Zhang Dayi, who closed her store, saw through the essence of online celebrity e-commerce

With the changes in Internet traffic and the evolution of the e-commerce environment, the once popular online celebrity e-commerce model has encountered challenges. The closure of Zhang Dayi's Taobao clothing store "My Happy Wardrobe" not only symbolizes the end of an era, but also reflects the inherent fragility of online celebrity e-commerce.

“Influencer e-commerce is wonderful, but it is only suitable for small and beautiful, small and exquisite, otherwise it will just be an assembly line product.”

The super internet celebrities who once enjoyed great glory now seem to be saying goodbye to their golden age.

Recently, the top Tik Tok internet celebrity "Crazy Little Brother Yang" has been embroiled in allegations of false advertising. From the controversial hairy crabs to the real and fake Hong Kong mooncakes, he and the Three Sheep Group behind him have had the most difficult Mid-Autumn Festival.

In comparison, Zhang Dayi, who became famous earlier than Crazy Little Yang Ge and was once a representative figure of the internet celebrity economy, also recently announced the closure of her Taobao clothing store "My Happy Wardrobe", which had been open for ten years.

Back in 2014, Zhang Dayi and Feng Min, the founder of Ruhnn Holdings, launched the Taobao store "My Happy Wardrobe". In the same year of its opening, the store ranked among the "Top Taobao Women's Clothing Merchants" with sales of over 100 million yuan.

In 2015, the store became the only women's clothing store to be included in the Taobao online celebrity store best-selling list. On Singles' Day in 2016, the store became the first women's clothing store on Taobao to achieve sales of over 100 million yuan.

Just like the rapid growth of the store, Zhang Dayi also had smooth sailing in those years. In April 2019, Ruhnn Holdings, of which Zhang Dayi was the second largest shareholder, officially rang the bell on the Nasdaq. Ruhnn Holdings became the well-deserved first stock of the internet celebrity e-commerce company, and Zhang Dayi also reached the pinnacle of her career.

But nothing lasts forever. With the rise of short videos and live broadcasts, short text and picture content represented by Weibo is no longer the traffic center of the Internet. The first generation of Internet celebrity and his ten-year Taobao store are inevitably caught up in the "front wave".

1 The history of the first generation of Internet celebrities

Like many early influencers who became popular on Weibo, Zhang Dayi also started out as a model, made her fortune on Taobao, and eventually established her own brand, gradually converting internet traffic into real money.

Among them, the Taobao store "My Happy Wardrobe" jointly created by her and Feng Min, the founder of Ruhnn Holdings, can be regarded as an important turning point in her career as an internet celebrity.

In 2014, Zhang Dayi and Feng Min cooperated to open the Taobao store "My Happy Wardrobe". Feng Min was responsible for the supply chain, while Zhang Dayi was responsible for shaping the online store style and Internet celebrity brand.

Before that, the relationship between Zhang Dayi and Feng Min was just like that of an employed boss and employee. Feng Min had started many businesses before. In 2011, she entered the women's clothing industry and established her own brand "Libelin" on Taobao. Zhang Dayi happened to be an exclusive model in the store, but at that time she had accumulated 300,000 fans on Weibo.

With the continuous rise of mobile Internet at that time, the channels for users to obtain information gradually shifted from traditional offline advertising and print media to social platforms. Feng Min felt that personalizing the clothing brand and promoting it on Weibo might have great market prospects.

The real basis supporting this concept also comes from Zhang Dayi's personal Weibo account. Although Zhang Dayi did not have many fans at the time, every time Zhang Dayi posted a photo of herself wearing new clothes, the corresponding link of the Taobao store would have a certain sales increase, and the conversion rate was quite considerable.

Later facts also proved that this "people-led sales" model can occupy the minds of consumers more quickly and promote sales conversions more directly. It is even more like an early prototype of today's live streaming sales by internet celebrities.

One year after its establishment, "My Happy Wardrobe" became one of the top women's clothing merchants on Taobao; on "Double Eleven" in 2015, Zhang Dayi's store became the only C store among the Internet celebrity stores to be ranked among the women's clothing rankings of the entire platform.

After the successful experience of the clothing store, Zhang Dayi subsequently opened a lingerie store and a cosmetics store on Taobao. On the first day of the cosmetics store's opening, she set a sales record of selling 20,000 lipsticks in 2 hours.

In 2016, Ruhnn Holdings received RMB 300 million in Series C financing from Alibaba. It was the only MCN agency in which Alibaba Group invested at that time. Zhang Dayi, CMO of Ruhnn Holdings, was getting closer and closer to entering the capital market.

On April 3, 2019, Ruhnn Holdings was officially listed on the Nasdaq in the United States. Although its stock price fell sharply on the first day of trading, shrinking by nearly one-third, this did not prevent Ruhnn from becoming the first de facto internet celebrity e-commerce stock.

In July of this year, the US "Time" magazine released a list of "The 25 Most Influential People on the Internet", and Zhang Dayi was on the list. Also shortlisted were then-US President Trump, Prince Harry and his wife, and others.

2 Clothing business is not easy to do

Like many business stories of rise and fall, Ruhnn’s listing was both a highlight moment, but it was also more like the beginning of the decline of Zhang Dayi’s internet celebrity business.

In the several consecutive financial reporting seasons after its listing, Ruhan was unable to deliver a profit report. However, the short video wave represented by Douyin and Kuaishou came surging, new top Internet celebrities were mass-produced and created, and the traffic world began to change.

In 2021, Ruhnn Holdings, which had been listed for only two years, announced the completion of its privatization and delisted from the U.S. stock market. Its market value shrank by nearly 70%. The market value on the first day of listing became Ruhnn's peak in the capital market.

In the eyes of outsiders, Zhang Dayi is both the reason for Ruhan's success and the reason for its failure. Due to the exposure of Zhang Dayi's personal negative events in 2020, Ruhan, which is highly dependent on the performance of top Internet celebrities, was severely frustrated, which directly had a significant adverse impact on the company's reputation, business and the trading price of ADS.

In addition, Ruhan’s misjudgment of the live e-commerce situation also caused it to miss the ticket to the new world.

In fact, as early as 2016, Zhang Dayi tried live streaming to sell goods on Taobao. She sold nearly 20 million yuan worth of goods in just two hours of the live broadcast. She can be said to be one of the first people in the industry to try this out.

However, after this live broadcast, Zhang Dayi and her team made a misjudgment and did not devote too many resources and energy to live streaming e-commerce. By the beginning of 2017, when top anchors such as Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya took away a large amount of traffic on Taobao, it was too late to catch up.

In addition to the narrowing of traffic ports, the clothing track on which Zhang Dayi started her career has gradually become one of the most "miserable" e-commerce categories in recent years.

Zhang Dayi herself also admitted in her "farewell letter" that "the meager gross profit margin of the clothing category cannot support various operating costs. Switching platforms will result in losses, and the return rate is higher than that of Taobao."

Zhang Dayi's words actually reveal the difficult situation of the women's clothing industry today. As freight insurance and refund-only policies have gradually become standard features of e-commerce platforms, the women's clothing category has also become a disaster area with high return rates. It is rumored in the industry that the return rate of women's clothing stores in some e-commerce channels is as high as 80%. Such high after-sales costs are difficult for even the top sellers to bear.

According to incomplete statistics from Lianshang.com, no less than 40 women's clothing online stores have announced their closure/stop selling new products since 2024. Among them are old stores with millions of fans or more than ten years of operation, such as Girl Kayla, Big Sim Little Sim Homemade, Lola Code, Retro Big Bang, etc.

In addition to closing stores due to unbearable operating pressure, once the fragile capital chain of women's clothing e-commerce is broken, e-commerce stores and suppliers will suffer heavy losses. For example, the "Girl Kayla" women's clothing Taobao store that was reported to have run away in May this year involved more than 300 suppliers, and a total of more than 35 million yuan in payments for goods could not be redeemed.

3 Internet celebrities cannot survive cycles?

From PC Internet to mobile Internet, from BBS forums, blogs, Weibo to short videos and live broadcasts, it seems that every era of concentrated traffic will give birth to a group of phenomenal Internet celebrities. But unfortunately, even a super IP like Zhang Dayi who already owns a listed company seems to find it difficult to survive the Internet cycle.

The reason for this is, on the one hand, the rise and fall of Internet platforms cannot be shifted by the personal will of Internet celebrities. Most Internet celebrities can only follow the traffic and migrate continuously, but they do not have the ability to grow independently from the platform.

Judging from Zhang Dayi's growth path, the years when she and Ruhan were at their most glorious happened to be the period when Weibo and Taobao e-commerce grew fastest. The high degree of integration of short text and picture content with clothing e-commerce also enabled it to be the first to reap the dividends of celebrity IP and quickly take off on the cusp of the trend.

However, as the mobile wave continues to deepen, Weibo's traffic has been continuously divided up by many up-and-coming companies, and the rise of Pinduoduo has caused Taobao's e-commerce to suffer heavy losses. In addition, the clothing track is also under the impact of price wars between platforms. For an already listed Internet celebrity agency, large-scale operations have become a burden.

Zhang Dayi herself also reflected on Weibo that the ultimate problem of the rise and fall of e-commerce is corporatization and process-based management. They all want to rely on regular forces and entities, but instead they are following the old path that many traditional clothing companies have failed to achieve.

Due to the needs of the times and the iteration of operating tools, the team has to become larger and larger, and the invisible hidden costs are getting higher and higher.

Zhang Dayi also believes that "influencer e-commerce is wonderful, but it is only suitable for small and beautiful, small and exquisite, otherwise it will just be an assembly line product."

On the other hand, high-quality content productivity is also an important factor in determining how far an internet celebrity can go, especially when new platforms emerge. Faced with a brand new community atmosphere, user preferences, and content distribution mechanisms, no type of content creator can always rely on their old reputation.

From subscription-based public accounts to information platforms for recommendation and distribution, from Weibo where pictures and texts are dominant, to Douyin and Kuaishou where short videos are king, this trend is particularly obvious, and more and more internet celebrities are being eliminated as a result.

The commercial monetization model of internet celebrities themselves has also determined that whether it is taking advertisements, promoting products, or establishing brands, they need the injection of front-end traffic, otherwise their own development will not be sustainable.

As for how to obtain traffic, the underlying logic is still the classic fatalistic statement, "It is inseparable from personal struggle, but at the same time, we must also consider the course of history."

Author丨Muge Editor丨Nut Cover Source丨Unsplash"
This article is written by the author of Operation Pie [Spiral Laboratory], WeChat public account: [Spiral Laboratory]. It is originally created/authorized to be published on Operation Pie. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

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