Original debut | Golden Horn Finance
Author | Little Dick
Edit | Weekly sledgehammer
Douyin's parent company, ByteDance, officially broke away from its relationship with Li Ziqi.
On October 27, ByteDance confirmed its withdrawal from its investment in MCN institution Hangzhou Weian Brand Management Co., Ltd., and launched the procedure on October 16.
Two days ago, Li Ziqi's Sichuan Ziqi Culture filed a complaint against Wei Nian, who had cooperated for 5 years, to court, and the cause of the case was suspected of an equity dispute.
The conflict between Li Ziqi and the MCN organization that incubated her was finally put on the table.
But even if the contradiction reached the extreme, Li Ziqi did not break with Wei Nian, but engaged in a huge game. After all, it is time to break with Wei Nian, and according to the non-compete agreement, she has no head in the video industry.
But she had no other choice.
On the other hand, the industry has long been familiar, and Wei Nian has long planned to let Li Ziqi retire at the peak of his popularity due to risk considerations and commercial interests. But it is also difficult to operate.
At this point, there is no room for retreat on either side.
Who made "Plum Ziqi"?
The hidden danger between Li Ziqi and Wei Nian was already buried in 2016.
Before this, Li Ziqi had no fire, and uploaded a short video of ancient style food through selfie self-directing and self-editing through the beauty shoot, attracting the attention of fans, with creativity and little traffic.
After the two sides signed the contract, Wei Nian promoted and operated the social platform for Li Ziqi, and her fans began to grow all the way.
At the beginning of the story, it is still like a fairy tale of "Bole and Maxima".
With the support of Wei Nian, in July 2017, Li Ziqi created its own brand Ziqi culture. According to the enterprise investigation, the business scope of Ziqi Culture includes video packaging, e-commerce, food and cosmetics research and development and sales in addition to content services such as activities and film and television planning.
In the shareholding structure of Ziqi Culture, the registered capital of the company is 1 million yuan, Weinian holds 51% of the shares, and Li Ziqi himself holds 49%. This actually means that Li Ziqi himself, as the main body of Ziqi culture, does not have actual control.
What makes the interest relationship between the two sides so complicated is also the production rights of the trademark of "Li Ziqi" and related products. Through Li Ziqi's video, products such as Plum Ziqi snail powder and Plum Ziqi flower cake have become Internet celebrity products.
Take the hottest plum snail powder in the Plum Seven Tmall store as an example, the sales volume of this snail powder in 2020 is 500 million yuan. However, according to Tianyan, Plum Qiqi Snail Powder belongs to Guangxi Xingliu Food Co., Ltd., the two major shareholders of this enterprise are Wei Nian, which holds 70% of the shares and Hangzhou Chuangliu Video Co., Ltd., which holds 30% of the shares, which is responsible for sales. In addition, the main business entity of Li Ziqi Tmall store is also a micro-thought.
Plum snail powder
These products, named after Li Ziqi and with her video as the main means of revenue, no matter how well they sell, have little to do with her.
Feng Hui, an investor who once intended to invest in Micro-Concept, once revealed to the media that the annual sales of the Li Ziqi brand are between 1.5 billion and 3 billion. For this part, Li Ziqi got an agreed share ratio.
This proportion and share is the fuse of the two against the court.
Break or game?
The lawsuit between Li Ziqi and Wei Nian is a "lawsuit for payment", that is, one party requests the court to order the other party to perform certain civil obligations, such as requesting the other party to compensate for losses and return property.
Simply put, it's about money.
Back on August 30, Li Ziqi posted a picture on the oasis - she walked into the police station with the text "Call a police officer early in the morning". In the comments, she replied to fans that "capital really has the means" and then deleted it in seconds.
Plum Oasis
Half a month later, Li Ziqi's assistant responded that "Li Ziqi is dealing with the problem between the company and the third-party company."
Feng Hui said that the core of this problem is how to distribute equity and money.
The original negotiations were written on the complaint, and things seemed to have changed, but in fact, rather than saying that Li Ziqi was asking for a "break", it was better to say that she was "playing" through legal means.
Li Ziqi, which has been excluded from the "plum ecology", has no power to break with micro-thoughts and "capital". This is also the reason why KOLs are limited by MCN institutions and can only "clean out of the house".
Share and shares, after all, white paper and black writing on the contract, at the beginning of the establishment of Ziqi culture, the proportion of subscription is also agreed by the two sides, and it is too late to put forward opinions when the cake is bigger.
What makes KOLs have to bow their heads is the non-compete agreement that prevails in the MCN industry - in order to avoid celebrities from jumping ship, MCN institutions will stipulate that celebrities cannot sign other institutions after leaving the agency, nor can they open social media accounts for decades or even life.
This means that Li Ziqi, who is free from micro-thoughts, may face a ban on all social media platforms.
This is a very embarrassing situation - to stay, you can only continue to endure your business value being continuously excavated and realized, and then leave, to go, there is nowhere to go.
Taking the old owner to court is Li Ziqi's last resort.
How did it come to this?
Li Ziqi has been suspended for three months, and her fans are losing on various platforms.
Compared with "Li Ziqi", it is more appropriate to call her Li Jiajia now. Li Jiajia created classic content for the IP of "Li Ziqi", and from these contents derived the brand and products of "Li Ziqi", but "Li Ziqi" does not belong to Li Jiajia.
"Li Ziqi" belongs to the micro-thought. On the Internet platform, all accounts about "Li Ziqi" belong to Wei Nian.
The contradictions between the two sides were irreconcilable at least three months ago.
On July 3 this year, WeIan welcomed a heavy guest - Beijing Quantum Leap Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of ByteDance, took a stake in WeChat, holding 1.48% of the shares, making it the 15th largest shareholder.
The arrival of bytes made Wei Nian once jump star assets, and the old shareholders Xingxin Economic Fund, Chun Bi QiuShi, and Huaying Capital increased their holdings. Relevant people said that byte's investment in micro-thoughts, "mainly because of optimism about Li Ziqi."
Now that the contradiction between Li Ziqi and Wei Nian broke out, Byte turned his head and ran.
Wei Nian went farther and farther on the road of capitalization, but What Li Ziqi got was not as she expected, no matter how much capital was ushered in, the way of sharing between the two executions was still the set specified in the contract.
KOL grievances, think that this IP can exist, all because of their own face; MCN is also wronged, you an ordinary person can be red, or rely on the operation of capital?
In the hearts of both sides, there is only one account for each.
A similar ending to KOLs?
The love-hate relationship between KOL and MCN agencies has long been commonplace in the industry.
The common pattern is that MCN institutions sign up unknown KOLs for cultivation and personal IP operation, and KOL account rights belong to MCN, and set shares and related agreements. But as the number of KOL fans grows, the revenue increases, and at this time, the original unfair share cannot meet the KOL, and contradictions arise.
Cooperative relations become hostile relations, and in the final analysis, it is the distribution of interests that cannot be discussed.
In May last year, the B station living area with six million fans, "Xiangxiang Dazhan", released a video saying that because of the contract dispute between himself and Beijing Maker Interactive Technology Co., Ltd. (Shocking Culture), the account of Xiangxiang Dazhan could not continue to be updated. Subsequently, the account of "Xiangxiang Battle" was frozen.
Xiangxiang Battle farewell video
At this moment, Li Ziqi is facing such a situation.
Perhaps from the case of the "Xiangxiang Battle", we can see the result of Li Ziqi's hard thinking - the account was withdrawn, and more li Ziqi imitators emerged after that.
As for the hundreds of millions of fans, but the temporary stopover in the torrent of the online world will always find a new scenery.