Author l Musen.
At the recently concluded year-end meeting, all the employees of Oriental Selection appeared in solemn red dresses, and only Dong Yuhui wore a simple black dress.
During the conference, Dong Yuhui expressed his gratitude and deep blessings to his colleagues in a calm and firm tone, and hoped that everyone would live a happy life and take their work to a higher level.
In the past few years, Dong Yuhui has brought countless good memories to netizens with his talent and wisdom. Through his efforts, the Dongfang Selection Live Room has also become a household name.
Before Dong Yuhui suddenly became popular in June 2022, the share price of Dongfang Selection (which was still called "New Oriental **" at that time was about 4 yuan, and the total market value was about 4 billion Hong Kong dollars. But after Dong Yuhui became popular, the stock price soared, reaching a maximum of 7555 yuan, with a market value of nearly 100 billion Hong Kong dollars. Based on this, it has been calculated that Dong Yuhui's IP value exceeds 10 billion Hong Kong dollars.
But the just-ended year 2023 was not smooth for Dong Yuhui, and a huge turmoil at the end of the year almost made him and Dongfang Selection on the verge of a break.
Encountering a water reversal
In July 2021, the "Opinions on Further Reducing the Burden of Homework and Extracurricular Training for Students in the Compulsory Education Stage" was officially issued, and the "double reduction" began. In the following year, the education and training industry changed significantly - without the coercion of capital, related enterprises were fully transformed.
In the past, New Oriental, the leader in education and training, relied on "live broadcasting" to break out of the world, and the anchors selected by Dongfang are different from Simba and Li Jiaqi who brought goods in the live broadcast room at the same time, they are more like a group of teachers who have stepped down from the podium, it seems that sharing knowledge is still their main business, and "bringing goods" is a side business.
Dong Yuhui, Yoyo, Dunton, Mingming, Tianquan and a number of anchors have also become popular.
Among them, Dong Yuhui became popular by virtue of his Shaanxi dialect and live broadcast while telling jokes, and became the head anchor in the domestic live broadcast industry. Many netizens reported that they learned about black holes, Nietzsche, the Industrial Revolution, the origin of life and other knowledge after a live broadcast, and also learned a lot of English words, which is a very peculiar live shopping experience.
But after entering 2023, the Dongfang Selection live broadcast room is "in constant condition".
On March 15, the topic of Dongfang's selection of farmed shrimp to be sold as wild shrimp appeared on the hot search. Mr. Wang, a consumer in Jiangsu, bought the "100% wild sea-caught" prawns claimed by Dong Yuhui in the "Oriental Selection" live broadcast room, but he found that the shrimp were actually farmed. After half a year of fruitless complaints, Mr. Wang chose to sue Oriental Selection.
Subsequently, Yu Minhong, chairman of New Oriental Education Group, admitted at the 2023 Yabuli China Entrepreneur Forum that Oriental selected and sold farmed shrimp, saying that it was because of insufficient experience in product selection and not intentionally.
On the afternoon of July 26, the Douyin live broadcast room "Oriental Selection Self-operated Products" issued a suspension notice, saying: "Due to the requirements of the rules, from the 26th to the 29th, the Dongfang Selection Self-operated Product Store and the Dongfang Selection Self-operated Product Live Room will be suspended for three days."
On October 11, the million-fan anti-counterfeiting blogger "Iron Head Punishes Evil and Promotes Good", which has attracted much attention for reporting illegal make-up classes in education and training institutions, issued a **, saying that it is about to crack down on fake Oriental Selection, and called it an e-commerce platform that mainly sells stories.
Source: Black Cat complains about Weibo.
On October 31, according to the news released by the Black Cat complaint, 66 consumers collectively complained on their platform that the anchor of the Dongfang Selection ** live broadcast room will return the red envelope after placing an order, which can be used to pay the final payment, buy spot, etc., and mention "zero yuan purchase"; As a result, before the time to pay the final payment, the red envelope had expired, resulting in a loss of hundreds of yuan. Consumers believe that Dongfang Selection is suspected of false propaganda and misleading consumers to buy.
In December, the Dongfang selection "small composition" incident caused a stir, and finally ended in a personnel adjustment.
In the same December, the popular science blogger "Fruit Hunter Yang Xiaoyang" issued a ** saying that the Rong'an kumquat products sold in the live broadcast room of Dongfang Selection were suspected of false publicity, and the packaging of the self-operated kumquat products sold by Dongfang Selection was marked as "big fruit", but the actual product was 15g-20g "Zhongguo". At the same time, Dongfang selected and publicized the product from Rong'an County, Liuzhou, Guangxi, but what was sold was "crispy kumquat" that was not available in Rong'an County, and the name of the variety was wrong, which was suspected of false publicity.
On January 18, 2024, Wang Hai, a well-known anti-counterfeiter, said on Weibo** that laxative ingredients were detected in the hot tiq prune juice promoted by Dongfang Selection.
Behind a series of negative news, in fact, the side reflects the chaos of Dongfang Selection's internal management.
Bringing goods "loses money and makes money".
In addition to product problems and personnel management problems, Dongfang Selection is also facing a greater dilemma.
In June 2022, the live broadcast room of Oriental Selection was out of the circle, and the stock price also soared. In January 2023, Dongfang Selection's share price once climbed to 75HK$5. However, in the following year, the share price of Oriental Selection fell into a long downturn, as of January 31 this year**, the company's share price was 23 Hong Kong dollars, a decline of nearly 70% in a year.
Source: Oriental Fortune.
On the evening of January 24, Oriental Selection released its interim results report for the 2024 fiscal year, and from January 25th to January 29th, Oriental Selection's stock price was ** for three consecutive trading days, with a cumulative decline of 1974%。
According to the financial report, in the six months ended November 30, 2023, Dongfang Selection achieved revenue of 279.5 billion yuan, compared with 20 in the same period last year8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 344%；
Achieved a net profit of 24.9 billion yuan, compared with 5Compared with 8.5 billion yuan, a significant decrease of 574%。
Dongfang Selection, who is embraced by traffic and frequently searched, plus Dong Yuhui, who has become a "top Internet celebrity", why is the company's performance so poor?
In the financial report, Dongfang Selection attributed the sharp decline in profits to the sharp increase in business, which led to an increase in inventory costs and transportation costs of self-operated products。In addition, in order to expand the scale of self-operated product selection, recruit more employees for the live broadcast business, and invest more sales and marketing expenses, the launch of the "Oriental Selection APP" has also caused a significant increase in R&D expenditure.
During the reporting period, the total cost of revenue of Dongfang Selection was 1.7 billion yuan, compared with 1.1 billion yuan in the same period last year, an increase of 55% year-on-year.
During the same period, the company's sales and marketing expenses increased from 227.8 billion yuan increased to 559.5 billion yuan, an increase of 145 percent year-on-year6%；R&D expenditure increased to $75.5 million from $48.3 million in the same period last year.
In addition, the significant increase in employee compensation expenses was also an important reason for the decline in performance.
According to the financial report, for the six months ended November 30, 2023, the total salary expenses of Dongfang Selection were 6$2.5 billion;
In the six months from June 1 to November 30, 2022, Oriental Selection's salary expenses were 23.3 billion yuan, an increase of 16.7 billion7%。
The stock price has been ** for days, coupled with the ugly performance, the company's shareholders chose to "recharge".
On January 31, Oriental Selection and New Oriental jointly announced that New Oriental and Yu Minhong (director and chief executive officer of Oriental Selection and director of New Oriental) have each committed to purchase a total of HK$700 million worth of Oriental Selection shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at market price.
According to the announcement, New Oriental promised to purchase a total value of 6The HK$600 million Oriental Selection shares will be beneficially held by New Oriental after the purchase, and Yu Minhong promised to purchase the Oriental Selection shares with a total value of HK$40 million, which will be beneficially held by Yu Minhong or the corporation controlled by Yu Minhong after the purchase. The share purchase exercise will be progressed gradually over a period of six to 12 months from the date of the announcement.
Judging from the results, the shareholders' actions have had a good effect, and the share price of Dongfang Selection rose 6% intraday on January 31, and there were also different increases in the next two trading days.
Walk with Hui and kill back
At the end of 2023, the Dongfang Selection "Small Composition" storm is full of wind and rain in the city, which is well known, which not only exposes the loopholes in the management model of Dongfang Selection, but also allows the public to see the urgency of Dongfang Selection's executives to "de-Dong Yuhui".
In the end, the turmoil ended temporarily with Sun Dongxu stepping down as CEO of Oriental Selection, and Dong Yuhui being promoted to senior partner of Oriental Selection, cultural assistant to the chairman of New Oriental Education and Technology Group, and vice president of New Oriental Cultural Tourism Group.
After the turmoil, Yu Minhong not only promoted Dong Yuhui, but also officially registered a company for Dong Yuhui as a subsidiary of Dongfang Selection, and opened an independent account "Walking with Hui" on Douyin as Dong Yuhui's live broadcast platform.
According to the data of the third-party data platform "Three Eyes Check", the top 20 Douyin talents with goods in January 2024 have been sorted out.
The list shows that the top three on the list in January were Hui Walking, Mi Na Na, and Mr. Dong, with a total sales of 205.9 billion, accounting for 27 percent of the total sales on the list7%。The newly established company walked with Hui, with sales of more than 8 in January8.9 billion, 1 ahead of the second place500 million.
Judging from the detailed data,In the past 30 days, there have been 39 live broadcasts with Hui, with more than 600 million people and a cumulative increase of 789 fans30,000, with cumulative sales of over 900 million, cumulative sales of 15.25 million, and a conversion rate of 251%。
At the same time, Oriental Selection, which ranked first on the list last month, slipped to fourth in January. It can be seen that Dong Yuhui's appeal is still strong.
Moreover, even if Dongfang Selection chose to let Dong Yuhui open another "trumpet" in order to avoid the loss of fans, while developing rapidly with Hui, Dongfang Selection still did not escape the reality of "losing fans".
According to the data, from January 9th to 15th, the total number of fans of "Walking with Hui" increased from 72240,000 rose to 119310,000, up 47070,000; The total number of fans of "Oriental Selection" has increased from 315080,000 to 313270,000, about 180,000 fans.
As of 8:30 p.m. on January 27, the followers of the "Walking with Hui" Douyin account were 139590,000 people, and the fans of "Oriental Selection" are 311600,000 people. Although the number of fans of the two accounts is very different, if you count the fans of Dong Yuhui's personal account, the overall number of fans exceeds that of "Oriental Selection".
In response to the problem of diversion of the two platforms of Dongfang Selection and Walking with Hui, Yu Minhong recently said at the financial report meeting that the diversion is not obvious, and many fans are fans of both accounts at the same time.
Summary
With the unique "knowledge with goods" model, Dong Yuhui has transformed from an unknown teacher to a "top stream" who can leverage hundreds of millions of traffic, and it is precisely because of his rise that the side has boosted the transformation of New Oriental.
But since Dongfang Selection became popular, the voice of "Dong Yuhui" has been full of it, the reason is that a company's performance and growth cannot rely too much on a certain person.
This view seems plausible on the surface, but there is a huge risk of "putting all your eggs in one basket".However, in the era of live broadcast e-commerce, this concept and practice do not conform to the law of industry development。The value of a super IP is even more than the sum of hundreds of waist IPs, which is why even if Dong Yuhui went out to "practice a trumpet", he could quickly reach the top of the list in a short period of time.
Now it seems that the way for Dongfang Selection to encounter a breakthrough in the dilemma of choosing to break through is to remove the CEO and give Dong Yuhui a space to play alone, although this has eased the contradiction in the short term, but in the long run, the impact on the main brand is emerging.
Disclaimer: This article is only for knowledge sharing, just to convey more information! This article does not constitute any investment advice, and any person makes investment decisions based on it at his or her own risk. February** Dynamic Incentive Program