEXSE also signed live streamers with training and makeup artist backgrounds, but due to the high cost of communication with live streamers, coupled with the fact that the live streamers did not understand HEXSE’s products and supply chains, so they could not reflect the advantages of brand production and research. Therefore, Wang Ni, the founder of HEXSE, decided to start live streaming in person with “HEXSE Ni Jie” (“Ni” is the family name and “Jie” means sister in Chinese and here also means boss) as the ID with the identity of HEXSE’s boss.
Wang Ni opens her live streaming from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. every day and there is almost no interruption during the live streaming. Later, her assistant substitutes her in live streaming until 4 p.m. There are about 10 hours a day for live streaming. In order to increase followers, Wang Ni will connect the microphone to make a list on Kwai in the evening and HEXSE also uses “Kwai Fentiao” (a paid promotion service officially launched by Kwai) to increase exposure on the home page of Kwai.
Despite the efforts of HEXSE and Wang Ni, HEXSE’s account data growth is still at a relatively slow pace due to the lack of understanding of the tactics of Kwai.
In order to break through the dilemma, in April 2021, HEXSE chose to cooperate with Kwai Cili Jinniu (a tool for promoting products through short videos and live streaming). Cili Jinniu, in collaboration with marketing central edge (as a bridge for connecting the front-end and back-end together) and side activities of e-Commerce, jointly assisted HEXSE in planning growth strategies and providing traffic delivery services, and thereby HEXSE began to make full efforts from streaming and quickly achieved a double breakthrough in followers and GMV.
In May 2021, in the Championship of Kwai Brand Self-Streaming, HEXSE ranked first in both stages of GMV, with a cumulative GMV of about $950,000 in 19 days, about $420,000 ahead of the second place. In May 2021, the number of HEXSE’s followers on Kwai reached 1.5 million and the number of followers exceeded 3 million in July.
On the “2021 Kwai 116 Super Brand Day”, HEXSE garnered a swathe of followers with ceremonies of sending 10 million units of products as gifts for its followers and the event of sending 400,000 single units of products. The market price of about $43 HEXSE’s “POLYPEPTITIDE FIRMING NECK CREAM”, directly dropped to 1.1 yuan (about $0.16) in a second kill. HEXSE’s custom watches, custom scarves and custom thermos have also attracted many users. During the event, the sales revenue of best-selling products reached about $1.07 million and the total sales revenue of the brand exceeded $50 million (about $7.45 million). The exposure of online platforms exceeded 280 million, the number of viewers in the live streaming reached 120 million and the brand followers increased by 1 million which creates a miracle.
The success of live streaming has also contributed to the development of HEXSE’s research and development. HEXSE’s followers can directly meet the brand founder in the live streaming, so they can communicate without obstacles and the opinions of consumers can be directly conveyed to the end of production, research and development.
It is understood that HEXSE will launch 1 to 2 SPUs per month (SPUs: standardized product units, such as 17 shades of HEXSE’s “HEART STEALER” lipstick, which is actually counted as an SPU) and 2 to 3 new shades. After the product is listed, the management leaders then will make a decision based on the data report obtained and the product with poor sales data is directly eliminated.
In April 2022, HEXSE, in collaboration with Super Brand Day, held the anniversary celebration ceremony, achieving total sales of about $8.46 million, with about $4.02 million in brand self-streaming sales revenue and total exposure of 190 million on online platforms. The event also invited Kwai e-commerce virtual live streamers “Guan Xiaofang” and Wang Ni to connect the microphone for the first time, which became the highlight of the anniversary.
At present, Wang Ni’s followers on Kwai have exceeded 15 million. Feigua data show that Wang Ni’s live streaming sales revenue in the past 30 days has exceeded 62 million yuan (about $9.23 million), and the average daily sales revenue has exceeded 2 million (about $300,000). The average sales volume is 15,000 in every live streaming, and the average sales revenue in every live streaming is more than 1.2 million yuan ($180,000).
