Although EAST BUY's stock performance has been strong in the short term after "de-Dong Yuhui-ization," and the company has gradually shifted its strategic focus toward self-operated products while attempting to build a membership-based retail model similar to an "online Sam's Club," Dong Yuhui's departure still caused some short-term impact on the company's financial performance. Compared to Sam's Club, EAST BUY still faces significant gaps in product pricing and supply chain management.

On August 16, Luo Yonghao posted on Weibo claiming that after Dong Yuhui established his independent venture "Walking with Hui," his annual revenue could reach 20-30 billion yuan, yet he still needed to borrow money for a down payment before leaving EAST BUY Holdings Limited (Stock Name: EAST BUY, Stock Code: 01797.HK). This statement quickly sparked widespread discussion and reached second place on Weibo's trending topics. In response, "Walking with Hui" immediately clarified that the related information was inaccurate.

However, one year after Dong Yuhui's departure, EAST BUY's stock price has experienced sustained growth with strong momentum, even showing a trend toward challenging the peak of HK$75.5 per share reached during Dong Yuhui's popularity surge. As of the close on August 18, 2025, EAST BUY's stock price was HK$43.38 per share, up 5.19%. From the stock price trend, since July 2, 2025, when the stock price was HK$12.94, it has cumulatively risen over 235% in less than 50 days, reaching a market value of HK$45.4 billion.

Although EAST BUY's stock performance has been strong in the short term after "de-Dong Yuhui-ization," and the company has gradually shifted its strategic focus toward self-operated products while attempting to build a membership-based retail model similar to an "online Sam's Club," Dong Yuhui's departure still caused some short-term impact on the company's financial performance. Compared to Sam's Club, EAST BUY still faces significant gaps in product pricing and supply chain management.

**De-headlining Strategy Faces Short-term Performance Pressure**

EAST BUY was launched by New Oriental in 2021, initially operating as a live-streaming e-commerce platform. In June 2022, Dong Yuhui became viral on Douyin with a "bilingual steak explanation" live stream, rapidly accumulating a large fan base and becoming the platform's top anchor, driving EAST BUY's rapid development.

As a live-streaming company dependent on top influencer sales, EAST BUY's business model was limited by over-reliance on a single celebrity effect. As the company's strategy gradually shifted toward "de-headlining" and focused on self-operated products, the relationship between EAST BUY and Dong Yuhui gradually became distant.

On July 25, 2024, Dong Yuhui announced his independent development, acquiring 100% equity in "Walking with Hui" for 76.59 million yuan, successfully achieving independent operations. After Dong Yuhui's departure, Luo Yonghao publicly expressed support, stating that Dong Yuhui "bought back his own company with his own earned money."

On August 7 of the same year, Dong Yuhui held his first live stream after departure in the "Walking with Hui" streaming room, achieving an average monthly sales of 25.5 million yuan. Since 2025, "Walking with Hui" has conducted nearly 280 live streams, with third-party data showing average sales per session between 25-50 million yuan, with annual sales exceeding 10 billion yuan.

Clearly, Dong Yuhui's departure had a short-term impact on EAST BUY's financial performance. According to the FY2025 interim report, for the period ending November 30, 2024, EAST BUY's continuing operations (including self-operated products and live-streaming e-commerce) generated revenue of 2.187 billion yuan, down 9.29% year-over-year; GMV was 4.8 billion yuan, down 15.79% year-over-year. Additionally, the disposal of "Walking with Hui" resulted in a loss of 97 million yuan. Excluding this factor, net profit was only 33 million yuan, a significant 79.50% decline year-over-year.

**Becoming "Online Sam's Club" - Still a Long Road Ahead**

Currently, EAST BUY is vigorously developing self-operated products and attempting to create an online membership-based retail model similar to Sam's Club. The company launched an independent APP in August 2022 and introduced a paid membership service with an annual fee of 199 yuan in October 2023, offering benefits such as discounts and coupons.

According to the 2025 interim report, the APP's paid membership reached 228,300, with approximately 600 self-operated SKUs. For the six months ending November 30, 2024, GMV was 4.8 billion yuan, with self-operated products accounting for about 37%. GMV from the APP accounted for 13.6%, while self-operated product orders on the Douyin platform totaled 50.1 million.

With the gradual reduction of discounts, the company's private brand gross margin has improved (from the second half of 2024 to 21% in the first half of 2025), and the comprehensive gross margin has also grown from last year's 32.9% to 33.6%.

However, compared to Sam's Club, EAST BUY still has obvious gaps in gross margin and membership revenue structure. According to Walmart's Q1 2025 financial report, Walmart's overall gross margin was 24.94%, with Sam's Club in the US market achieving a gross margin of 11.7%. Additionally, Walmart China CEO Zhu Xiaojing revealed that Sam's China achieved operating revenue of 100.5 billion yuan in 2024, with over 5 million members and membership fee income exceeding 1.3 billion yuan. Membership fees have become a key pillar of Walmart China's profitability.

Clearly, Sam's profit model relies more on membership fee income rather than purely high gross margins, an advantage that EAST BUY has yet to achieve.

In terms of supply chain, Sam's "store-warehouse" model has obvious advantages. Sam's can achieve shared inventory pools for online and offline orders, greatly shortening product circulation time, enabling fresh products to complete the loop from shelf to table within 48 hours. In contrast, EAST BUY still relies on the traditional "multi-level distribution" model, where agricultural products must pass through multiple intermediaries including origin purchasers, regional wholesalers, and urban distributors before entering the main warehouse, significantly increasing product loss and quality control risks.

Data shows that in the past 30 days, EAST BUY has received 11 complaints about product quality, involving issues such as damaged packaging, poor quality, and product deterioration.

Although EAST BUY is learning from Sam's business model, the possibility of its success remains uncertain. Freshippo's membership store, which had a similar model to Sam's Club, ultimately ended with large-scale store closures due to lack of flagship products and immature supply chains.

As EAST BUY's transformation deepens, despite improvements in its self-operated products' gross margins and membership system, it still faces a series of challenges, especially in an increasingly competitive market environment. Although the company attempts to bridge gaps in gross margins and product pricing by improving supply chain efficiency and enhancing member loyalty, EAST BUY has yet to compete with mature membership retail giants like Sam's in terms of resource integration and scale effects.

In the short term, EAST BUY may still need to rely on the strong traffic from live-streaming e-commerce and innovative marketing models to drive growth. However, in the long term, optimizing the supply chain system, improving product competitiveness, and accelerating the maturation of the membership revenue model are key to determining whether it can develop steadily in the future.

As the competitive landscape of the domestic and international retail industry changes, whether EAST BUY can break through current bottlenecks and create brand value with sustained appeal still requires time to verify.