Livestreaming of Nansha blue crabs attracts regular customers

Zhu Zijian, the first Taobao shopkeeper to sell blue crabs, has won 8,000 regular customers in 200 livestreaming sessions in half a year.

He opened a livestream show on the "Double 11" (Nov 11) shopping craze like many other online vendors. However, he didn’t invite any influencer to draw views.

The live image sometimes stood still, with the crabs being the only protagonists. Zhu, playing as a voice-over, engaged with consumers by frankly but seriously answering their questions on crabs, recipes, even on the weather.

“Actually, I thought of inviting some popular influencers to promote sales at first, but I eventually gave up this idea because they are not so familiar with blue crabs. They may lure more viewers other than crab enthusiasts. I intended to attract loyal fans and regular consumers by professional interpretation and superior product quality,” said Zhu.

The blue crab, a special local product in Guangzhou’s Nansha district, enjoys relatively-high market popularity for its large body, delicate meat, delicious flavor and high nutritional value.

In the past 10 years, local blue crabs were mainly sold wholesale with relatively low margins.

Zhu believes that livestreaming is a trendy way to retail and is able to improve profits by 30 percent.

Now, his customers are spread all over the country, most of them coming from Shanghai, Beijing, and provinces of Fujian and Jiangsu. Some overseas Chinese residing in Singapore and Canada also order through the livestreaming. Zhu refers them as his “crab friends”.

“Ten percent of the Taobao shop followers choose to place orders. This result is satisfying though it can’t match wholesale results,” he said, adding, “I wish to make Nansha blue crabs a reputed brand.”

The followers will exceed 10,000 by the end of this year, according to Zhu’s data analysis.