Stop for a year, Li Ziqi is back! Wei Nian reached a settlement with Li Ziqi, and the business map or division of Li Ziqi intensified.
Li Ziqi, the "First online celebrity", sued the equity dispute of MCN organization Micro-read, which came to an end temporarily, and the two sides ended in reconciliation.
Judging from the results of industrial and commercial changes, Wei Nian made great concessions in equity, and public opinion generally believed that Li Ziqi had won. However, the concession of equity may further aggravate the separation of brand IP and product management in the "Liziqi" commercial map. The future commercialization prospect of the word "Liziqi" needs to be clarified.
Li Ziqi won?
On December 27th, Hangzhou Weinian Brand Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Weinian") updated its social platform and said that "Weinian and Li Ziqi reached a settlement under the mediation of Mianyang Intermediate People’s Court", and the equity dispute between the two parties came to an end temporarily.
At the same time when this statement was issued, Sichuan Ziqi Culture Communication Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Ziqi Culture"), which holds all the trademarks of "Liziqi", underwent industrial and commercial changes, and the shareholding ratio of micro-reading was reduced from 51% to 1%, and Liu Tongming, the major shareholder of micro-reading, withdrew from the ranks of senior executives.
Specifically, according to the enterprise investigation, Ziqi Culture experienced two industrial and commercial changes, namely, equity and senior management, on December 26th.After the change, the shareholding ratios of Li Jiajia and Weinian were 99% and 1% respectively. After investigation, it was determined that Liziqi was the actual controller and the ultimate beneficiary of Ziqi culture. Previously, as the founding shareholders, since the establishment of Ziqi Culture, the shareholding ratios of Li Jiajia and Weinian have remained at 49% and 51% for a long time. At the same time, Liu Tongming withdrew from the ranks of Ziqi cultural executives and was replaced by Pu Qianyun as a supervisor.
At present, apart from that one-sentence statement, Li Ziqi and Wei Nian have not made any further response to this incident. However, public opinion generally believes that Li Ziqi won the equity dispute, and "Li Ziqi is hard-driving" and "looking forward to the return" are the common attitudes of netizens.
However, according to the enterprise investigation, in addition to this equity dispute case of Li Ziqi v. Wei Nian, there are two cases filed by Wei Nian as the plaintiff between the two parties. The two cases were filed in January and March this year respectively, and the current progress is unknown.
Stop working for a year, and the appeal will not decrease.
Looking back at this round of disputes between online celebrity and MCN, the two sides rarely responded, and Li Ziqi himself never made a sound. According to Wei Nian’s previous statement, this round of dispute was sued by Ziqi Culture for equity dispute. On November 1, 2021, Wei Nian officially received the notice of litigation from Mianyang Intermediate People’s Court, which has passed more than one year.
Li Zikai and Wei Nian have cooperated since 2016, and the two sides jointly incubated the "Li Zikai" IP and brand in the form of MCN company. The cooperation mode between the two parties is relatively simple. According to the micro-reading statement, Li Ziqi is responsible for content creation and publishing, and micro-reading is responsible for operating and exploring business models. In 2020, Weinian proposed to update the cooperation mode and drew up the "share arrangement and cooperation fee" with the consent of Weinian shareholders, but these arrangements failed to reach an agreement with Li Ziqi, and the two sides finally went to court.
During the year of litigation, all kinds of social accounts operated by Li Ziqi were suspended. On major platforms such as bilibili and YouTube, Li Ziqi’s last updated video stayed in July last year.She once said in an interview that the lawsuit took up a lot of her energy and time, and she didn’t want to shoot a video casually, so she just stopped. There is also public opinion that Li Zikai is making concessions in forcing micro-thinking in the form of a larger foe.
After disappearing for a year, Li Zikai’s appeal on social platforms has not declined much.Up to now, its fans in Weibo have dropped from 27.7 million to 26.38 million, and those in bilibili have dropped from nearly 8 million to 7.65 million. However, on the YouTube platform that made it out of the circle, the fans of Liziqi account have increased by more than 1 million, reaching a new height of 17.3 million.
The prospect of commercial territory needs to be clear
The appeal of the word "Li Ziqi" is also reflected in the continued expansion of her business map. At present, the flagship store of Liziqi, which mainly sells snail powder and lotus root starch, has a booming business on e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.COM, and there are also products on display in offline channels such as Box Horse, Century Lianhua and Carrefour.
According to the best-selling list of snail powder provided by Tmall, the monthly sales volume of three bags of plum and snail powder is 100,000+,ranking fourth in the whole network. This list is updated daily according to the ranking of sales volume and turnover in recent 7 days.
In JD.COM’s convenience food list, three bags of plum and lion powder ranked ninth, with more than 1,000 pieces sold in 24 hours, pushing ahead the fist products of first-line brands such as unified Laotan sauerkraut beef noodles, Shuanghui Wang Zhongwang and Master Kong braised beef noodles. It is worth mentioning that among the products ranked in front of Liziqi snail powder, there are four canned fruit products that are "suitable for the scene", and the sales ranking of Liziqi snail powder may be higher on weekdays.
In the last double 11 before the dispute between Wei Nian and Li Ziqi broke out, Wei Nian disclosed that in 2020, the sales of double 11 "Li Ziqi" brand exceeded 150 million yuan, a record high. Among them, Liziqi Liuzhou snail powder sold 6.7 million bags, a year-on-year increase of 458%. Liziqi snail powder and osmanthus nut lotus root powder products were the first sales in the same category of Tmall Double Eleven that year.
However, it is worth noting that the brand IP and product management of the "Liziqi" brand with great commercial prospects are in a split state. In fact, this reconciliation and industrial and commercial changes between the two sides have further aggravated this division.
According to Tmall’s disclosure, the operator of Liziqi flagship store is Micro-concept, and the investment promotion of "Liziqi" brand in the past offline channels was also completed by Micro-concept. Weinian also holds a 70% stake in Guangxi Xingliu Food Co., Ltd., a snail powder manufacturer. However, the most critical "Liziqi" brand trademark is all owned by Ziqi culture.
From the perspective of equity, the separation of brand IP and product management may be acceptable when holding 51% equity of Ziqi Culture in the past. But now, Micro-concept’s shareholding in Xiaoqi Culture has dropped to 1%. How to continue the operation of the "Liziqi" brand and how to distribute the interests of all parties remains to be clarified.
In fact, micro-thinking has not prevented this from happening. According to incomplete statistics, from 2017 to 2020, Wei Nian tried to register more than 60 trademarks related to "Liziqi", but all of them were unsuccessful; None of the 57 trademarks it currently holds is related to "Liziqi". On the other hand, Ziqi culture currently holds over 200 trademarks related to "Liziqi", and the registration time is also concentrated from 2017 to 2020.
Perhaps the competition between the two sides around trademark ownership occurred earlier and more intensely than the equity dispute exposed in front of the stage. As of press time, the reporter tried to inquire about the follow-up sales arrangements of the products through the customer service of Liziqi flagship store and Liziqi assistant, but they did not get a response.
Editor: Zhang Qian
Proofreading: Li Lingfeng
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