Another "Yu Hui's Peer" has emerged. Is it too late to feel sorry for Yu Minhong?

The former CEO of East Buy has gone on to launch a new venture, bringing along two of its original core live streamers.

According to Qichacha App, a company named "Beautiful Tomorrow (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd." was quietly established recently. With a registered capital of 10 million yuan, its three shareholders are Sun Dongxu, Shi Ming (Mingming), and Guo Tianquan (Tianquan), holding 34%, 33%, and 33% of the shares respectively. Sun Dongxu serves as the legal representative, director, and manager.

The company name was thoughtfully devised. "Beautiful" corresponds to Sun Dongxu's Douyin nickname "Sun Meili", "Ming" refers to Mingming, and "Tian" refers to Tianquan. The three men who left East Buy embedded their names into the brand of their new company.

As soon as the news broke, internet users were embroiled in heated debate. Some lamented that "East Buy has been split into a Pinduoduo-like fragmented entity", others claimed "Yu Minhong has raised a bunch of ungrateful people", and many pulled up stools to watch the drama: after "With Hui Go", here comes "Beautiful Tomorrow", adding another name to Yu's list of competitors.

Back two months ago everyone was sympathizing with the live streamers, but is it too late to switch to feeling sorry for Yu Minhong now?

A Two-Year Wager From Talent to Merchandise

In reality, both sides knew this day would come.

At the end of 2023, the "Little Essay Incident" erupted: disputes over the ownership of Dong Yuhui's live-streaming copywriting sparked fan discontent, and Sun Dongxu's responses during a live broadcast further escalated tensions with his attitude and remarks. On December 16, East Buy announced the removal of Sun Dongxu from his positions as executive director and CEO, with Yu Minhong personally taking over as CEO.

At that time, Sun Dongxu still held the title of "advisor". But anyone with a discerning eye could see that this role no longer carried any real power.

On November 6, 2025, Yu Minhong posted on his personal social media account confirming Sun Dongxu's departure for personal reasons. Yu stated that the two "maintained excellent communication without any conflicts or misunderstandings". He added that he encouraged Sun Dongxu to persevere and hoped he would return to a management role at an appropriate time in the future, but Sun Dongxu "after careful consideration, decided he wanted to leave".

Sun Dongxu was removed from the CEO position in December 2023 and officially departed in November 2025, nearly two years apart. During these two years, he was reported to remain at the company in an advisory role, occasionally appearing in live streams. Yu Minhong said this arrangement came about as a result of Sun Dongxu's "repeated requests".

On the surface, this seemed like an amicable separation, with both sides making concessions to preserve each other's dignity.

On April 25, 2026, East Buy live streamers Mingming and Tianquan announced their resignations. Zhongcan and Linlin left around the same time, making four streamers departing collectively. East Buy officially stated that Yu Minhong "had sincere communications with them and tried to retain them, but ultimately respected their choices".

Mingming's resignation letter was straightforward: "After the new management took over, the company's entire live streaming model and operational style completely changed. I find this cultural shift hard to accept. In daily work, I can clearly sense the new management's 'unfriendliness' towards me, which has pushed me into severe anxiety and internal friction."

Tianquan put it more poetically: "My idealism often seems out of place. The value I create apparently no longer aligns with what the company needs."

The "new leader" refers to Sun Jin, who joined New Oriental in 2006 and grew through the ranks within the New Oriental system. In December 2025, Sun Jin, Vice President of New Oriental Education & Technology Group, took office as Executive President of East Buy.

After Sun Jin assumed his position, East Buy fully implemented the "de-head-streaming" strategy: reducing top streamers' prime-time exposure, adjusting revenue-sharing ratios, and establishing new performance evaluation systems. The streamer team was planned to expand from 27 to 60 people, with over 20 matrix accounts launched.

Yu Minhong addressed the collective departures during a live stream, noting that the four streamers "were outstanding employees who grew alongside the platform, and their departure is a loss for the platform". He also acknowledged that "after the management reshuffle, the company's management approach deviated, overemphasizing institutional control while neglecting team humanistic care".

The attitude was sincere and humble. But whether a humble stance can retain people is another matter entirely.

Connecting these events reveals that East Buy is undergoing a systematic transformation from "talent-centric" to "merchandise-centric". This is not Yu Minhong's personal choice, but a structural issue that the entire live e-commerce industry must face at this stage of development.

Dong Yuhui went independent with "With Hui Go" in July 2024. After his contract expired in June 2025, Dundun moved to Guangzhou to run his own beauty product live-streaming business, nominally maintaining a cooperative relationship with East Buy. In April 2026, Mingming, Tianquan, Zhongcan, and Linlin all left collectively. Now, Sun Dongxu has teamed up with Mingming and Tianquan to launch their new venture.

The original core streamer "F4" — Dong Yuhui, Dundun, Mingming, and Tianquan — have all departed.

On the surface, this looks like a tragedy of talent loss. But from another perspective: If a company's core competitiveness relies on several irreplaceable individuals, its business model itself is fundamentally flawed.

Yu Minhong clearly realized this long ago.

What East Buy is doing, in professional terms, is called "de-head-streaming": using institutionalized supply chains and self-operated brands to replace non-replicable personalized traffic, shifting user trust from "people" to "products".

This strategy has a ready reference in the retail industry — Sam's Club.

On May 21, 2026, East Buy opened its first offline experience store in New Oriental Building, Zhongguancun, Beijing. Covering about 400 square meters, the store integrates merchandise retail, coffee and light meals, and leisure experiences, attracting over 70,000 visitors during its trial operation period.

Yu Minhong personally attended the opening ceremony, noting that the offline store layout planning started two years prior.

Two years earlier in 2024 was when Dong Yuhui was at the peak of his popularity. That means while everyone was fixated on Dong Yuhui, Yu Minhong was already exploring an alternative path.

Financial reports corroborate this direction: for the full fiscal year 2025, East Buy's net revenue from continuing operations reached 4.392 billion yuan, a 32.7% year-on-year decline. However, self-operated products accounted for about 43.8% of total GMV, with overall gross margin rising to 32%. After the new Executive President Sun Jin took office, 66 new self-operated products were launched in June 2026 alone.

Declining revenue alongside rising gross margins indicates East Buy is evolving from a "third-party product sales channel" into a "self-owned merchandise retailer", similar to how a traditional department store transformed into Costco.

A Long-Planned "Mutual Understanding"

Can Sun Dongxu and his partners' "Beautiful Tomorrow" truly become a formidable rival to East Buy?

Their fan base provides some foundation: Shi Ming has over 1.3 million Douyin followers, and Tianquan has nearly 500,000. Sun Dongxu's first personal live-streaming sales session on May 20 topped Douyin's "Books & Magazines" chart within two hours, with 16,000 copies of *A Teenager's World History* sold alone.

In terms of experience and resources, Sun Dongxu was the core architect who built East Buy from scratch, while Mingming and Tianquan were its early core streamers — the three are thoroughly familiar with all tricks of the live e-commerce trade.

Looking at the equity structure: Sun Dongxu holds 34%, Shi Ming 33%, and Tianquan 33%. Their investments are nearly equal — Sun Dongxu put in 3.4 million yuan, while the other two each invested 3.3 million yuan. This structure is less like a boss-employee hierarchy and more like three equal partners running a business together.

Yet the challenges facing "Beautiful Tomorrow" cannot be ignored.

First, the traffic dividend in live e-commerce has already peaked, as platforms and merchants are reducing their reliance on influencer streamers. The 2026 live e-commerce landscape is nothing like it was in 2022 when Dong Yuhui first rose to fame.

Dundun's post-departure data illustrates this: his debut session grossed nearly 12.5 million yuan over two days, but traffic quickly declined afterward, with concurrent viewers in his live stream dropping from tens of thousands to just thousands. A successful debut is easy, but sustaining long-term growth is not.

Second, East Buy is no longer "Beautiful Tomorrow's" only competitor. The "With Hui Go" matrix stands in front, education-technology companies like Gotu, TAL, and Dou Shen are chasing from behind, plus East Buy itself — the live e-commerce table now has more players but fewer available seats.

Third, Sun Dongxu and partners' business model remains unclear. Will they follow the personal IP path of "With Hui Go", adopt East Buy's self-operated supply chain model, or pursue a third direction?

Currently, "Beautiful Tomorrow's" business scope includes wholesale and retail of fresh meat, aquatic products, fruits, vegetables, and cosmetics, as well as performance brokerage and online cultural operations. The scope is broad and vague, only indicating they are sticking to agricultural product live streaming.

Gotu's "Gotu Youpin" live stream, which previously imitated East Buy's transformation, has neither successfully incubated top streamers nor secured a proper supply chain. Its follower count has dropped below 2.1 million, with average concurrent viewers under 1,000 per session.

Looking back from this July 2026 vantage point, Yu Minhong's situation does appear rather delicate.

On one hand, his former right-hand man has left to establish a new business with core streamers; on the other hand, the company's revenue has sharply declined, and the capital market has voted with its feet — after news of the collective streamer departures broke on the evening of April 24, East Buy's stock price dropped over 8% intraday on April 27.

But assuming Yu Minhong is "pitiable" because of this might be overly sentimental.

Don't forget: when Sun Dongxu left in November 2025, Yu Minhong said "I encouraged him to persevere... but after careful consideration, he decided he wanted to leave". When Mingming and Tianquan departed in April 2026, official statements noted "Mr. Yu had sincere communications with them and tried to retain them".

At every "separation", Yu Minhong expressed willingness to retain them. Yet in every instance, he ultimately respected their choices.

Is this the helplessness of being unable to retain people, or a tacit understanding of "I won't stand in your way if you leave"?

From a business logic perspective, the latter is far more likely. East Buy aims to "de-head-stream", transforming the company from one that depends on a few streamers to one that relies on a robust system. In this process, the interests of top streamers with their own traffic will increasingly diverge from the company's. Rather than letting conflicts escalate into ugly confrontations, it's better to part amicably: they go off to start their own ventures, while East Buy continues its transformation, each going their separate ways.

When Dong Yuhui took "With Hui Go" with him, East Buy rewarded him with 141 million yuan of the company's net profit. When Dundun left, both sides released a joint statement emphasizing "sustained friendly cooperation". When Sun Dongxu departed, Yu Minhong stated there were "no conflicts or misunderstandings".

These displays of dignity are not all for show.

Yu Minhong has likely long understood one truth: In an industry that relies on "people" for survival, you can keep employees but not their loyalty — it's better to let them go and preserve the "system".

The establishment of "Beautiful Tomorrow" is not so much a loss for East Buy as another confirmation of the "decentralization" trend in the live e-commerce industry.

As names like Dong Yuhui, Dundun, Mingming, and Tianquan disappear one by one from East Buy's employee roster and reemerge in the market as independent entrepreneurs, is this Yu Minhong's failure, or a deliberately chosen "dignified retreat"?

As for "feeling sorry for Yu Minhong", it's mostly just a joke. A veteran who has navigated the business world for 30 years probably doesn't need sympathy from onlookers. What he needs is for these "Beautiful Tomorrows" not to escalate price wars too aggressively.

After all, the more competitors there are, the more it proves he's on the right path.

This article originates from WeChat Official Account "Focus Foci", authored by Fang Wensan, and published by 36Kr with authorization.