One year after leaving Oriental Selection, the independently operated "Walking with Fai" has achieved remarkable results. In the full year since its launch on January 9, 2024, the total sales of "Walking with Hui" live broadcasts have reached nearly 10 billion. Third-party platform monitoring data shows that as of January 7, "Walking with Hui" has hosted a total of approximately 621 live broadcasts in the past year. After excluding the impact of window display and group purchase data, its total sales through live streaming have exceeded 9.3 billion yuan, ranking first among Douyin’s 2024 delivery experts.
In the first year since its launch, "Walking with Hui" has sold a total of 150 million products. Among them, household daily necessities sold nearly 45 million units, book products sold more than 3 million units/set, and agricultural products and food became the main sales force with more than 100 million units sold. The average price of products in its live broadcast room is 61.64 yuan.
After a turbulent year, Yu Hui and Dong Yuhui broke away from Oriental Selection and began independent exploration.
One rise and one fall
"Walking with Fai" was founded amid controversy.
In early December 2023, Dongfang Selection and Dong Yuhui were involved in a huge controversy over a 700-word essay. In this dispute about salary, business and emotions, it finally came to an end with Sun Dongxu being removed from the position of executive director and CEO of Oriental Selection, and Yu Minhong concurrently serving as CEO of Oriental Selection.
Later, Yu Minhong announced in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room that he would set up an independent live broadcast room with Dong Yuhui. So, a few days later, on December 22, Youhui Peer (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. was established, 100% owned by Beijing New Oriental Xuncheng Network Technology Co., Ltd., Yu Minhong, chairman of New Oriental Education Technology Group Co., Ltd., served as a supervisor, and the final beneficial share was 99%. Dong Yuhui was the legal representative, executive director, and manager.
On January 9, 2024, "Walking with Hui" premiered on Douyin and achieved sales of over 100 million yuan, with sales exceeding 889 million yuan that month. Subsequent sales performance increased month by month, with sales exceeding 449 million yuan in February and sales exceeding 603 million yuan in March. In about three months, it achieved sales of about 2 billion yuan, gained nearly 3 million fans, and had more than 1.2 billion viewers in the live broadcast room.
On July 25, 2024, Dong Yuhui resigned from Oriental Selection and purchased 100% equity of Yuhui Peer (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. for RMB 76.5855 million.
As the undoubted top anchor on the Douyin platform, Dong Yuhui's departure will inevitably have a big impact on the performance of Oriental Selection. According to the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 (June 1, 2024 to August 31, 2024), New Oriental's net revenue increased by 30.5% year-on-year to US$1.435 billion; operating profit increased by 42.9% year-on-year to US$293 million. If the operating losses generated by Oriental Selection's self-operated products and live broadcast e-commerce business are not taken into account, it increased by 58.4% year-on-year to US$303 million.
In other words, Oriental Selection incurred operating losses in the first quarter after Dong Yuhui left.
The impact continues. Gray Dolphin data shows that the total sales of the Oriental Selection account in the past 30 days (December 11 to January 9) exceeded 100 million yuan. The sales of most single live broadcasts remained below 15 million yuan, and only one live broadcast sales were close to 20 million yuan.
In comparison, the total sales of Hehui Peer in the same period also exceeded 100 million yuan, but its single live broadcast sales exceeded 20 million yuan, and the highest one even reached the level of 60 million to 70 million yuan.
With the support of strong performance, "Honghui" continues to expand its business territory. On the one hand, Yuhui Peer announced that it has successfully obtained the MCN qualification license; on the other hand, Dong Yuhui has recently established Zhongnan Yuantong (Xi'an) Technology Co., Ltd., Changge Youhe (Beijing) Technology Partnership (Limited Partnership), Zisan Province (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., Lanzhi Chunxu (Xi'an) Technology Co., Ltd., etc. The business scope involves tourism development project planning, venture capital and other fields.
Controversy and achievements go hand in hand
Yu Minhong felt deeply about the violent turmoil he experienced in the past year. In his eyes, "2024 has become the most unforgettable and difficult day in his life."
On January 2, 2025, Yu Minhong reviewed the "cyber violence" he experienced in 2024 in his personal public account "Lao Yu Xiahua".
Yu Minhong posted on his personal public account "Lao Yu Xiahua" that without any warning, the Internet violence against him was overwhelming, and all kinds of slander and rumors became an unbridled carnival for some people. Some people specifically dig up New Oriental and his personal deeds over the past thirty years, edit and tamper with them, and then interpret them plausibly as facts.
In his opinion, in thirty years of working in New Oriental, even in the story of the movie "Partners in China", he has never experienced such a torturous experience, almost to the point where his life's work has been ruined.
Although, Yu Minhong lamented, "There are some unsatisfactory aspects, but basically it is a happy situation for all parties involved."
But the controversy behind Dongfang Selection has not stopped.
On January 8, in response to a large number of online rumors, Dongfang Zhen issued a statement stating that no one had ever insulted Dong Yuhui on any occasion. Dramas such as throwing manuscripts and samples in the face, banning Dong Yuhui from broadcasting, and canceling access rights are even more nonsense.
Oriental Selection stated that such rumors had been circulating on the Internet before "Walking with Fai" was operated independently. "Such rumors fabricate facts out of thin air, maliciously fabricate false content, create hatred, and induce netizens who do not know the truth to misunderstand and attack our company."
However, it is not just Dongfang Selection that needs to face controversy, there are also many doubts encountered by Peer With Fai. On the one hand, Dong Yuhui was pointed out during the live broadcast that he read the wrong pronunciation. On the other hand, the greater challenge is the quality of goods.
During October and November last year, Wang Hai, a well-known anti-counterfeiter, repeatedly pointed out that Dong Yuhui’s live broadcast room was “selling counterfeit products.” From the fact that the "Hong Kong Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine" marked on the packaging of "Wanbang Mugwort Patch" is not registered in Hong Kong, to the fact that "Potato Assassin" is suspected of misleading consumers, to the fact that the selenium content of selenium-enriched eggs is not as good as that of ordinary eggs... But this has not hindered the continued growth of the number of fans in the live broadcast room. At present, the number of fans in the live broadcast room has reached 26.998 million, which is only 2 million behind Oriental Selection's 29.069 million.
In any case, when Dong Yuhui took the step of going solo, Dongfang Selection and Traveling with Hui both had their own destiny trajectories. Although they were disconnected, there was no turning back. Whether they can achieve a true win-win situation in the future will still take longer to test.Author｜Xie Xuan, editor｜Fang Yu)