---
title: "The Accidental and Inevitable Rise of East Buy"
description: "East Buy's explosive growth from 1 million to 10 million followers in days is both accidental and inevitable. It stems from a series of chance events and the team's relentless effort, embodying the brand's resilience and value-driven approach."
author: "金梅"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-06-21"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-accidental-and-inevitable-rise-of-east-buy-cf95530e/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-accidental-and-inevitable-rise-of-east-buy-cf95530e.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/CVcY1QCOO9MQtf7xvDGSSA"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%B8%9C%E6%96%B9%E7%94%84%E9%80%89%E5%87%BA%E5%9C%88%E7%9A%84%E5%81%B6%E7%84%B6%E4%B8%8E%E5%BF%85%E7%84%B6-cf95530e.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-accidental-and-inevitable-rise-of-east-buy-cf95530e/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# The Accidental and Inevitable Rise of East Buy

> East Buy's explosive growth from 1 million to 10 million followers in days is both accidental and inevitable. It stems from a series of chance events and the team's relentless effort, embodying the brand's resilience and value-driven approach.

********Click to read the original text for details********
Is East Buy's rise accidental or inevitable?
Over a single weekend, East Buy "exploded." It took six months to go from 0 to 1 million followers, but only three days to go from 1 million to 3 million. In the following three days, East Buy's followers soared directly to 10 million. At this rate, surpassing Luo Yonghao's "Make Friends" is just a matter of time.
New Oriental Online (01797.HK) stock price also surged, closing up 39.37%, 39.97%, 23.17%, 54.19%, and 72.71% respectively over the five trading days from June 10 to June 16.
With bilingual product promotion and knowledge-rich content, some say New Oriental is a breath of fresh air in the livestreaming world, **taking the industry to new heights of competition.** In this 618 shopping festival lacking top influencers, East Buy became a lifeline for platforms and users alike.
The livestream room, offering knowledge, joy, and emotion, made viewers watching with notebooks laugh and then cry...
With the entire K12 sector vanishing overnight, how did Yu Minhong steer this giant ship to a successful turnaround? Many said Yu Minhong made a wrong choice in livestream e-commerce. Now that East Buy has successfully broken out, is it accidental or inevitable?
**1**
**Accidental**
East Buy had been broadcasting for nearly 180 days. The gradual growth in followers to the sudden surge is indeed the result of a pile-up of numerous accidental events.
First, New Oriental's performance art on the ruins of K12 is itself an accident. Yu Minhong once bet with Jack Ma that his company would last 100 years. How could he, full of ambition, have imagined that this track full of opportunities would disappear overnight? When the industry was at its peak, it suddenly fell to the bottom, and laying off more than half of the company's teachers was definitely accidental.
Second, former New Oriental teacher Luo Yonghao's entrepreneurial failure and his use of livestreaming to repay hundreds of millions in debt was an accident. This event gave the desperate Yu Minhong hope, which was also accidental. Over the two years starting April 1, 2020, Luo Yonghao's "Make Friends Livestream Room" (including vertical categories) achieved a total GMV of 10 billion yuan, with over 55.51 million orders.
Yu Minhong, who had 50,000 people to support, also needed to go where the money was, but he certainly didn't expect the overtaking to come so suddenly. On the evening of June 13, Luo Yonghao, who had announced his "retirement" from livestreaming to start a business, appeared in the "Make Friends" livestream room, with a peak of 30,000 people there to reminisce with him. But at that moment, in East Buy's livestream room, there were 130,000 people online simultaneously.
Third, no one expected this 618 to encounter a desert of top influencers. In this "hardest 618 ever," Douyin's top seller Luo Yonghao left, Taobao Live's top female host Wei Ya stopped broadcasting, and Kuaishou's top host Xin Ba was embroiled in another fake goods scandal. The only surviving top influencer, Li Jiaqi, had all his goods ready, but his story came to an abrupt end as he also stopped broadcasting. As a massive mid-year promotion, e-commerce platforms were all geared up, but now their strength had nowhere to be released.
In this vacuum without top influencers, whoever could break through quickly would quickly occupy the high ground of traffic. Under such circumstances, Douyin's increased traffic tilt and changes in recommendation rules contributed to the popularity of "East Buy," a group of over ten anchors including Dong Yuhui, YoYo, Qiqi, and others.
Fourth, on a boring Friday, Dong Yuhui, who looks like a terracotta warrior, taught people "original cutting" steak and a series of related English phrases in a bilingual way, while selling steak and giving away a frying pan that closely resembled his face shape. This recommendation was just one of many ordinary ones in his six-month livestreaming career; the explosion was accidental.
As a former top lecturer at New Oriental, his staying on as an anchor was also accidental. He had already completed all resignation procedures, but coincidentally, New Oriental Online's CEO Zhang Dongxu kept him in a heart-to-heart talk until late at night, and by the time they finished, the HR department had closed, so he couldn't get his resignation stamped.
Then he went home and asked his grandmother, "What if I become a vegetable seller?" Going from a respected teacher to a shouting online anchor was a huge psychological hurdle for a cultured person, but his grandmother smiled and said, "As long as you're healthy." That's how these ordinary livestreams came to be.
Fifth, catching the livestreaming wave was also accidental. Livestreaming is nothing new; 2016 is widely recognized as the first year of internet livestreaming, and that year belonged to Taobao. We are familiar with top anchors like Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, who almost all emerged in that era.
On April 1, 2020, Luo Yonghao, who owed 600 million yuan due to his smartphone venture, started livestreaming to "perform to repay debts." His rise was the rise of "talk show" livestreaming and also the rise of Douyin livestreaming.
Now livestreaming is not new, but from the constant invitations of celebrities to top anchor rooms, it's clear that people's demands on livestream content are rising. When the anchor industry began to "roll" (compete fiercely), New Oriental, well-versed in "involution," happened to collide with it.
From this perspective, East Buy is extremely lucky.
**2**
**Inevitable**
People often say that all the luck in life comes from accumulated effort. There is no such thing as easy success. The reason East Buy's livestream room can make people cheer and sigh is also its strong "underlying wisdom of new consumer brands."
First, **a resilient and tear-jerking brand spirit.** Among all marketing activities, consumer goods spend the most on marketing. On one hand, they have amazing sales volumes and high-frequency consumption; on the other hand, their products lack absolute technical barriers. Therefore, FMCG needs strong brands, and strong brands are supported by strong spirits.
Thus, Nike and Adidas don't sell sports equipment; they sell the spirit of self-transcendence. P&G doesn't sell daily necessities; it sells the joy and cleanliness of a beautiful life. L'Oréal doesn't sell cosmetics; it sells women's pursuit of a better self. Chanel doesn't sell clothing and accessories; it sells women's independence and self-respect.
And Yu Minhong, who has faced life-and-death crises multiple times, with his big heart, is the perfect foundation for the East Buy brand.
From the early days of entrepreneurship, when he was kidnapped by a criminal gang, he not only survived after being injected with a large dose of animal anesthetic but also became the only one among the seven people kidnapped by the gang to be spared. They thought he was "a decent person."
He invited two friends from abroad to start a business together, but was ousted from the board by the invited friends, left to worry outside the meeting room. But he endured, and after the friends fought and both left, he continued to steer New Oriental.
In 2021, with the double reduction policy, the company's market value dropped by 90% in a year, revenue decreased by 80%, and within a few months, the company downsized from 110,000 to 50,000 employees. Cash expenditures for tuition refunds, employee severance N+1, and lease terminations for teaching sites totaled nearly 20 billion yuan.
This should be the biggest blow Yu Minhong has ever faced, making it difficult even to exit smoothly. Fortunately, Yu Minhong insisted that the money in New Oriental's accounts must be enough to refund all students' tuition and pay all employees' severance. He never gave shareholders a single dividend, saying they had already profited from stock appreciation. So he steadily took out 20 billion yuan and began a tragic yet composed transformation.
**Every crisis seems insurmountable, but Yu Minhong ultimately chose to face difficulties and challenges head-on.** Like his own book, "Finding Hope in Despair." He established "East Buy," focusing on agricultural products and daily necessities, and began developing self-branded products.
Carving stones of hope from the mountain of despair, such resilience is hard not to be moved by.
Second, **the righteous path gains many helpers; values are correct.** A brand not only needs an inspiring core but also must carry correct values. Recall the recent incidents: JNBY's child cult-like designs; Dolce & Gabbana being expelled from mainland China for wrong values on race; H&M's wrong voice in the Xinjiang cotton incident... Wrong values can be devastating to a brand.
People say "the righteous path gains many helpers, the unrighteous path loses them." The "path" of East Buy's success is important. The biggest characteristic of scholars is "poverty and sourness"—not afraid of poverty, but very "sour." Their value system says "one cannot bow for five dou of rice." So New Oriental teachers, especially excellent ones, find it hardest to cross the psychological barrier from teacher to "vegetable seller."
But Yu Minhong, born a farmer, understands farmers' difficulties better than anyone and knows the hardships of the bottom class. He donated 50 million yuan worth of desks and chairs he once used to conquer the world, giving rural children the opportunity to receive a good education. So, Yu Minhong can "paint pies" for these teachers more aptly than anyone else.
He lets them know they are not selling a bag of rice, but a farmer's year of harvest, and the possibility for a rural child to change their destiny. They are not selling corn, but an elderly left-behind person's labor to exchange for a child's return home for the New Year. They are not selling books, but society's pursuit of calmness and respect for knowledge.
When these educated people recognize the value of their work, when they have the chivalrous spirit to shoulder justice, and when they pass this on to users, the brand's appeal naturally forms.
Third, **positive incentive events.** Six months ago, Yu Minhong's livestream room had 5 million followers and sales of 5 million yuan. Yu Minhong, who led by example into the livestreaming field, set an example for the team with his internet celebrity status and decent performance. His experience of enduring mediocrity and cold stares also gave the team positive incentives.
East Buy went from a single livestream GMV of tens of thousands, to breaking 1 million per session in late May, to the recent popularity. This is both an accident and the result of the team's efforts over the past six months under Yu Minhong's demonstration effect, and even more so the accumulation of New Oriental's 28 years.
Fourth, **if you give a name to the miracle in this world, it is the effort of a group of people.** Every successful brand has a strong and efficient organization. As East Buy employees say, as long as you "make efforts no less than anyone else, even the gods will help you."
On December 28, 2021, Yu Minhong led the team to launch East Buy's livestream debut, with a total GMV of 4.604 million yuan. But without Yu Minhong's halo, the livestream room only sold 20,000 yuan on December 29. Broadcasting from 6:45 AM to 1 AM the next day, persisting for dozens of hours daily is not easy. They also faced strong doubts from the outside and within.
In the first month, Sun Dongxu, who transformed from CEO of New Oriental Online to the helm of East Buy, set a monthly sales target for the team. Everyone burst into laughter at this whimsical number, and he laughed too. The next day, six people didn't sell a single item all morning. But in the second month, the number was actually achieved.
On May 21, due to the pandemic, the building where East Buy's livestream room was located was to be sealed at midnight. To avoid interrupting the broadcast, after making countless calls, they contacted a hotel in Tongzhou District, Beijing. After ending the broadcast early at 9 PM, the team moved all livestream equipment, goods, and six large freezers onto trucks before the midnight lockdown.
At 2 AM, after arriving at the hotel, the team worked overnight to restore the livestream set, and the next morning, the livestream room was back online as usual.
"At that moment, I felt the team could achieve great things," Sun Dongxu said. "Everyone threw themselves in without regard for cost or salary, persisting and holding on, and no one ever thought of giving up." "After enduring the night, dawn will surely come," said East Buy employees.
**"The most essential reason for good luck is that when misfortune came, I didn't hide, and I couldn't hide, so one day good luck would collide with me head-on."** Said Dong Yuhui, who suddenly became famous.
Fifth, **consumption needs value, fun, and wisdom.** This is a consumption revolution. Teachers and "shopping guides" actually have many similarities. Those who do well in both need to lead "audiences" (students) to valuable "things" (knowledge) and tell the "audience" how amazing, valuable, versatile, and socially impactful these "things" are.
Our advertising has evolved from shouting sales pitches, to Sprite creating the cool experience of drinking a beverage on a hot summer day (scene marketing), to Diao Pai moving audiences with the warm story of a mother washing feet (emotional resonance), to L'Oréal supporting female scientists (value leadership). The way brands sell has changed dramatically.
So, tired of shouting anchors, the livestreaming industry is due for an upgrade. From inviting celebrities to the livestream room to giving fans free performances, livestreaming now needs to provide users with more value and resonance points. Coincidentally, New Oriental has never lacked humorous and charismatic teachers who can quickly immerse people in the wonderful ocean of knowledge and experience the shock of broad life values.
"This book, from rocks to bacteria, fully shares the rich life on this planet. We can't truly step on every piece of land, we can't hold our children's hands to see every landscape; we can't listen to every poet tell their stories and poems; we can't visit every scientist to hear their discoveries and study their manuscripts.
But please remember, you can always find a lazy afternoon, just like the lazy afternoon after school many years ago, to read this book with your child, chat about childhood growth stories, and let them feel that in those days, their parents were also people who loved mountains and rivers and were attached to nature." This is a glimpse of Dong Yuhui selling books.
**Contextualizing products (or knowledge), digging deep into product value, and conveying wisdom while introducing products**—this is the theoretical basis for his becoming a famous teacher and a viral anchor.
"The bright moon shines among the pines, the clear spring flows over the stones." He can recite poems anytime, anywhere, from Alaskan cod to seagulls of the South Pacific, to the stars and the sea. From a three-color coarse grain rice, he quotes Aristotle: "He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god."
Having been a famous teacher in the tutoring industry, he naturally has the potential to be a good anchor. He just needs to naturally add: "Friends, link number one in the bottom right corner..."
Not only Dong Yuhui, but every anchor in East Buy's livestream room has substance and stories, promoting products bilingually and integrating teaching into sales. They are not selling products but knowledge, values, and dreams.
Sixth, East Buy did not build from scratch; it **has a base of user traffic pool, and as long as it connects well, it can explode successfully.** How popular was New Oriental in the past? Countless people have taken New Oriental courses. Its lively and humorous classroom style and versatile teachers were experienced by many.
These people are easily triggered. As a user said, "Twenty years ago, we were the ones learning English at New Oriental. Twenty years later, we are still the ones stocking up on steak in East Buy's livestream room. This is the legendary 'East不败' (East Invincible)!"
Another user said, "Growing with users, New Oriental will surely overcome difficulties and transform successfully! A bold idea: the anchors' English is so good, they could sell on TikTok to the world, a reverse cultural export of Chinese culture. It will definitely be a hit!"
With a mass base, New Oriental's sudden popularity is less an accident than a continuous, quiet attempt to find the right key to unlock users' hearts.
**3**
**After Success**
Perfect timing, a group of people's relentless efforts, no slot fees, traffic support... In a series of accidents and inevitabilities, a huge wave of traffic rushed toward East Buy. But while traffic brings fame, it also brings great tests. After success, East Buy will face more challenges in the future.
First, can East Buy's existing supply chain meet the surging traffic? This is a challenge to its supply chain capability. The test of supply chain from traffic surge is not just shipping capacity; the foundation for an anchor's sustained popularity is still price advantage.
East Buy once had inflated prices, but after user feedback, it began offering affordable products, leading to rising sales and the livestream's explosion. But to get a larger base of users to keep ordering, higher cost-performance is necessary. After the heat fades, the key to repurchase rate is still cost-performance.
Second, fame brings trouble. In these days of traffic, people haven't focused on the negative aspects of the livestream room. If there are product quality control or after-sales issues, public opinion could flip instantly, turning the livestream room from "red" to "black red."
Ensuring stable product quality is very difficult. According to East Buy's sales records, its sales are mainly food and beverages (36%), fresh fruits and vegetables (28%), books and audio-visual (17%), gifts and cultural products (4%), beauty and skincare (4%), and others (11%). Standardizing quality control for these products is even harder.
These products put a heavy test on the supply chain. Without large-scale mechanized farming in China, achieving product standardization is not easy. But people will not lower their demands on East Buy.
China's agricultural modernization is a vast blue ocean. If they truly want to change the fate and status of rural people as they say, relying solely on audience sentiment to sell at high prices for poverty alleviation is not enough and not sustainable. Continuously extending upstream in the industrial chain is a meaningful but difficult attempt.
Although achieving all this is like an ant trying to shake a tree, maybe these "madmen" can really do it.
Finally, although it's said that East Buy's popularity is about the anchor team, in the end, it's really about Dong Yuhui as an individual. Dong Yuhui's popularity brings traffic to East Buy but also brings the hidden danger of a top anchor leaving. New Oriental is now recruiting new anchors with a high salary of 50,000 yuan per month to build the next "Dong Yuhui" for the team.
But anchor success is full of unknowns, so East Buy cannot be complacent. From a famous teacher in an industry to a famous anchor, Dong Yuhui is more sought-after than before. How to use better mechanisms to inspire talent and retain them is a question worth pondering.
In any case, best wishes to New Oriental for its gorgeous turnaround and initial victory. Best wishes that at "the end of the water," it can steadfastly "sit and watch the clouds rise," and the clouds it watches are the ones it stirred up itself.
Source: Lishi Business Review (ID: libusiness) Author: Jin Mei
Good article! Must like, watch, and share.


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671