Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok with domestic e-commerce operations, has been slammed for charging exorbitant promotion fees amid insufficient sales by the head of Chinese budget retailer Miniso Group, which runs multiple stores on the ByteDance-owned platform.
Miniso founder and chief executive Ye Guofu, 47, levelled his criticism of Douyin via his WeChat post on Wednesday that showed a video from online influencer Johnknow-nothing, who asserted in his recorded post that the ability of merchants to sell goods on the ByteDance platform was “deteriorating”. Miniso’s stores on Douyin sell a variety of lifestyle products such as beauty tools, toys and apparel.
Citing figures from the video, Ye said Douyin in 2023 recorded a gross merchandise volume (GMV) of 2 trillion yuan (US$276 billion), of which 40 per cent was refunded, while total advertising revenue reached 400 billion yuan in the same period.
Neither Miniso nor the online influencer immediately responded to a request for comment. The WeChat posts of Ye and the influencer that targeted Douyin were no longer online as of noon on Thursday.
In response to the social-media posts, Douyin vice-president Li Liang on Friday wrote in a post on ByteDance-owned news platform Jinri Toutiao: “The reality is that only a portion of Douyin’s advertising revenue comes from its e-commerce business, with most of the income generated by non-e-commerce content such as feed ads.”
Miniso’s fault-finding post marks the second high-profile bashing of Douyin over the past several days, involving some of the wealthiest individuals on the mainland.
