The livestream e-commerce wave continues to surge, creating opportunities for some while leaving others struggling to stay afloat. "Friends Shopping," once a shining star in China's livestream commerce landscape, appears to be facing significant growth challenges following the departure of its charismatic founder Luo Yonghao. Third-party data reveals declining performance across key metrics including sales volume and viewership, signaling the gradual fading of what was once a top-tier IP.
Sliding Metrics: A Shadow of Former Glory
Recent data from analytics platforms shows "Friends Shopping" generating between 100-250 million yuan in monthly sales, a noticeable drop from its peak performance. Viewer engagement has similarly declined, with concurrent viewership typically ranging between 2,000-5,000 users per session. Recent broadcasts averaged just 922,000 likes and 1.36 million cumulative viewers per session - figures that pale in comparison to the platform's heyday under Luo's leadership.
Over the past week, the channel conducted 17 livestream sessions attracting 18.09 million total views, with average sales per session ranging between 10,000-25,000 items and generating 1-2.5 million yuan. Notably, three recent broadcasts saw viewership plummet to just 2.36 million cumulative viewers. The platform's follower growth has stagnated at 19.59 million, unable to breach the 20 million threshold. Just three months after Luo's departure, "Friends Shopping" appears to have lost much of its original appeal.
Underlying Challenges: Lackluster Hosts and Generic Content
The platform faces several critical challenges. Current hosts demonstrate limited stage presence, often delivering product descriptions without sufficient enthusiasm or persuasive power to drive purchases. Content remains largely undifferentiated from competitors, focusing narrowly on product features without distinctive creative elements that might help the channel stand out in an increasingly crowded market.
The Content Commerce Revolution: Lessons from Oriental Selection
While Luo previously criticized content-focused livestreaming as distracting from core commerce objectives, this approach has emerged as an industry trendsetter. Oriental Selection's remarkable rise exemplifies this shift. Initially mocked for its classroom-style presentations featuring bilingual product demonstrations and educational content, the platform has successfully carved out a unique niche as a knowledge-commerce hybrid.
Oriental Selection's success has significantly impacted "Friends Shopping." Both being institutional livestream operations, the former's content-driven approach propelled rapid growth while the latter struggled post-Luo. During Oriental Selection's peak popularity, "Friends Shopping" experienced noticeable viewership declines, prompting speculation about Luo's potential return to revive the platform. While Luo denied such "rescue mission" rumors and maintained the channel performed adequately, the downward trend remains evident.
Strategic Shift: Luo's Content Experimentation
Facing persistent declines, Luo eventually embraced content innovation, returning to host a quiz show-style livestream event on "Friends Shopping." This marked a notable departure from his previous commerce-only philosophy. However, the long-term effectiveness of such content experiments in reversing the platform's fortunes remains uncertain.
Intensifying Competition: Returning Titans and New Challengers
While Oriental Selection and "Friends Shopping" operate in somewhat different product categories - the former specializing in fresh agricultural goods versus the latter's focus on FMCG, apparel, and cosmetics - the content pioneer has undoubtedly captured substantial platform traffic. More concerningly, the return of top influencer Li Jiaqi further escalates competitive pressures, particularly in beauty and lifestyle categories where both platforms overlap. Meanwhile, emerging players like Yaowang Network have rapidly gained traction on Douyin's livestream commerce scene. Having failed to capitalize on the interim period when top hosts were inactive, "Friends Shopping" finds itself in an increasingly precarious position.
The Path Forward: Reinvention as Imperative
Luo's departure clearly created significant challenges for "Friends Shopping." However, in the rapidly evolving livestream commerce sector, reliance on individual star power proves unsustainable long-term. The platform must pursue meaningful transformation to identify new growth drivers. Priorities include strengthening host training programs to enhance professional capabilities and on-screen charisma, while exploring distinctive content formats that increase user engagement. Only through continuous adaptation can the business hope to maintain relevance in this hypercompetitive environment.
Whether "Friends Shopping" can successfully transition from Luo-dependent phenomenon to sustainable institutional player will determine its future trajectory. Without meaningful innovation, the platform risks fading into obscurity among countless undifferentiated competitors.