Hidden business behind emerging web celebrities

Global Business

Hidden business behind emerging web celebrities

We are all familiar with how fast someone can become an internet sensation.

There are so many people in China now are trying to make a business out of being a web celebrity.

CCTV’s Mi Jiayi reports.

Nice pictures, pretty clothes and a Weibo account with 270,000 followers, Weibo star A-Shui is quite popular and easy to get public’s attention on the internet.

To her followers, she seems just like a pretty model for a Taobao clothing shop. But in fact she is also the owner, which makes her career much more complicated than what we thought.

While her fans may thought her as someone who traveled a lot with plenty of nice clothes, we heard about a different story from her.

“Online shopping is a high-speed business, you have to come with new things one after another. So you have to pick up the seasonal style for the cloth, making samples, taking photos while fitting, shooting videos and doing marketing promotion as well. I worked more than 12 hours a day, which it’s a lot different than I thought it would be before I started,” she said.

Four years ago she had only three employees, but now A-Shui actually has a company of 100 people helping her maintain her social media platform and images. They brainstorming ideas and marketing promotion.
At the same time, A-Shui’s 12-hour days are paying off, the company’s income was 50 million yuan ($7,487,384) last year.

A-Shui is just one of hundreds of people who are making living based on their internet fame. There are countless people have made their name by critiquing fashion trends, making funny videos, or just live-broadcasting their life. These media platform make those web celebrities always be given attention from the public and meanwhile those attention are bringing investors to them as well. In March 2016, several venture capitalists have invested 12 million yuan ($1,797,012) in one emerging online celebrity.