In 2025 4, Baiyunshan announced a complete halt to new external trademark authorizations. At that time, the industry generally believed that this pharmaceutical giant, with over 3000 trademarks, was shrinking its beauty business.
14 months later, a company named "Guangyao Da Meili Biotechnology" was quietly registered. With registered capital of 2000 ten thousand yuan, Baiyunshan holds 51%; the other party holding 49% is Xiamen Haizhiweilai Investment Co., Ltd. — an affiliated company of Fujian's leading beauty retail e-commerce Haini Group.
▍Screenshot from the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System
In the past few years, Haini was the agency operator for Baiyunshan's beauty business, coordinating the operation of Baiyunshan's cosmetics business, achieving nearly one hundred million yuan in annual payment volume; now, it has become a shareholder of the joint venture company.
For Haini, this is not just opening a window, but a coronation ceremony bought with 45 hundred million yuan in annual revenue. Is this step a solitary case for Haini, or a microcosm of the collective fate shift of the entire "Xiamen gang"?
Since 2026, the transformation moves of Xiamen gang leading enterprises have been touching a field previously considered impossible: heavy assets.
Putting the moves of five enterprises together, three patterns clearly emerge:
Pattern one: From live-streaming rooms to real shelves.
Sanzitang entering Sephora, VC entering WOWCOLOUR, Disiaipu opening flagship stores... In the past, the Xiamen gang's shelves were in Douyin live-streaming rooms; now they are entering offline physical channels. Simultaneously, brand capability catch-up is happening: TVCs, celebrity endorsements, brand stories — these actions that traditional brands have done for decades, the Xiamen gang is starting to make up.
Pattern two: From traffic spending to R&D investment.
Haini's 3 hundred million yuan headquarters, 7000 square meter R&D center, and hundred-million-level research fund — this money might have been a quarter's traffic budget in the past, but now it is being poured into laboratories and office buildings. This is a physical correction of the past "asset-light to the point of almost no assets" model.
Pattern three: From media buyer-driven to brand talent-driven.
Haini offers 200 ten thousand to -500 ten thousand yuan annual salary to recruit a CMO and sets up a brand operation center in Hangzhou; Chunpu Technology relocates its post to Hangzhou, shifting the talent center of gravity. In the past, the most expensive position in the Xiamen gang was the media buyer; now the most expensive positions have become brand officers and scientists.
These moves share a common undertone: heavy assets, long cycles, and only burning money without profit in the early stage.
In the past, the Xiamen gang's approach was "invest in traffic today, collect payment tomorrow," with capital turnover calculated in days. Now building a building takes three years, and setting up an R&D center takes several years to see results. It can be said that this is a thorough restructuring of the capital rhythm, from "daily settlement" to "annual payment," from "calculating ROI" to "calculating the future."
Why is everyone transforming at this point in time?
At the beginning of 2024, it was a different scene.
Chanmofang data shows that in 2024 1-2, among Douyin beauty TOP20, Xiamen white-label brands accounted for 40%. Wenboshi's monthly traffic cost exceeded 8000 ten thousand yuan, and through tens of thousands of short video materials and a 24-hour self-broadcasting matrix, it once rushed to the 7th place on the Douyin beauty list. VC, Gongfu and other brands had monthly sales exceeding one hundred million yuan, and even reached 2 hundred million yuan in a single month, surpassing international big brands such as Estée Lauder and La Mer.
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The logic behind these numbers is not complicated. According to multiple industry practitioners who spoke to YAN BEAUTY REVIEW, the Xiamen gang generally spends 70% to 80% of sales on traffic, using high leverage to drive high growth. This approach is highly dependent on platform traffic distribution. When the algorithm gives you traffic, you are a dark horse on the list; when the algorithm changes, you are nothing.
And starting from the second half of 2024, the platform took successive actions.
First adjustment: In 2024 7, Douyin re-prioritized GMV as the top priority. Previously, the platform's assessment focused more on order volume (OPM), encouraging a low-price strategy of small profits but quick turnover. After the algorithm weight shifted from order volume to sales amount (GPM), the Xiamen gang's path of low-price involution, which relied on "9.9 yuan free shipping," was blocked.
Second adjustment: In 2025 4, Douyin launched the "account health score" mechanism.
The initial score is 100 points, and below 80 points will affect traffic and monetization rights. The platform explicitly cracks down on behaviors such as "frequently publishing plagiarized or reposted content" and "industrialized production and batch publishing of homogeneous content." The Xiamen gang's past expertise in template-based content batch replication and matrix account bombardment-style advertising was precisely targeted.
▍Part of Douyin's "Account Health Score"
Third adjustment: Starting from 2025 5, Douyin launched a special campaign against false advertising in live-streaming rooms. As of 7, 500 violating merchants and over 1000 violating influencers had been punished. By 8, nearly 3.7 ten thousand influencers had their product promotion rights permanently revoked, and 1778 violating merchants were removed. In 2025 12, Wenboshi was penalized by market regulatory authorities for false advertising in its live-streaming room. The platform and regulators tightened the noose simultaneously.
Three heavy punches, each aimed at the white-label playbook.
The result was that the once-glorious hot white-label brands like Wenboshi and VC in 2024 had fallen out of Douyin beauty TOP20 by the third quarter of that year. Entering 2025, the decline intensified further. Wenboshi dropped to outside the top one hundred in the first quarter, and some data shows it even fell to around 200th place. "Ironclad Douyin, fleeting white-label brands" became an industry footnote. Old kings abdicated, new kings took over, but the positions of Wenboshi and VC never returned.
Beyond external pressure, the internal model is equally fatal.
The essence of the Xiamen gang's play is "traffic arbitrage," using low-cost products plus high-leverage traffic spending for quick monetization. The hit product logic is to find pain points, offer extreme low prices, and spend aggressively on traffic. Consumers pay for the impulse of a 9.9 yuan purchase, but if the blackhead removal product has no effect and the brightening serum shows no change, they won't buy a second time after one use. The lack of product strength leads to extremely low repurchase rates and almost zero brand loyalty. Some media analyzed data of Douyin brands whose annual GMV exceeded 5 hundred million yuan and concluded: the shortest flowering period of a Douyin brand is less than half a year.
Platform rules are changing, traffic costs are rising, consumers are evolving, and the lifecycle of the old model is getting shorter and shorter.
Transformation is not a choice, it is survival.
The determination to transform is there, and the actions have been rolled out. But how far these actions can go depends on whether the Xiamen group can overcome several mountains.
● First: The mindset dilemma
In the scaling phase, the Xiamen group's approach is visualized pain points and extreme cost-effectiveness.
Wen Boshi created a hit product with "blackhead removal," VC quickly scaled with "brightening skin tone," and Sanzitang entered eye makeup with a 49 yuan eyebrow pencil. Each product precisely corresponds to an intuitive need, priced low enough for consumers to buy without hesitation.
But the hit product logic is exactly the opposite of brand logic.
Hit products pursue functional visualization, letting users see at a glance what the product does; brands pursue irreplaceable value, making users unable to say why, but willing to pay more.
The cost of the extreme cost-effectiveness approach is price anchoring. When consumers get used to Sanzitang's 49 yuan eyebrow pencil, Wen Boshi's 79 yuan essence, and VC's 59 yuan tone-up cream, what price will support brand premium next?
This is exactly the pricing dilemma the Xiamen group collectively faces. When users attracted by cost-effectiveness cannot accept your price increase for brand building, who will pay for the brand building costs?
The deeper question is: Do Xiamen group's consumers recognize the product, the efficacy, the price, or the brand?
Sanzitang entering Sephora is a footnote. When a 49 yuan eyebrow pencil is placed next to Lancôme and Guerlain, do consumers see a good 49 yuan eyebrow pencil, or the Sanzitang brand? If users remember the function and price, not the brand name, then brand equity cannot accumulate.
The cruelest part of white-label brands becoming brands is right here: the money spent on traffic, users remember; the money spent on brand, users may not recognize. This is the brand cognition gap the Xiamen group collectively faces.
● Second: The organizational dilemma
The Xiamen group's past core capability was "traffic buying." As mentioned earlier, the organization and capability structure of white-label brands grew around traffic buying: 70% or even more of the expenditure structure is spent on platform traffic buying, and over 70% of the team are content and traffic buying personnel.
Now, they need to hire CMOs, brand directors, and chief scientists. In 2025, Haini founder Xu Yonghan even personally stepped in to recruit a CMO with an annual salary of 200 to 500 ten thousand yuan plus partner dividends. Behind these "sky-high" positions are two completely different organizational logics colliding:
▍ Screenshot from previous report
Traffic teams are used to "fast"—test creatives today, check ROI tomorrow, scale up the day after. Brand teams require "slow"—do user insights, build brand equity, wait for time to ferment. An industry insider once told media that the Xiamen group's "top five companies have all hired brand consulting advisors, and begun massively reducing ad buyer positions while recruiting brand directors and R&D talent."
But reducing ad buyers and recruiting brand talent are two different things; the former is subtraction, the latter is addition; the former can be done through layoffs, the latter requires reshaping organizational culture. Two rhythms, two sets of KPIs, two ways of thinking, coexisting in the same company is no less difficult than starting a new business.
● Third: Unique concerns of the joint venture
The first two dilemmas are common challenges all Xiamen group companies face. But the joint venture between Haini and Baiyunshan has an additional question that other Xiamen group companies do not have: the marriage of two business genes.
Baiyunshan is a pharmaceutical company. The pharmaceutical gene is compliance, stability, and long cycles. A new product from project initiation to filing to launch may take 6 months just for filing. Haini is a traffic player. The traffic player's gene is fast, flexible, and data-driven. Today's hit product sprout goes on sale tomorrow.
How do these two rhythms mesh? How is the decision-making mechanism established? Who leads product definition? Who controls brand tone?
The bigger issue is the brand ownership problem already touched on in the previous section. The Guangyao Dameili brand's intellectual property belongs to Baiyunshan. Haini upgraded from agency operation to equity-holding agency operation, but if the two sides part ways one day, what can Haini take away?
If brand ownership always remains in Baiyunshan's hands, and Haini only grew a rented brand, then its essential identity has not changed, just with the word "partner" added to the badge. The core assets of a true brand builder are brand ownership and user mind share. If neither is in Haini's hands, then is this joint venture Haini's brandization, or just a deeper-bound advanced agency operation?
Three dilemmas, layer by layer. The mindset dilemma concerns how consumers see it, the organizational dilemma concerns how the team does it, and the joint venture dilemma concerns who this transformation ultimately belongs to. The first two question whether a brand can be built, the last cut questions "if the brand is built, who owns it."
In 2025 4, Baiyunshan closed a door; in 2026 7, Haini opened a window. The story that happened in these 14 months is not just an identity leap for one company, but a footnote for the entire "Xiamen group" moving from traffic arbitrage to brand building.
From "daily settlement" to "annual payment," from "calculating ROI" to "calculating the future." What the Xiamen group is experiencing is not a strategic adjustment, but a surgery at the genetic level.
Whether the surgery succeeds depends on three tests: Are consumers willing to pay a premium for a former white-label brand? Can the organization accommodate two completely different rhythms? And most fundamentally, can they let go of the self that "earned the first gold coin"?
The Xiamen group wants to change from sellers to brand builders, and there is still a long way to go. But at least, they have started walking.