Nandu reporter recently learned that Li Ziqi's MCN company Hangzhou Wei Nian Brand Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Wei Nian") announced a new round of financing, the new investors in this round are ByteDance, as well as the old shareholders Huaxing New Economy Fund, Chun Bi Qiu Shi, Huaying Capital, Taihe Capital as the financing consultant for this round.
Tianyan check shows that as of now, There are 21 shareholders in Weinian Company, of which 7 shareholders hold more than 5% of the shares and 14 have a shareholding ratio of less than 5%. Of these shareholders, 11 are corporate shareholders.
Established a joint venture with Li Ziqi
According to Wei Nian, Wei Nian and Li Ziqi first began to cooperate in September 2016, and Wei Nian provided weibo resource promotion services for li Ziqi to fully devote her energy to content creation.
In July 2017, Li Ziqi and Wei Nian changed the cooperation model, the contract model was transferred to the joint venture company model, and the two sides jointly established Sichuan Ziqi Cultural Communication Co., Ltd. to prepare the Li Ziqi brand.
According to the information disclosed by Wei Nian, the Li Ziqi brand is jointly operated by Wei Nian and Li Ziqi. According to tianyancha data, Sichuan Ziqi Culture Communication Co., Ltd. is legal person by Li Jiajia (Li Ziqi), with Li Jiajia holding 49% of the shares and Weinian holding 51%.
In 2018, Li Ziqi had more than 5 million followers on YOUTUBE, and this year, Li Ziqi opened a store of the same name on Tmall, when Li Ziqi's flagship store had not yet sold its ace product, snail powder.
In July 2019, Li Ziqi's team purchased the top brand snail powder on the market, and after internal evaluation, comparison and negotiation, they selected Zhongliu Food as a foundry. In August 2020, the Liuzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce reached a strategic industrial cooperation relationship with the Li Ziqi brand, and Li Ziqi announced on the spot that he would invest in Liuzhou to build a factory.
During the "Double Eleven" period in 2020, in the list of convenience food sales released by the third-party platform, the brands related to snail powder accounted for half of the Top10, of which Li Ziqi pressed traditional brands such as Huanluo and Luobawang to become the first in the list.
Li Ziqi and Wei Nian have never disclosed the sales data of Li Ziqi's brand, but according to the list released by Tao Data in the first quarter of 2020, the sales of Li Ziqi's official flagship store exceeded 190 million, and sales and sales increased by 37 times and 23 times respectively, with a rapid rise.
According to the "2021 Most Growing New Consumer Brands in China" released by Dolphin Think Tank, Li Ziqi's sales in 2020 were 1.6 billion, an increase of 300% year-on-year.
Its internet celebrity matrix includes Ziwang, Fang Yuan, etc
Nandu reporter learned that in addition to Li Ziqi, there are also a number of Internet celebrities under Wei Nian.
On March 14, 2018, Wei Nian and Yang Ziyu jointly established Hangzhou Erxi Culture Media Co., Ltd., and the two sides carried out the relevant operations of KOL business brokerage.
The KOLs (Internet celebrities) currently cooperated by Wei Nian and Erxi Culture include "Zi Wang", who currently has more than 5 million Sina Weibo fans, Aaron Kwok's wife Fang Yuan, as well as Internet celebrities "kakakaoo-", "Sleeping Silkworm Auntie", "Ten Yuan Poetry Garden", "Wu Qiongqiong Loves Painting", etc. Erxi Culture has also independently cooperated with more than ten KOLs such as "Meow Daxian", Liu Meng, and "Liu Jin".
At the same time as announcing byteDance's investment, Wei Nian also clarified the cooperation with net red Lin Xiaozhai on the official public account. According to its account, since September 2018, WeiNian has only operated Lin Xiaozhai's Taobao store and some Weibo promotion cooperation, and the two sides have broken up around January 2020.
The luxury camp of shareholders behind it is huge
Weinian brand management company was formerly known as "Weinian Technology", Liu Tongming, as the founder of the company, has rich experience in Internet celebrity and short video operation, and is currently the major shareholder of the company, with a shareholding ratio of more than 21%.
According to the data of Tianyancha, Weinian has obtained seven rounds of financing so far. The last round of equity financing was completed in October 2020, and Huaxing New Economy Fund and Zhongyuan Capital jointly invested in Weinian, and the old shareholders Sina Weibo, Huaying Capital, Zhenshi Capital, Chenhai Capital, and Liu Daxiong, founder of Weinian, followed suit.
With the investment of ByteDance, WeNian Company currently has 21 shareholders, of which 7 shareholders hold more than 5% of the shares and 14 have a shareholding ratio of less than 5%. Of these shareholders, 11 are corporate shareholders.
From the perspective of investment structure, in addition to dozens of investors such as ByteDance, Huaying Capital, Huaxing New Economy Fund, Chenhai Capital, Tomson By-Health, Shanghai Poster Industry, Guangdong Yueke Finance, etc., weinian's shareholders can also be seen through equity penetration that weinian has received support from many listed companies such as Greenland Holdings, ZTE, Xinhua Media, Vanke, and Guangguang Media, but through layers of shareholding, they do not hold many shares.
Written by: Nandu reporter Wang Chenchen