Yumeijing, 44, 'gets online' overnight — chairman dances, first livestream tops RMB 1M

In September 2023, Florasis's 79-yuan eyebrow-pencil row sent Chinese shoppers rushing to cheap veteran brands. Bee & Flower sold 79-yuan shampoo bundles and sold out; other legacy brands piled in. Yumeijing, a Tianjin children's-cream maker with over RMB 1 billion in annual sales by 2015, had no social-media presence at all, and netizens were asking why it was missing from the party.

A 44-year-old brand with no social account joins Douyin overnight and opens its first livestream with the chairman dancing to the joke that it 'finally got internet'.

On September 13 the brand announced accounts on Xiaohongshu and Douyin; on September 14 it posted 'stop rushing us — we just got internet. We're 44 and not good at this, please forgive us.' That night chairman Shi Bin opened the brand's first-ever livestream by dancing to thank viewers, put up a 79-yuan bundle of its own, and traded jokes in the comments with China Post and other guohuo brands.

By 10 a.m. on September 15 the account had 845,000 followers, roughly a day after opening. The ten-hour debut livestream recorded sales of RMB 1–2.5 million per Chanmama data, and #郁美净终于通网# ('Yumeijing finally got internet') trended on Weibo.

Yumeijing is a Tianjin brand founded in 1980 (its predecessor dates to 1979) whose fresh-milk children's cream became a household staple; the company passed RMB 100 million in sales in 1997 and RMB 1 billion in 2015. By 2023 it was still selling that same cream — but it had never opened a social-media account or run an e-commerce livestream, while younger competitors built empires on Douyin.

On September 11, 2023, Bee & Flower, a fellow legacy brand, repriced its shampoo bundles at 79 yuan in response to Florasis's 79-yuan eyebrow pencil, and its livestream flooded with buyers; Hongxing Erke and other veterans joined the running joke that this was 'the most plain-spoken business war in history'. The wave made every unfashionable old brand into a target of affection — and Yumeijing, invisible online, was the one netizens kept asking about.

The brand answered in 48 hours. It registered accounts on September 13, announced itself on September 14 with a self-mocking post admitting it was '44 years old and not good at this', and opened its first livestream that night with chairman Shi Bin dancing on camera. It listed a 79-yuan bundle to join the meme, and the comment sections of China Post and other guohuo brands filled with banter welcoming the latecomer.

The results were immediate: 845,000 followers within about a day, ten-hour debut-night sales between RMB 1 million and 2.5 million per third-party tracker Chanmama, and a trending Weibo hashtag. The moment became the textbook example of the September 2023 guohuo livestream wave.

Self-deprecation was the right register: a 44-year-old brand admitting it 'didn't know how to play' disarmed suspicion of opportunism.

The chairman's dance converted a corporate account registration into a human, shareable moment.

Speed mattered: registering and streaming within 48 hours let it catch a wave that was still cresting.

The 79-yuan bundle gave shoppers a concrete way to participate in the meme rather than just watch it.

Decades of unclaimed brand trust — the cream almost every Chinese household once used — meant affection was already banked; the livestream just collected it.

For a legacy brand, showing up online can itself be the content. Yumeijing turned its lateness into the story — self-aware clumsiness beat polish, and arriving fast mattered more than arriving well.

Yumeijing kept its Douyin and Xiaohongshu accounts running after the debut, and coverage grouped it with Bee & Flower as proof that China's legacy 'guohuo' brands could still command national attention. Press analysis framed the episode as both a windfall and a warning — the wave showed how much goodwill these brands had banked, but also how far behind they had fallen on the channels where younger consumers now shop.