Wei Ya is no longer invisible: her Taobao account has 6 million more followers than Li Jiaqi
It has been off the air for more than two years, but Wei Ya's Taobao account has more than 6 million followers than Li Jiaqi.
Header image source: Attempt library
Text: "Chinese Entrepreneur" reporter Yan Junwen
Editor|Li Wei
Since being "blocked" in December 2021, Wei Ya, the "first sister of Taobao Live", has disappeared from public view. However, there are some signs that Wei Ya is slowly "making a comeback".
On September 7, 2023, Wei Ya's 38th birthday, she began to update content on a WeChat video account called "Qianxun-Haifeng", and the theme of the first video was "The 20th birthday together", which received 4,800 retweets and 1,100 comments. Wei Ya's husband Dong Haifeng left a message: "Thank you. ”
The latest video of "Qianxun-Haifeng" was published on January 11, and the background music of the video is "Return to Xi", "I am willing to return to Xixi by the wind...... I'm still waiting for you." Up to now, "Qianxun-Haifeng" has been updated with 13 videos, including 8 original videos.
"Chinese Entrepreneur" noticed that the content of the "Qianxun-Haifeng" video account is also synchronized on the Douyin account "Haifeng", which began to update its works in September 2022, and the content is mainly based on Wei Ya's family life dynamics, and the account currently has 200,000 followers.
In the two years since Wei Ya disappeared, the Internet has erased almost all traces of her. Taobao Live froze her account and cleared all content, and the WeChat public account "Wei Ya Surprise Club" was updated on December 19, 2021, and Wei Ya's Douyin, Weibo and other accounts were banned.
But some traces still show Wei Ya's tenacious existence.
Wei Ya has not disbanded her huge fan base, in the "Wei Ya's Woman" WeChat group, although there has been no news update for two years, almost forgotten, but once someone randomly sends advertisements or game links, Wei Ya's little assistant will jump out to speak: "Dear people, in order to maintain a friendly environment in the group, any form of advertising is prohibited." ”
In addition, "Chinese Entrepreneur" confirmed that Wei Ya's Taobao live broadcast account has not completely disappeared, it has been left in the fan's attention list under the name "akalil-v", and the account's certified profile is: graphic model, clothing stylist. At present, the account still has 89 million followers, which is more than Li Jiaqi's 82.79 million followers.
Source: Screenshot of Wei Ya's Taobao live account
Regarding Wei Ya's dynamics, "Chinese Entrepreneur" asked Qianxun for verification, but as of press time, the other party has not replied. A senior person in Hangzhou's e-commerce circle analyzed to "Chinese Entrepreneur" that Wei Ya does not need to make a comeback, and there are a bunch of problems caused by her comeback, "It is no longer the era of live broadcast e-commerce, the wind has passed, and the comeback is of little significance."
Wei Ya's absence in the live broadcast rivers and lakes, the vicissitudes of life.
Now, even Li Jiaqi's momentum is no longer what it used to be, and he has repeatedly fallen into controversy, the new center of traffic is Dong Yuhui and Brother Xiao Yang, the platform continues to gather and strengthen towards Douyin, and Taobao has not yet won a second Wei Ya.
Be low-key
Once, Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi were known as the "first sister" and "first brother" of Taobao Live. In the "Double 11" in 2021, Wei Ya's first-day turnover was 8.2 billion yuan, and Li Jiaqi's turnover exceeded 10 billion yuan.
In December 2021, Wei Ya was recovered and fined 1.341 billion yuan by relevant state departments, and as a result, the anchor Wei Ya became invisible and became the behind-the-scenes operator.
After Wei Ya retired, the company behind her, Qianxun, launched the "Bee Surprise Club" on Taobao Live, which currently has more than 10 million fans. Since then, Qianxun has also launched the "Bee Wish Club" and "Bee Joy Club". Wei Ya's assistant broadcaster Qi'er went to Douyin and currently has 6.8 million followers. In February 2023, Qianxun's "Dolphin Surprise Club" appeared on Douyin and started live streaming, which currently has 1.9 million followers.
The live broadcast style, speech and live broadcast category of these accounts replicate Wei Ya, but they do not reproduce Wei Ya's glory, and their combined sales throughout the year may not be as good as Wei Ya's sales in one day at her peak.
Live streaming is no longer Wei Ya's top priority, and she has a lot of options to influence the live broadcast e-commerce industry.
In August 2023, some attentive Xiaohongshu netizens discovered that an account named "Doraemon doesn't understand Amon" appeared on Xiaohongshu, which disclosed many of Wei Ya's dynamics, from which it can be seen that Wei Ya has embarked on a "fashion style", and each dynamic shows different clothes to wear, which has aroused fans. But the account disappeared soon after.
Wei Ya's updated content in the "Qianxun-Haifeng" video account. Source: Qianxun-Haifeng Video Account
In the "Qianxun-Haifeng" video account, Wei Ya also appeared in the video with different costumes, and many fans left messages asking for the same costumes. In the video on January 11, Wei Ya appeared in a Chinese-style cardigan, and a suspected employee of the Bee Surprise Club left a message: "Sister has the same clothes, and the clothing festival in the live broadcast room of the No. 15 Bee Surprise Club will arrange a wave." ”
The clothing category is Wei Ya's dominant category, and Wei Ya and her husband Dong Haifeng's career started from selling clothing in the Beijing Zoo Wholesale Market. In 2017, Wei Ya sold Haining fur for 70 million yuan, becoming famous in a fight, attracting the official attention of Taobao Live. At its peak, there were 40 factories supplying Weiya's live broadcast room, of which a considerable proportion were clothing factories.
A strong supply chain is an important part of Weiya's business ecosystem. According to media disclosures, Weiya's super supply chain base has 10,000 square meters, accommodating tens of thousands of SKUs, and in 2020, more than 3,000 brands applied to settle in.
In 2020, Wei Ya and Qianxun built an open platform for product selection, which is a SaaS platform that links MCN institutions, talents, and merchants. According to the official website, Lingke has settled in more than 70,000 merchants, and the number of service products exceeds 30 million.
In the past two years, Wei Ya has not made a comeback, but her company's anchors and supply chain have been running in a low-key but orderly manner.
However, trapped in not hatching the next "Wei Ya", Lingke's traffic is unstable, and many brand merchants have turned to Brother Xiao Yang and Dong Yuhui selected by Dongfang.
The elastic tension of the supply chain is accompanied by the tidal flow of traffic, in the past, Wei Ya was the tide maker, and now, it is the turn of Xiao Yang and Dongfang Selection in Douyin, they are now the central node of the supply chain flow.
Do things in a high profile
Wei Ya's career layout has gradually moved away from the live broadcast level, relying on her husband Dong Haifeng and Qianxun Group, involving investment, AI, brand incubation and so on.
In May 2023, Guangdong Delmar was listed, with a total market value of 6.762 billion yuan on the first day of listing. The investment team behind this small household appliance company has Qianxun. In November 2020, Dong Haifeng, chairman of Qianxun (Hangzhou) Culture Media Co., Ltd., invested 150 million yuan in Delmar.
In addition to Delmar, Giant Bio, which specializes in collagen skin care products, was also listed in November 2022, and before the listing, Qianmeow Capital, a subsidiary of Qianxun Holdings, and Hillhouse Capital, CPE Yuanfeng and other institutions subscribed for a total of 37.98% of the shares of Giant Bio at a price of 20 yuan per share, with a total investment of 7.33 billion yuan. Among them, the proportion of Qianxun shares is less than 1%.
What Delmar and Juzi Biotech have in common is that they have both been watered by the traffic of Weiya's live broadcast room and achieved a big explosion of business.
Qianxun has also continued to expand its own brand business. In 2021, Qianxun and Nicholas Tse co-founded the "Fengwei Pai" brand, and in 2023, "Double 11", its product "Sauce Grilled Sausage" sold 150 million.
Even after Wei Ya became invisible in December 2021, she and Qianxun under her control are still expanding the business ecology and expanding.
In May 2023, Qianxun established an AI digital human company called Hangzhou Qianyu Intelligent Technology, which is a joint venture between Qianxun and Silicon-based Intelligence, an AI unicorn company in Nanjing. Founded in 2017, Silicon-based Intelligence has received multiple rounds of financing, including Sequoia, Tencent, China Merchants Bank, and Guoxin Central Enterprises, and has produced nearly 1.5 million digital humans.
Weiya is striving to build Qianxun into a "digital, platform-based, and international" technology company. At present, the AI digital human live broadcast service has become one of the business segments of Qianxun, providing AI digital human live broadcast system and AI digital human live broadcast operation teaching and training support.
It can be seen that the story of Wei Ya's live broadcast e-commerce is not over, but she does not only focus on the anchor.
In April 2023, according to the announcement on the website of the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources, Qianxun Holdings won an industrial land covering an area of 16,000 square meters in Binjiang District, Hangzhou at a price of 22.06 million yuan, and plans to invest 300 million yuan to build a "new retail e-commerce live broadcast industry base" project.
This land is surrounded by large companies such as Alibaba, NetEase, and Hikvision, as well as leading companies in the live broadcast industry such as Simba, Wuwu Media, and Chenfan E-commerce, where Sydney is located.
The person in charge of Qianxun responded to the media that the reason for the land acquisition is that the current industrial park of Qianxun has gradually been unable to meet the company's business needs. Qianxun seems to have adapted to the era without Wei Ya.
On September 8, 2023, Wei Ya updated a video on the "Qianxun-Haifeng" account, with the title of the video "Who am I in your eyes?" One of the fans left a message: "Be a person who is useful to the country and society." This message was liked by the author, and the author replied "definitely".