Louis Vuitton sees big interest on Kuaishou as fashion show live-stream outperforms Douyin, Weibo and Tencent Video

A live-streamed menswear show from the French fashion house reached 49 million viewers on Kuaishou, a rival of Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok

Kuaishou’s association with lower-tier cities has caused some call Louis Vuitton ‘unstylish’, but it could lead to interest from other luxury brands

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Published: 6:00pm, 24 Jan 2022

French fashion house Louis Vuitton (LV), a popular luxury brand in China, has found a huge new audience in an unlikely place: Kuaishou Technology, the short video-sharing platform known for its appeal with rural and small-town residents.

Live-streamed and playback views of the brand’s autumn/winter 2022 menswear show last Thursday had reached 49 million as of mid-day Monday on the platform, China’s second largest short video app behind Douyin, the domestic version of TikTok that is also owned by ByteDance. Kuaishou users accounted for nearly half of the event’s total viewership, far exceeding views on other internet platforms.

The show was also streamed on Douyin, microblogging platform Weibo, and Tencent Video, where views reached 26.5 million, 20.7 million and 8.7 million views, respectively, according to LV.

Louis Vuitton’s autumn/winter 2022 menswear collection, presented during Paris Fashion Week on January 20. Photo: Louis Vuitton

While this was LV’s first time streaming a fashion show on its official Kuaishou account, it ran a trial for its spring/summer 2022 men’s show last June in partnership with Nylon China, which streamed the show on its account. That show reached 39 million views on the platform.

Given its association with users from lower-tier cities and rural areas, Kuaishou would appear to be an unusual place for luxury brands to market their goods. LV’s association with Kuaishou has even led some commentators to refer to the brand as “unstylish”. LV is currently the only luxury brand maintaining an official presence on the platform.

This presence is not likely about direct sales, however, given users’ limited spending power. Instead, it could be a means of keeping a broad marketing base, according to Vicky Li, managing director of the China office of Digital Retex, a marketing agency that counts European luxury brands Saint Laurent and Valentino as clients.

“Luxury brands run different social accounts to cover as many consumers as possible, although they may not be the brand’s directly targeted consumers,” Li said.