As Liu Genghong’s fitness livestreaming continues to take the Internet by storm, not only does this live streamer make shrewd moves, but his commercial value also continues to grow at a surprisingly rapid rate, which has attracted great public attention.
The online fitness business has seen a significant surge in China since the pandemic started in 2020. According to online research, female consumers who are the majority in this vast fitness market, make up a market share of 72%.
Meanwhile, the retail scale of China’s sportswear market in 2021 was 371.8 billion RMB ($56.2 billion), a year-on-year increase of 19.1%. China’s huge consumer market has paved the way for Liu Genghong’s commercial empire to expand from fitness meals to sports equipment and clothing.
From what we’ve seen thus far, it won’t be long before celebrities who go viral overnight will bring in a huge amount of business value. Clearly, Liu Genghong’s brand collaboration plan has long been premeditated. As netizens compare the non-labelled clothes Liu wore at first, to his latter collaboration with Li Ning’s sportswear, Liu is seemingly showing more interest in collaborating with brands. He is still in the midst of planning his business expansion after seeing rapid fan growth of 4.5 million and ad quotes increasing 2.5 times.
Not only that, this fitness livestreaming giant also keeps a close collaborative relationship with his wife. While Liu Genghong shares sports and fitness content on his account, Wang Wanfei, Liu’s wife, shares her “Vivi Healthy Kitchen” series on her Xiaohongshu account, introducing delicious and healthy dishes with less oil, salt, and is low in calories.
Of course, there are pitfalls too, with the most obvious being that Liu will undoubtedly face a change in his fitness livestreaming image. He may lose the simplicity of gathering people together to follow his home aerobic workout routines – kicking shuttlecock (a traditional Chinese folk game). As well as Liu’s followers’ decision on whether to continue following him or turn to others who focus purely on healthy things that have been made popular since Liu’s wave.
Even so, people also need to bear in mind that Liu’s business potentially changing direction won’t be a faint-hearted decision. It is an endeavor that will first require playing a waiting game.
