text | Ding Jiao, author | Su Qi, editor | Wei Jia
Dong Yuhui, who hates hot searches, has once again become a hot search topic on the entire Internet.
html On July 25, Oriental Selection released an announcement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which was a thunderous announcement. According to the announcement, starting from that day, Hehui Peer, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oriental Selection, will officially separate from Oriental Selection. Dong Yuhui will personally hold 100% of its shares at a purchase price of 76.58 million.Later, Yu Minhong issued an open letter, saying, "I arranged the money for Yu Hui to buy the company, and the company was given to Yu Hui." In addition, he also managed to give all the profits from Going with Hui to Dong Yuhui. The announcement shows that Hehui Peer’s net profit in the past half year was 140 million yuan.
all said that the IP address of the anchor has grown, and it will be a matter of time before he goes it alone. This time Dong Yuhui and Oriental Selection split up, which is decent enough. Many people also praised Yu Minhong for his style.
The "grievances" between Dong Yuhui and Oriental Selection have already begun since the essay incident at the end of last year. Dong Yuhui first returned to Oriental Selection to "quell the public anger", and a few days later announced the establishment of an internal business with Hui. In the past half year or so, Dong Yuhui and Yu Minhong have frequently been on hot searches, and the disputes in public opinion have caused a gap between Oriental Selection and Yuhui Peer, and there has also been huge uncertainty in the development of the two companies.
But if we separate the companies decently, will the problem be completely solved?
’s divestiture of Dongfang Selection, a major anchor, seems to have reduced the pressure, but how should we explain it to investors and other internal anchors? Dong Yuhui, who clamored not to be an Internet celebrity, seems to be free, but what awaits him is another brand new challenge.
Both the money and the company were given, a decent separation
html On July 25, Oriental Selection announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that Dong Yuhui has decided to no longer serve as an employee of the company and the senior management of a consolidated affiliated entity of the company, and it is time to resign. It is due to Dong Yuhui's career ambitions, investment in his other businesses and personal time arrangements, and will be effective on July 25, 2024.In the announcement, Oriental Selection announced that in addition to fully paying the promised benefits and compensation to Dong Yuhui, Yu Minhong, chairman of the board of directors, will distribute all remaining undistributed profits of the company to Dong Yuhui. The announcement shows that from the establishment of Hehui Peer on December 22, 2023 to June 30, 2024, the net profit was approximately 141 million yuan.
In addition, the announcement also stated that the buyer (Dong Yuhui) agreed to acquire 100% of the equity of the target company (Yuhui Peer) for a consideration of 76.5855 million yuan.
Yu Minhong stated in "An Open Letter to Friends of Oriental Selection Shareholders" that starting from today, Dongfang Selection's wholly-owned subsidiary Hui Peer will officially become independent from Oriental Selection, with Dong Yuhui personally holding 100% of its shares. At the same time, "I (referring to Oriental Selection) arranged the money for Yuhui to buy the company, and the company gave it to Yuhui."
He also mentioned that Oriental Selection will continue to support Hui in the past and in the future. In the past, under his coordination, the company spent a few days to free up more than a thousand square meters of office space for He Hui, assemble a mature team of about 60 people, and provide vending systems, pallet supply and A large number of equipment and facilities support. As for the independence of Hefei Peer, the new office space was completed by the professional team of New Oriental Assets. The company's support for Hehui Peer, including the connection of government resources and business opportunities, remains as always.
Subsequently, Dong Yuhui issued a response, reviewed his experience in New Oriental from teacher to anchor to now independent, expressed his gratitude to the company and Yu Minhong , and said: "Considering the current actual situation and development plan, after both parties After friendly consultations and unanimous decision, the company with Hui will start to operate independently. The future is unpredictable and we can only go all out."
As for the reason for the separation, Yu Minhong explained in his response that he had reduced the number of appearances in front of the cameras of Walking with Fai and Oriental Screening, because once he appeared, there would be intensive attacks, and Yu Hui also received a lot of unwarranted accusations. In addition, the power of public opinion often affects the development of the company. Although there is no communication barrier between himself and Yuhui, the complicated public opinion dispute directly leads to the estrangement between Dongfang Selection and Yuhui Peer, leading to huge uncertainty in the development of both companies. .
This is a seemingly decent "family separation". Many people describe Yu Minhong as kind and big-hearted. Maizi, the head of mcn organization operations, told "Dingjiao" that the officially announced acquisition fee is 76.58 million, which is not high and was selected by Oriental Selection. The reason behind this may be to minimize the impact of this incident.
However, fans and shareholders obviously did not buy the split and the sale of Hui at a low price, which was directly reflected in the capital market. As of press time, New Oriental's share price fell 5.46% to US$70.33 per share.
Is Dong Yuhui really independent? The root cause of the
split that triggered the entire Internet can be traced back to the essay incident at the Oriental Screening last year.
In December 2023, the issue of who wrote the promotional copy of the "Jilin Trip" live video triggered a multi-party debate among Dong Yuhui's fans, Oriental Selection editor, Dong Yuhui and the company's management.
A few days later, Dongfang Selection CEO Sun Dongxu "held a meeting" in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room and pointed the issue at the fandom behavior. As a result, Oriental Selection continued to lose fans and its stock price plummeted. The account was suspended several times. The live broadcast room and stock price of competitor Gaotu Jiapin ushered in a boom.
This short essay incident exposed the internal management problems of Oriental Selection.
Finally, Yu Minhong came forward to reveal the truth. He posted a video saying, "The editor's actions seriously lack professionalism, which shows that there are big loopholes in the company's management. Sun Dongxu's actions are also inappropriate. As the chairman, I have leadership responsibilities."
At the critical moment, multiple sources of news spread at that time There are companies that are snatching Dong Yuhui. Former New Oriental famous teacher Luo Yonghao openly discussed the Dong Yuhui incident in WeChat Moments and Make a Friend live broadcast room, and repeatedly encouraged Dong Yuhui to come out and do it on his own. In the end, the turmoil ended with Sun Dongxu being dismissed as CEO and Dong Yuhui staying.
But the matter is not over yet. At the end of December 2023, Dong Yuhui officially left "Oriental Selection", created a new account "Walking with Hui", and launched 7 new anchors, opening a new way of live broadcasting. In just three months, the cumulative sales of the "Walking with Hui" live broadcast room were close to 2 billion yuan, far exceeding the "Oriental Selection" in the same period.
Picture source / Hehui Peer’s official video account
On July 21 this year, He Hui Peer moved to a new office location. The live broadcast lasted for more than 14 hours that day, with more than 3 million viewers and nearly 80 million live broadcast sales. During the live broadcast that day, Dong Yuhui also expressed his gratitude to Yu Minhong many times. At that time, the outside world did not expect that this would be Dong Yuhui's last live broadcast as an Oriental Selection employee. The incident of
has once again verified a law - the major anchors will eventually separate from the company.
During the three years of rapid development of live streaming e-commerce, Li Ziqi and Lang Weixian experienced a separation crisis from the MCN organization behind them, while Xin Xuan experienced an "internal strife" crisis similar to that of Oriental Selection.
Maizi said that as a traditional entrepreneur, Yu Minhong was exposed to the organizational model problem of "big anchor" for the first time, and he had hesitation and choice between the CEO and Dong Yuhui. “At that time, he may not have been able to feel that the ability of the super big IP of live broadcast e-commerce to obtain resources, bring influence and profits, and the ability of individual premium may be far greater than any one in the company. Roles, including CEO. "
But in the way it is handled this time, Yu Minhong seems to have made a balance between the company and his personal IP. Yu Minhong did not hesitate to "treat" Dong Yuhui preferentially this time, and paved the way for his future development with Hui. may be out of the desire to prevent Dongfang Selection from being affected by Dong Yuhui, but he also wanted to tie Dong Yuhui down.
Zhao Yuanyuan, a former veteran in the live-streaming e-commerce industry, also commented in the circle of friends: Dong Yuhui just left New Oriental, a listed company. His existence will only bring doubts to the company's business entities and blur its positioning, which will affect the stock price.But it is unlikely that he will leave "Yu Minhong's universe". The ransom money was paid by Lao Yu. What do you want to pay back?
But this is not a bad thing for Dong Yuhui. Maizi said that if he does not become independent, Dong Yuhui will always be the anchor. Even if he starts an internal business, he will be subject to many restrictions and will interact with the original company system. Only independent IP can . is the real ip. is now fully owned by Dong Yuhui and is with Hui Peer. "His identity can be defined by himself. As for whether he can do well in the future, it all depends on his own ability." After the separation of
, who is more affected?
Oriental Selection and Youhui Peering have separated. The outside world is curious about the impact of the separation on both parties. Who is affected more?
Maizi analysis shows that after the establishment of and Hui Peer, both parties have experienced a decline in potential energy in the past six months.
Let’s first look at Oriental Selection. In the past six months, not only has the style of product delivery changed, but the attention has also been lower than before.
Around June this year, the anchors of the Oriental Selection Beautiful Life live broadcast room were busy shouting about the products, "You are here, buy an order and then go." "321, link up!" This style change made many netizens cry out for disappointment.
html On May 31, Yu Minhong said in a live broadcast that "Oriental Selection is doing a mess now." After this comment became a hot search, Oriental Selection's stock price dropped by 9.92% at the close of the day, and its market value shrank by more than HK$1.8 billion in a single day.By the end of June, Dongfang Selection's popular anchor Dundun publicly expressed his dissatisfaction: "I think what's annoying about this company is that they don't discuss many things with the anchors now, and they don't discuss opening accounts with the anchors." Afterwards, the topic sparked heated discussion, and Oriental The selection is off the air for one day.
Various incidents have caused netizens to question the internal management of Oriental Selection, and more and more exposed the fact that it is an MCN organization . It has failed to achieve the stories it has previously told about independent apps, self-operated e-commerce, cultural tourism, etc. volume. The capital market is not optimistic about the model and prospects of mcn institutions.
On the other hand, both Hui Peer and Dong Yuhui's performance is not stable enough.
This 618 is the first big promotion after the establishment of Hui Pingtong. In the previous March and April, it was firmly ranked first in the monthly list of Douyin experts, but this time it fell to third place (in May 24th to June 18th), which may be related to the reduction in the frequency of live broadcasts by the host Dong Yuhui. The Oriental Selection was only ranked 11th, falling out of the top ten.
According to statistics, Dong Yuhui only participated in 7 live broadcasts of the 618 sales this year, and showed his fatigue in a talk show, saying that his sleep was very bad, and he "resisted selling things" and was unkind to others. Calling him an internet celebrity is "very offensive." In the previous February, Dong Yuhui was on the Weibo hot search for "three refusals to explain underwear" and was accused of being "unprofessional" and "discriminating against women". Subsequently, Dong Yuhui cleared his personal Weibo account.
Picture source / Walking with Hui Douyin account
In the next six months, how to adjust the status and stabilize the situation is a common dilemma facing both. In addition, they have their own problems to solve. A voice from
pointed out that whether walking with Hui is really considered independent, the answer remains to be seen. Because it can be seen from Yu Minhong’s open letter that most of the government resources, suppliers and customer resources that and Hui have together are still in Dongfang Zhen players.
If you carefully observe the live broadcast room with Hui Peer, you can also see that except for the self-operated products of Oriental Selection, most of the other products overlap with Oriental Selection. "From the perspective of the people and goods field of live broadcast e-commerce, the goods part involves the supply chain, which is a big shortcoming of Hui Peer. If it is not handled well, the quality control issues that are pressing on Dongfang Selection will also be put under pressure at the same time. In walking with Hui," Maizi said.
For Oriental Selection, in addition to finding ways to stabilize the stock price and explain to investors, they also have to find ways to stabilize other anchors and executives of Oriental Selection after Yu Donghui goes solo. As for other management tasks of , they must be completed in time.
For Dongfang Selection, which relies on listed companies to transform its business, dealing with such problems is even more critical, because the dissatisfaction of the capital market and consumers will continue to be reflected in the stock price.
But it is almost certain that Dong Yuhui’s future focus will not be on selling goods. As he mentioned in the live broadcast after his return after the incident, he believed that "the world does not lack me as a seller, and it is not my original intention to become a anchor and sales champion." At that time, he I hope that my focus will be on agriculture, books, culture, tourism, and interviews with writers. However, it is not easy to be free. After independence, Yu Hui needs his traffic and his management ability even more.
insiders analyzed that separation is not the best choice, but it must be an inevitable choice. This scene has been an expected ending since the incident of Xiaozong.
* At the request of the interviewee, Maizi is a pseudonym in the article.
