Author|Ouyang

Editor|Garden Manager

Article source|Hedgehog Commune (id:ciweigongshe)

Have you ever swiped into a live streaming room selling fresh-cut flowers on a short video app or shopping software? 

A bunch of simply packaged bouquets stacked together, setting off the rather bold "momentum" of the anchors selling flowers—"ten lilies, ten roses, ten carnations, not enough? I'll send you a tie full of stars, a tie yellow Ying with grass, all these, 39.9 yuan shipping, babies, add quickly into the small yellow car to order."

If you know the price of flowers, or buy flowers offline, you will know that these live-shouting prices are really low for some people, making it difficult to say the word "no". In the studio, consumers place their orders again and again, and "spring" is sent from Yunnan to everywhere, box by box. 

So, the question is, where did these cheap and good-looking flowers come from? And who is it that buys the flowers from the live stream? The business that sells flowers live is selling them this way, plus the postage. Won't they lose money?

Is there a good place to buy flowers in the live broadcast room?

The first time I tried to buy flowers live was in 2022, and before that, she bought flowers through online channels such as Poundland or Flower Plus. But after the first time buying fresh-cut flowers live, she began her own uncontrollable "buy flowers mania". 

In 2016, ty left school and started working. In the past, when she was at home or at school, the scene, the need, and habit of buying flowers were not formed, and she would not have the awareness of buying flowers. Like many people, ty also started her own flower buying journey from the flower vendors at the subway entrance. Seeing a heartwarming, just-right bouquet on the way home from work, spending a dozen or twenty dollars to bring it home, this was her very first experience with flowers. 

So, the question arises: where did these cheap and good-looking flowers come from? And who is it that buys the flowers from the live stream? If live flower sellers sell like this, plus postage, won't they lose money?

ty is exactly this: after getting used to the presence of flowers in a corner of the house, "just like it is difficult to go down again after the consumer upgrade", she will want to maintain the vitality of this corner, not to let the house become empty, so she will periodically buy flowers online and offline through various channels.

Figure source interviewees

The fresh-cut flowers live streaming, in ty's opinion, is the "cost-effective" choice to achieve this kind of spiritual enrichment.

In fact, in 2021, someone mentioned to her about buying flowers live, but she never tried it, and then she started to think about trying flowers live after she encountered some unstable quality in other online channels. Before placing an order that night, ty squatted in the live room for more than half an hour before selecting the package she wanted to order.

After placing an order for herself, ty bought one for each of her two friends and leaders, placing over 200 flowers in one night and waking up the next day with some regret: "It's a process. At that time, I was very excited about buying it. I thought "This is so cheap." The next day, I began to regret my purchase; however, until the flowers arrived, I began to handle it when I felt very worthy; there is this psychological ups and downs in it, so perhaps I discovered that the flowers are almost bad; I will begin to buy again.

Who buys flowers on the live stream? In fact, through the sale mode of goods in the live room, one or two can also be inferred. 

Most of the flowers sold live are provided by the package consumption, accounting for the bulk of the price. Although the price is absolutely very cheap, a package does not necessarily include all the flowers you want. How to choose is not an easy problem. Basically, you buy a package of 30 to 60 yuan and will be able to get your hands on 40 to 70 different varieties of flowers. So many flowers, the average person's home "wake up flowers" containers and vases are difficult to accommodate. Supporting the handling tools and care knowledge is also very important. 

At the same time, most of these packages will also have color and flower materials and other matching logic, including matching grass, etc., which will give consumers more room to play with the different kinds of flowers to meet their own aesthetic floral creations. 

We may be able to extract the general characteristics of this group of people: there is a stable demand for flowers; they understand the basic knowledge of flower care; are happy to invest time in flower consumption; and they have their own understanding of flowers and aesthetics. There will be a strong willingness to consume such goods as flowers, but consumers are also more sensitive to the price, in which case the quality of the acceptable range of cost-effectiveness is the most respected. 

"It's too cheap." "It's really hard not to be impressed!" Such words often appear in the self-reports of the interviewees. For them, it seems to be the perfect place to buy flowers.

Flower packages in the live shopping cart

The various settings in the live room are good enough to satisfy some consumers, and what plays a decisive role in the whole chain is still the quality of flowers. 

How well do the flowers in the live room bloom? 

In the communication with several interviewees, we also heard some cases of poor buying experiences. Although overall satisfied with the majority, today's flower trade is not yet perfect. Cost issues, complex logistics, and the difficulty of standardizing quality control create unsolvable dilemmas for all online flower traders.

Perhaps subject to some luck component, last year I just joined the work of a few who did not get their own satisfaction from the live flowers. When she was working in Hangzhou, Gao would often buy flowers from the "flower vending machines" in the subway stations. The prices were cheap, and the flowers were beautiful, which always made her feel satisfied and was a kind of direct enjoyment and possession of the beauty of flowers. Not long ago in the live room, buying flowers was not as good as it should be. The flower head is very small, has a high rate of breakage, and does not look very good. When you wake up after the flowers, the anchor hand flower state difference is enormous.

"Buy flowers in the live room, just like I buy snacks, to take a chance, but because it is cheaper than other similar things (even if the experience is not good), I do not feel that I fell for something big. Xiao Gao thinks she should not go to the live room to buy flowers. She should either do more homework to find a reliable online store, or still go to offline stores to pick the beauty that can be seen. In short, she wants to have a blind box experience. She is not very interested in trying again.

When the flowers bloom in the live room

An interviewee once said that the reason for buying flowers offline is to feel the "soul connection" when the flowers bloom in front of their eyes. And when these flowers "bloom in the live room", in the anchor to show the user "will send you flowers", the buyer of flowers becomes the "user", and the flowers in the "soul conversation" become an "electronic connection". 

For consumers who are accustomed to purchasing flowers via live streaming, live streaming provides a connection between ordinary online stores and offline flower purchasing that is more vivid than simple pictures and videos but not as intuitive as offline flower purchasing. But overall, live flower buying does make it more convenient for her, but also makes her more able to feel the quality of flowers. 

Now in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, a provincial flower industry park is responsible for live e-commerce business. Mr. Huang, once a series of visits and research on live flowers and now also in leading their own live team, has gradually begun to join live from the video number, which has been a certain achievement for Jitterbug live development. 

According to his observation, the live selling of flowers was first done by a few large volumes of Taobao florists in 2018, 2019, and onwards. These high flow of stores in line with Taobao's strategy to begin to do live at this time. Taobao store is the infrastructure; store live is one of the channel tools to realize; it is the time of Jitterbug flowers to live well in the second half of 2020 and early 2021; and this year's Spring Festival. After resuming work, Mr. Huang also obviously noticed that many flowers and greenery live broadcast began to do the video number.

These developments are still more guided by the platform's policy, and different platforms have very different underlying logic for live streaming. If there were not enough resources to support, before the live logic of the platform had not been touched, many stores may have been eliminated.

After searching for "flowers" in the Jitterbug app

For the Jitterbug live now, for example, a more mature live e-commerce system has been formed for the store. In addition to short video content to shoot, the live room also has to carry out the normal regularity and also has to keep changing the play to stimulate consumption conversion. From Jitterbug e-commerce to traditional e-commerce, the cost is undoubtedly very high, depending on the background, store operations, and the need for a large team.

Aside from the Jitterbug e-commerce traffic low threshold, there are more systemic influencing factors behind this. 

"Your logistics shipping ability and customer service response promptness will affect your word-of-mouth score, which will in turn affect your traffic, giving you the weight of the push. These are interlocking, for example, you shake the store at the specified time to send out (backstage) directly to your fine limit flow. Mr. Huang told Hedgehog News Agency that "Not every open broadcast the number is up. As per observation, basically seventy to eighty percent of the number is not done up." 

The flowers live in accordance with the traditional e-commerce scene under the "people, goods, and fields" model analysis. This category has many characteristics that need to be focused on. For the moment, in the fresh cut flower market, brand force is limited, the industry is concentrated, and shortcomings are clear. To maximize the competitive advantage is the supply chain, or "throughput", of the perfect construction. 

"For example, our site and production efficiency, I should say, in a certain period of time are fixed, right?" However, flower e-commerce has a high consumption frequency and turnover rate. You have a high repurchase rate for products. If you do not have a large site to turn around the production space, no production end of the planning, what is the concept?"

Ouyang photographed at Wangsiying Wholesale Flower Market

This is also an extremely important condition for many large fresh-cut flowers sold live: as long as the chain is allowed to turn as much as possible, connect more consumers and suppliers, and keep the goods in circulation, a channel for the circulation of money and goods can be built, and flowers can be transported in this channel in the most efficient way. Also, because of the special nature of the flower industry, breakage in orders cannot be avoided, but the rate can be kept within an acceptable range by having more orders flow up to cover this part of the breakage rate, which is also an important part of the chain. 

This is also the reason why many live broadcasters are not "selling their own flowers". They are more in charge of building the chain rather than being rooted in the flower base, similar to a "head", using their own traffic capital to package the way to expand the profit margin as much as possible, but also, to a certain extent, to facilitate distant consumers. 

After all, this can be said to be in bulk "benefit the soul".

The double "addictiveness" of live flowers

Fresh cut flowers live streaming is becoming one of the sources of "addictiveness" in the new era of buying flowers. Hedgehog News Agency, after talking to several consumers, believes that this is a double effect of the superposition of "flowers" and "live streaming". 

We can analyze this problem on two levels:

The first is the "live room" format. A non-controversial perception is that the live broadcast itself is a sales approach with promotional elements in which emotions play a very important role in promoting. 

In the past period of time of live flower purchase, Kiki, is also a loyal fan of Li Jiaqi live. With live shopping experience, she will frequently disregard the anchor's introduction of the flower package.Direct self-help ordering is possible, but there will be no initial contact with the psychological threshold of live e-commerce. There is a natural psychological implication of "not consuming" in the field of live streaming, and the temptation is also released in the crazy display and description of the anchor. 

Sometimes Kiki will also be happy to interact with the anchor wherein she feels that she is a more active consumer. Now the anchor will see the pop-up from you during the show, you have this demand, and they will be more patient to communicate with you." This interaction is intuitive and immediate, shortening the time people spend understanding before consumption; the barrier to consumption will be reduced once more, as most live broadcasts will be packaged, but also to reduce the heart of paying.

Ouyang photographed at Wangsiying Wholesale Flower Market

The second is the consumption of flowers itself. A newer perception is that we may see flower buying as a "lightly addictive" category of consumption, and with the upgrading and restructuring of consumption, the psychology of flower consumption is bound to change. 

When faced with the question "What is the meaning and value of flowers to you?", respondents generally associate them with the work scene and the city. 

In the past, when ty lived in a city with a heavy urban life, she could not feel the difference between flowers and not flowers at all, but when you start working and living in a first-tier city, you will have a very different feeling. The emotional value and communication value brought by flowers greatly relieved her when she came home with work pressure every day, and it was because of flowers that she gradually communicated with her mother more and more. "I'm not a work machine yet my life is still interesting", ty thought. 

Mei Mei, who has several years of experience buying flowers online, prefers to keep them on her desk: "I like to go and buy flowers that I haven't bought before, such as different colored moonflowers, and every time I see them I'll be happy and will go and cut the flowers and change the water and so on, feeling like I'm carefully keeping a pet." The situation of the flowers is a reflection of the current state of the flower keeper. When we are in a more stable emotional state or life is in a relatively controlled state, the feeling of raising flowers will naturally be better.

Figure source interviewees

Emotions + emotions, fresh cut flowers in the live room were stacked with two layers of consumer gain buff: on one hand to meet the positive emotional effect of the flowers and on the other hand, perfectly assumed the responsibility of the low price of the live room merchandise promotion, "earning" three words enough to make people happy for half a day.

Thus, flowers, currency, and emotions are traded in countless live streaming rooms. 

In Shanghai, Mei Mei has not bought flowers for a month. According to the past two weeks of consumption pattern, at this time, she should have placed another order for flowers. Now she can only go downstairs at night to queue for nucleic acid to feel some natural atmosphere and cannot even see whether the branches of trees in the community green belt have been green. 

Good thing she still has the cherry blossoms she bought earlier: three branches still sitting in the kitchen, already growing new leaves. Mei Mei sees them every time she washes her hands and wonders if it's time to change their water. "Now it does not grow flowers anymore. It only grows leaves and that is fine, at least it is also a rare green." These few cherry blossom branches are all Mei Mei has imagined about flowers and spring for the past month.

Figure source interviewees

The night before she exchanged her thoughts on buying flowers with Ty, she suddenly realized that she hadn't bought flowers for a long time. The last time she bought flowers was a month ago, on the eve of Shanghai's city closure, when she bought them during the live broadcast. During this month of living at home, she watched the flowers gradually lose their vitality, taking out and throwing away the wilted flowers by the handful, and in the end, only empty vases and "not much life" wood and ornaments were left at home. 

She immediately placed a "passionate order" for her mother and sister-in-law, each sending a set of flowers home. Although she could not receive the flowers in Shanghai in the short term, the flowers from afar seemed to be a way to convey emotions. 

Coincidentally, ty's mother told her that the flowers at home happened to be thankful, and that the flowers she bought would redecorate the home and spring.

In this article, ty, Mei Mei, Kiki, and Xiao Gao are all pseudonyms.