Bilibili Launches E-Commerce Livestreaming for Upcoming Double 11 Shopping Festival

Chinese video content platform Bilibili on October 14 officially launched a new online shopping function within the livestreaming part of its homepage, ahead of the country’s popular “Double 11” shopping festival, according to Tech Planet‘s report.

At present, livestreaming rooms on Bilibili support adding and displaying products from Taobao, JD.com, and some self-operated products. Users need to jump to a third-party platform to complete purchases while ordering goods within the livestreaming rooms of Bilibili uploaders.

The strategy is almost the same as what Kuaishou and Douyin used when they initially explored the livestreaming e-commerce field. Their own supply chain shortcomings were filled up by introducing products from third-party e-commerce platforms.

An industry insider close to Bilibili said that in the second quarter of this year, the platform opened the live-streaming e-commerce function to the first batch of 1,500 uploaders for testing. At present, the new business belongs to the firm’s livestreaming department.

Livestreaming e-commerce requires comprehensive scheduling of people, goods and channels. It took 10 months for Bilibili to build the infrastructure. At the end of December last year, 36Kr reported that Bilibili was preparing to launch the function.

The threshold for uploaders to participate in livestreaming e-commerce is also being lowered, including a minimum age of 18, over 1,000 fans, and broadcasting records from the past four years. This means that most of the 3.6 million monthly active uploaders on Bilibili can participate in the new field.

SEE ALSO: Bilibili Eyes Livestreaming E-Commerce Business

Bilibili is making great efforts to transform uploaders into livestreamers by launching an incentive plan. However, many uploaders still hold a wait-and-see attitude, fearing antipathy from fans. The platform’s supply chain and after-sales service capabilities are also one of the factors they are worrying about.

Bilibili needs livestreaming to serve as a new growth point in addition to games, advertisements and membership. The firm’s financial report for the second quarter of 2022 shows that its revenue in the second quarter was 4.91 billion yuan ($676 million), a year-on-year increase of 9%, while net losses reached 2.01 billion yuan, up 79.3% year-on-year.