Author 丨 Chen Xiao
Editor 丨Fang Yu
Image source 丨Li Ziqi Weibo
After more than three months of suspension, after experiencing countless speculations from the outside world, on October 25, Li Ziqi filed a complaint to make public his dispute with Wei Nian Company.
On October 27, the relevant person in charge of ByteDance confirmed that due to the dispute between Li Ziqi and the contracted company Weinian, ByteDance, The shareholder of Weinian has started the withdrawal process on October 16. ByteDance's withdrawal seems to have added a fire to Li Ziqi's "determination".
For a time, public opinion pointed to Li Ziqi's "Bole" brokerage company. On the evening of November 1, in response to Li Ziqi's lawsuit against Wei Nian, Wei Nian Company, which had been silent for a week, issued a note in response to the equity dispute with Li Ziqi.
Wei Nian admitted that there was a dispute with Li Ziqi, but never thought about or controlled any of Li Ziqi's related platform accounts. He also said that as early as more than a year ago, he proposed li jiajia's equity plan and cooperation model direction, but there was no substantive progress.
Less than ten minutes after the release of Wei Nian's response, Li Ziqi's assistant "her assistant" angrily rebuked on Weibo: "Who dares to ask for shares in a company that has not even disclosed the contract truthfully to investors and shareholders?" And shouted: "Ignoring the facts, full of spring and autumn, it is not interesting to fight a war of words, you want to fight a lawsuit!" ”
From the entrepreneurs who have achieved mutual achievements on both sides to the current situation between Bo Gongtang, Li Ziqi and Wei Nian? After breaking off the relationship, how should Li Ziqi and Wei Nian go in the future?
Five years of cooperation fell apart
"I love your videos, can you meet and talk?" Li Ziqi's acquaintance with Liu Tongming, the founder of Weinian, was due to a private message on Weibo.
Founded in 2013, Weinian's business scope includes brand management, Internet sales, cultural and entertainment broker services, etc., and its legal representative, largest shareholder and actual controller are Liu Tongming. In 2016, he became a full partner of Weibo MCN, and in the same year, Liu Tongmin discovered Li Jiajia (Li Ziqi's original name) on Weibo, and the quiet and comfortable idyllic life in the video attracted him.
After communication and contact, the two sides reached an agreement and began cooperation in September 2016 to jointly incubate the "Li Ziqi" IP and brand in the form of MCN company. The company provides Weibo resource promotion services for it, and Li Jiajia fully devotes her energy to content creation.
In July 2017, Li Jiajia and Weinian changed the cooperation model, the contract model was transferred to the joint venture company model, and Sichuan Ziqi Cultural Communication Co., Ltd. (Li Jiajia held 49% of the shares, Hangzhou Weinian held 51%) to prepare the Li Ziqi brand and operate together. Li Jiajia is responsible for content creation and release, and Weinian is responsible for operation and exploration of business models.
It can be seen from the description of Wei Nian Company that the company is mainly responsible for the commercialization part of the brand "Li Ziqi", and Li Ziqi has developed into one of the fast-growing new food consumer brands in recent years.
According to reports, after Li Ziqi's Weibo fans exceeded 10 million, Wei Nian Company launched the Li Ziqi Tmall flagship store in August 2018. The main selection of the Li Ziqi brand is traditional foods with regional characteristics but no well-known brands, such as snail powder, lotus flour, flower cakes, etc., and soon its sales exceeded 10 million yuan and began to grow rapidly. According to the statistics of "2021's Most Growing New Consumer Brands in China", the sales of the Li Ziqi brand reached 1.6 billion yuan in 2020, an increase of 300% year-on-year.
The "Li Ziqi" brand has created a huge IP cake in the commercial field, but from the perspective of the shareholding structure of Weinian Company, Li Jiajia herself does not seem to have enjoyed much cake dividends in the process of IP commercialization of "Li Ziqi".
On November 1, WeiNian Weibo posted an explanation of the situation in response to the dispute with Li Ziqi's equity. Among them, it is highlighted that Weinian Company proposed Li Jiajia's equity plan and cooperation model direction more than a year ago, but there was no substantial progress; second, Weinian never thought of and controlled any relevant platform accounts of @Li Ziqi; third, Weinian made a detailed explanation of the division of labor between the company and Li Jiajia in Li Ziqi's IP and brand; fourth, Weinian hoped to conduct continuous and frank communication with Li Jiajia on the content of cooperation, cooperation methods and other issues.
However, from the response of Li Ziqi's assistant "her assistant", it seems that "equity disputes" are not the focus of Li Ziqi's appeal. "A company that has not even disclosed the contract truthfully to investors and shareholders, who dares to ask for its shares" pointed to the problem of the contract.
People can't help but think of Wei nian since the cooperation with Li Ziqi, has received many rounds of financing, the shareholder list is not lacking in Huaying Capital, Huaxing Fund, ByteDance, Mango Cultural and Creative Fund and other 22 shareholders, and Li Ziqi has a partner position in Wei Nian, but does not account for Wei Nian's shares. ByteDance chose to withdraw after learning about the dispute between Li Ziqi and Wei Nian, which makes people wonder whether Capital knew whether it was the Li Ziqi brand or Li Ziqi himself when choosing to invest in the shares.
At present, the dispute between the two sides is still continuing, and the viewers are still speculating, and it is all a fantasy before the conclusion is concluded. "Let the bullets fly for a while" and wait and see.
Break off the relationship, lose both?
As far as the current situation is concerned, Li Ziqi may have to completely "break with Wei Nian".
There is also precedent for popular Internet celebrities TO break up. In October 2020, director Zhang Xiaoce announced that he had officially withdrawn from the team of the series "Zhu Dan's Boring Life". After that, Zhu's updated video data kept declining. Zhang Xiaoce started updating the video, and also did not find a new direction.
But Li Ziqi is different from ordinary Internet celebrities, and she carries more cultural values. Recently, there is news that ByteDance will directly sign Li Ziqi. For this message, ByteDance declined to comment.
Compared with Li Ziqi's situation, Wei Nian's living state is even more worrying. According to the news, Hangzhou Weinian seems to be preparing to "go plums to qiqi". Some micro-thinking employees said that people in the company are now worried. It revealed that the double 11 market plan of the Li Ziqi brand is still being carried out, but it is estimated that there will be layoffs after the double 11."
As a start-up company, Wei Nian naturally does not want to lose the big tree of Plum Ziqi. It also said in its response that the company is willing to continue to communicate frankly on issues such as the content and cooperation method of the two sides, and sincerely hopes that the two sides can untie the knot and continue to move forward hand in hand. Although Li Ziqi has not yet formally responded, from the attitude and response of his assistant, Li Ziqi's team is ready to resort to the law.
Behind it is the support of tens of millions of netizens, carrying the mission of inheriting culture, and Li Ziqi has occupied the upper hand of public opinion from the beginning. Even if the fish dies and the net is broken, and the contract is terminated with micro-thoughts, there will be capital lined up to want to invest.
The pressure on Li Ziqi may come from content competition. Protracted lawsuits are time-consuming and labor-intensive, and a long pause is bound to cause the loss of Li Ziqi's audience. The short video of the pastoral life theme has also caused many imitators because of the popularity of Li Ziqi, and the West Yunnan Brothers, Huanong Brothers, foodie Wang Gang, and even actor Li Yapeng are all shooting the same type of video and gaining a large number of fans.
The most important thing for Internet celebrities who rely on traffic to eat is to maintain the speed of updates, no one can withstand a long period of disappearance, and the long-term dispute between Li Ziqi and Wei Nian may also kill a thousand enemies and lose eight hundred.
But Li Ziqi insisted on appealing, and may also have enough evidence in his hands, until the gavel has fallen, onlookers can not understand the specific situation, but the Bole story of Liu Tongming and Li Ziqi has evolved into a sigh for Bo Gongtang.