Gaining over 200,000 followers, has a new "top trending star" emerged on Douyin?

Douyin's beauty category may soon welcome a powerful new live-streaming host.

Recently, news spread rapidly across social media that Sun Dongxu, Shi Ming, and Tian Quan — former core employees of East Buy — had left the company to jointly launch a new venture called "Beautiful Tomorrow Technology", drawing widespread attention from inside and outside the industry. The day after the official Douyin account of "Beautiful Tomorrow" went live, their former boss Yu Minhong publicly responded, wishing the three of them smooth progress in their new business.

This "East Buy-affiliated" team, which integrates capabilities in platform operations, content live streaming, and in-depth category expertise, appears highly similar in terms of founder backgrounds and business direction to another team that spun off from East Buy — Walk with Yu Hui.

At present, the business scope of "Beautiful Tomorrow" includes cosmetics retail and wholesale. So, what kind of variables will the entry of this new player bring to the Douyin live streaming landscape?

The Next "Walk with Yu Hui"?

According to data from the National Enterprise Credit Information System, Beautiful Tomorrow (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Beautiful Tomorrow Technology") was established on July 10 with a registered capital of 10 million yuan. Information from Qichacha further shows that former East Buy CEO Sun Dongxu, former hosts Shi Ming and Guo Tianquan are the company's three major shareholders. Sun Dongxu invested 3.4 million yuan, holding a 34% stake and serving as the company's legal representative, manager, director, and financial supervisor, while the other two each invested 3.3 million yuan for a 33% shareholding.

In terms of equity distribution, the three hold nearly "equal" shares. As the largest shareholder, Sun Dongxu has a veto power over major matters, but the combined forces of the other two partners can also counterbalance him.

Screenshot from Qichacha

"This model can quickly unify the team in the early stage of entrepreneurship and help the company operate efficiently," an industry insider told Qingyan, "but once internal disagreements arise later, the company may fail to make quick decisions and miss market opportunities."

In terms of the company name, "Beautiful" comes from Sun Dongxu's widely used personal nickname "Sun Meili", while "Tomorrow" combines the "Ming" from Shi Ming and the "Tian" from Tian Quan. This naming strategy creates strong personal recognition, making it easy to divert their existing fan base to the new IP.

Three days after the company's establishment, on July 13, the "Beautiful Tomorrow" Douyin account quietly launched its first official announcement video featuring all three founders. As of press time, the video has received 115,000 likes and 23,000 comments, with many netizens expressing anticipation: "Looking forward to your live streams", "The joy is back", "Hope you can bring better products to everyone". Currently, Beautiful Tomorrow has not opened official accounts on other platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo, and its Douyin account has accumulated 238,000 followers as of press time.

Screenshot from "Beautiful Tomorrow" Douyin

Judging from the feedback in the comment section, based on the three founders' established reputation from their time at East Buy, consumers have high expectations for Beautiful Tomorrow, giving the new venture a solid initial fan base and trust.

Naturally, as another team that left East Buy to start their own business, Beautiful Tomorrow will inevitably be compared to "Walk with Yu Hui", the venture of Dong Yuhui, the former star host of East Buy.

In terms of team configuration, the founders of both Beautiful Tomorrow and Walk with Yu Hui were once "star hosts" at East Buy, with existing fan bases that allowed them to quickly gain visibility and build loyal consumer groups in the early stage.

However, although "Walk with Yu Hui" has intentionally reduced Dong Yuhui's live stream frequency in recent years to cultivate new hosts, the account still heavily relies on Dong Yuhui's personal IP.

In contrast, the division of labor among the three-person team of Beautiful Tomorrow is complementary, offering certain risk-resistance capabilities. Currently, the Douyin accounts of the three founders — @Sun Meili, @Mingming Xiang Yuanfang, and @Tian Quan Shi Guo Da Pao Liang Shi Fan Ba Ba Shi Er Ying Ying Yu Lao Shi — have 558,000, 1,306,000, and 475,000 followers respectively.

Screenshots from Sun Dongxu, Shi Ming, and Tian Quan's Douyin profiles

Additionally, as the former CEO of East Buy, Sun Dongxu is fully familiar with the entire process of platform operations, brand business development, and corporate management. Shi Ming and Guo Tianquan, as former star hosts of East Buy, have their own strengths: Shi Ming has deep experience in agricultural product promotion and cultural content output, while Guo Tianquan's overseas study background gives him in-depth knowledge of high-end consumption tracks such as wine tasting and business gifting, having developed a mature live streaming style and stable audience. Overall, the three have distinct live streaming styles with complementary traffic, avoiding over-reliance on a single personal IP.

In terms of main business, although Beautiful Tomorrow has not yet launched live streaming sales, according to the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, its business scope includes cosmetics wholesale, cosmetics retail, performance brokerage, online cultural operations, and more. Its overall business covers fresh produce categories, beauty, and online operations, seemingly no different from East Buy and Walk with Yu Hui.

It can be said that whether in terms of team configuration or starting threshold, Beautiful Tomorrow seems to have the potential to create the next "Walk with Yu Hui".

Aiming at the Live Streaming E-Commerce Track

Combining the founders' backgrounds and recent actions, Beautiful Tomorrow's core development direction is likely to be live streaming sales.

On one hand, both Shi Ming and Guo Tianquan have recently hinted on their social media profiles that they are preparing for Beautiful Tomorrow's live streams. For example, Guo Tianquan wrote in his social media bio: "Live streaming time — everyone, wait a bit, we're working hard on it."

On the other hand, Sun Dongxu tested personal live streaming as early as May this year. According to data from Qingyan Intelligence, from May 20 to May 23, Sun Dongxu hosted three live streams on his personal account "Sun Meili", selling books and educational products, with total sales reaching 500,000 to 1 million yuan. Third-party public data shows that on May 20, Sun Dongxu's one-hour live stream attracted about 480,000 viewers, and the three books he promoted once ranked second on Douyin's books and magazines chart.

Judging from Sun Dongxu's trial operations, Beautiful Tomorrow may follow the same path as Walk with Yu Hui, starting with categories familiar to the host team such as food and beverages, fresh produce, and books, to quickly demonstrate the team's sales capabilities to the market and brands, laying a foundation for subsequent category expansion. The high-margin, high-repurchase beauty category is also expected to become one of Beautiful Tomorrow's key focus areas.

According to Qingyan Intelligence data, among the audience profiles of the three founders' personal accounts, women account for over 70%, with most aged between 31 and 40, creating a solid audience base for the account's future beauty product sales.

However, it should be noted that similar to "Walk with Yu Hui", the three members of Beautiful Tomorrow's team have almost no prior experience selling beauty products. Whether they can successfully integrate their personal styles into beauty-focused live streams and convince consumers to make purchases still requires continuous exploration and refinement by the team.

That said, "Walk with Yu Hui" has already set a successful example for Beautiful Tomorrow.

At the beginning of "Walk with Yu Hui", Dong Yuhui did not rush into the beauty category. Instead, he first stabilized the overall traffic of the live stream, then gradually expanded influence in the beauty space.

According to Qingyan Intelligence data, the core fan base of the "Walk with Yu Hui" Douyin account mainly consists of mature women with strong purchasing power — women make up 63.35% of followers, the 31-40 age group accounts for 54.54%, and users from new first-tier, second-tier, and third-tier cities represent 65.51%.

After "Mothers-in-law" (the nickname for Dong Yuhui's fans) highly recognized Dong Yuhui's knowledge-driven sales style and built solid consumption trust, "Walk with Yu Hui" was able to rely on precise customer targeting, emotional recognition, and organic user recommendations to form a steadily growing customer base for its beauty business.

On this basis, "Walk with Yu Hui" expanded its professional beauty host team, continuing the "knowledge-based sales" style. Through differentiated host personas, it transformed the live stream into a "beauty classroom", extending the trust built in Dong Yuhui's personal IP to the entire account team.

Currently, "Walk with Yu Hui" has become one of the top-performing live streamers in the beauty category. Public data shows that during the 2025 618 shopping festival, even without Dong Yuhui appearing in person, the team's three dedicated beauty live streams each achieved GMV exceeding 150 million yuan.

In fact, Walk with Yu Hui has already become an important influencer partner for many brands seeking incremental growth on Douyin. For example, according to Qingyan Intelligence data, in June this year, Helena Rubinstein achieved 1 million to 5 million yuan in sales through Walk with Yu Hui's live stream, ranking among the brand's top-performing influencer partners.

In terms of domestic brand cooperation, Walk with Yu Hui has also become a key channel for new brands to enter the market. According to Qingyan Intelligence data, last August, a single live stream on Walk with Yu Hui generated tens of millions of yuan in GMV for Sanjing Pharmaceutical, playing a critical role in driving its overall performance surge. The following month, Sanjing Pharmaceutical returned to Walk with Yu Hui, and the live stream's GMV hit a new high of 75 million to 100 million yuan, directly helping Sanjing Pharmaceutical enter the ranks of brands with monthly GMV exceeding 100 million yuan. The brand's ranking rose by 56 positions, making its debut in Douyin's beauty monthly TOP 20 list.

Different from Walk with Yu Hui, under the overall strategy of "reducing reliance on top hosts and focusing on self-operated products", their former employer East Buy has taken a different path. Its layout in the beauty category is mainly defined by "supporting live stream sales while prioritizing self-operated products".

On one hand, in its Douyin live streams, East Buy has not positioned beauty as a core development category.

As early as 2022, East Buy launched the account "East Buy Beautiful Life" (referred to as "Beautiful Life"), focusing on niche categories such as beauty and home goods. The account's first live stream was held on July 8, 2022. At that time, Qingyan's investigation found that by the evening of July 19, the East Buy Beautiful Life live stream had sold 249 products in total — 74 of which were personal care and home cleaning items, accounting for 29.7%, while only 32 were beauty and fragrance products, making up just 12.9%. In other words, home goods and personal care products occupied most of the live stream's product slots.

Currently, Qingyan's observations of Beautiful Life's live streams show that the account still mainly sells personal care and home cleaning products, with beauty products accounting for a relatively small proportion.

On the other hand, in its self-operated business, East Buy has successively launched multiple self-operated products under the brand name "EASTBUY", including face masks, lip balms, facial cleansers, and powder puffs, covering categories such as skincare, makeup, and beauty tools, most priced below 100 yuan. Taking the EASTBUY face mask as an example, it is priced at 59 yuan per box, focusing on basic moisturizing and soothing effects. According to official data disclosed by East Buy, the mask sold approximately 1.5 million pieces within 20 days of its launch.

In terms of product development model, East Buy adopts the common industry OEM model. According to the Cosmetics Regulation App, EASTBUY has a total of 47 registered products, all manufactured by well-known domestic and international OEMs such as COSMAX, Jiahua Home Chemicals, Bave, and Aobao. Just last month, EASTBUY added registrations for 5 crystal glossy lip glosses, 5 velvet matte lipsticks, and 4 blade eyebrow pencils.

It is clear that the two major accounts similar to Beautiful Tomorrow have both positioned beauty as a critical category. If Beautiful Tomorrow can replicate the successful paths of Walk with Yu Hui or East Buy, it may also become another rising sales powerhouse in the beauty track.

The Former Employer Doubles Down on Self-Operated Products — Where Will Beautiful Tomorrow Head Next?

From Dong Yuhui's independent venture to the establishment of "Beautiful Tomorrow", East Buy — once known as the "fresh stream of the live streaming industry" for its content-driven sales style that combined cultural value with star hosts — seems to be struggling to retain talent.

According to incomplete statistics from Qingyan, since Dong Yuhui left East Buy in 2024, six hosts have successively departed, all of whom were "star hosts" with high popularity and large fan bases. Since April 2026, hosts such as Mingming and Tian Quan have left the company in quick succession. Notably, after Sun Dongxu stepped down, East Buy quickly appointed Sun Jin as its new Executive President. In their lengthy farewell posts, both Mingming and Tian Quan openly stated that the core reason for their departure was misalignment with the new management team's philosophy.

With the continuous departure of star hosts, it is not surprising that East Buy has chosen to shift its focus away from live streaming and bet heavily on "self-operated products", taking full control of its business. According to East Buy's financial reports, from June 1 to November 30, 2025, the company had launched a cumulative 801 self-operated products.

Now, following Dong Yuhui's independent departure, former key executives such as Sun Dongxu have re-entered the market to compete for a share of East Buy's market, leveraging their established host resources to create new live streaming ecosystems. Given the high overlap in their user profiles, this may further divert East Buy's consumer base.

However, it is worth noting that the emergence of Beautiful Life coincides with the "second half" of Douyin's live streaming era — a period marked by fading traffic dividends and the gradual decline of the "super-host" era. From the overall platform landscape, Douyin is continuously reducing the traffic privileges of top hosts, lowering its reliance on super IPs by supporting brand-owned live streams, store live streams, and a matrix of niche category influencers. At the same time, brands are also actively developing their own live streams and store live streams to regain control over pricing power and user assets.

Taking the beauty category as an example, public data shows that during the 2026 618 shopping festival, brand-owned live streams and store live streams accounted for nearly 70% of GMV on Tmall; on Douyin, brand-owned and store live streams also contributed close to 50% of total live stream GMV.

According to Qingyan Intelligence data, in 202