Taking the wrong path of “peeping on women” marketing for blog traffic? There is deep anxiety behind the high growth of Mingchuang Premium (09896)
Not long after the “non-members can't pay” incident, Mingchuang Premium (09896) received several negative trending topics one after another.
Over the past two days, entries such as “Mingchuang Premium's Diary”, “Mingchuang Premium Apologizes”, and “The blogger account involved in Mingchuang Premium is already private” have hit the hot list one after another.
From tough offline “scan the code to pull new products” to “edge marketing” that crosses the border online, these controversial operations seem to be out of place with a recent financial report on a sharp increase in profits handed over.
On the one hand, there are gorgeous results, and on the other, public opinion overturns one after another. What happened to Mingchuang Premium?
Using spying on women as marketing material?
Some netizens discovered that in a video posted by the Douyin blogger “A Lei's Diary,” which has more than 500,000 followers, there was actually content that you can sneak a peek at the female residents downstairs by lifting the floor after the renovation.
The key point is that the video's copy marks “Mingchuang Premium Product,” “Mingchuang Premium Home Textiles,” and “Dormitory Memory Foam Pad,” and the product focuses on “lightweight” characteristics.
If you look through the blogger's content on other platforms, you'll find that the video in question is part of its continuously updated “King of Home Improvement” series. The content mainly uses funny and exaggerated methods to tell a series of funny clips about “When You Hire Your Friend to Decorate Your Home to Save Money”.
Picture/social media screenshot
However, the idea of entertaining spying on the act of spying quickly aroused disgust and questioning from a large number of consumers when linked to brands and products. In particular, many female consumers felt deeply offended.
You need to know that the young woman being spied on in the video is the core consumer of Mingchuang Premium.
According to the Huaxin Securities Research Report, the consumer portraits of Mingchuang Premium are mainly students aged 16 to 28 and young white-collar women. Open e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, and also mostly women appear in promotional videos for products related to Mingchuang Premium bedding, etc.
After the incident unraveled, the accounts of the bloggers involved have now turned private.
Picture/social media screenshot
Mingchuang Premium also issued an urgent letter of apology on the evening of July 13, announcing the termination of cooperation and the removal of relevant content from the entire network.
In fact, this isn't the first time Mingchuang Premium has offended its core customer base due to a marketing rollover.
In 2024, when introducing the famous IP “chiikawa” product, the official flagship store of Mingchuang Premium used inappropriate adjectives such as “intellectual disability and crying,” “crazy,” and “waistband,” which not only revealed that the brand lacked a basic understanding of the cooperative IP, but also directly hurt the huge fan base that paid for it, causing strong dissatisfaction.
From IPs that don't respect consumers' favorites to today using voyeur stories from a male perspective to sell home textiles with women as the main decision makers, the failure of Mingchuang Premium in marketing control is probably obvious.
Regarding this phenomenon, PR expert and senior digital marketing director Wensha pointed out from an objective level of implementation that under the planting logic of the algorithm era, the online launch of large-scale FMCG brands is often handed over to proxy operators or marketing companies, and brands usually only clarify the direction of communication.
“With the huge amount of materials, it is really difficult for brands to strictly control every material. “People at the end of the blog with 500,000 followers may have inappropriate content, but as a listed group, this must not be an excuse for shirking responsibility and allowing content to compromise with vulgarity, which in itself is irresponsible for the brand's reputation.” Wensha emphasized.
In contrast, industry analyst Zhang Shule has a harsher attitude. He pointed out that since it is a business partnership, it is impossible for the brand to not review the video in advance and turn a close eye on this kind of sideline traffic, which reveals its marketing “traffic KPI” characteristics.
Zhang Shule said that women are the main decision makers in household consumption. Using marketing topics from a male perspective shows that brands do not really understand the target audience experience, and “there is nothing they can do about it other than a cold official announcement of the standard process.”
It is worth mentioning that this letter of apology is sealed with the official seal of “Mingchuang Premium Technology (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd.”, but the sending account is “Mingchuang Premium Home Textiles Hetong”.
As of the evening of July 15, the account that posted the apology letter had only 63 followers. Picture/social media screenshot
According to the Tianyancha App, the former is wholly owned by Mingchuang Premium (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd., while the latter's corporate certification entity is Nantong Hetong Textile Co., Ltd., and there is no connection with Mingchuang Premium after the shares were penetrated.
In contrast, none of the official main accounts of Mingchuang Premium's platforms spoke out about this.
PR expert Wensha believes that to some extent, this is suspected of being “exploited”: “It usually means a wait-and-see attitude, and follow-up actions depend on the extent to which the situation unfolds. It's serious; the statement that has been issued can 'save' lives. If it's not serious, then this incident will just pass.”
What happened to Mingchuang Premium?
The disorder and omission of online publicity seem to be the same in terms of underlying logic as another storm recently caused by Mingchuang Premium offline.
Earlier, consumers in many places concentrated on complaints about “one-size-fits-all” when checking out at Mingchuang Premium's offline stores, and to buy a bottle of water, they had to scan a code to register as a member before they could pay. Officials later responded that membership restrictions “only target popular toy categories such as blind boxes and vinyl plush dolls.”
Although this paper's response provided a literal clarification, it also acknowledged in disguise the fact that Mingchuang Premium tried to use popular products as a drainage tool to forcibly convert public traffic into private sector members.
Whether it's exchanging traffic for traffic online, or using popular IP dolls offline to forcibly divert new traffic and obtain user data, what is reflected behind these operations is the deep anxiety caused by Mingchuang Premium to maintain a high-growth story.
Judging from the books, the report card for the first quarter of 2026 handed over by Mingchuang Premium is outstanding. Financial reports show that its revenue for the single quarter reached 5.688 billion yuan, up 28.5% year on year; profit for the period reached 1,248 billion yuan, up 199.7% year on year.
However, if you carefully disassemble the profit structure, you will find that the sharp increase in profit in the first quarter largely depended on its early investment in the AI unicorn MiniMax.
Financial reports show that the investment in the artificial intelligence industry brought unrealized returns from fair value changes of 874.6 million yuan; after excluding this portion of non-recurring income and exchange gains and losses, Mingchuang Premium's adjusted net profit actually grew 8.1% year-on-year in the first quarter.
Looking back at the full year of 2025, the net profit of Mingchuang Premium in 2025 fell by about 54% year-on-year due to factors such as accounting for Yonghui supermarket's loss of 812.7 million yuan.
This means that leaving aside the ups and downs brought about by cross-border investment, Mingchuang Premium's physical retail infrastructure is facing a test. By the end of the first quarter of 2026, Mingchuang Premium Group had 8,565 stores worldwide. In a situation where domestic business districts in Tier 1 and 2 cities tend to be saturated, the logic of exchanging scale for growth may encounter bottlenecks.
When organic offline traffic hits the ceiling, it becomes an important bargaining chip to prove its ability to continue to monetize to the capital market by attracting new members. This not only explains why the grassroots level of stores are being forced to upgrade under the pressure of consumer complaints, but also explains to a certain extent why online marketing teams take the lead in traffic conversion rates.
Mingchuang Premium has had an ambitious strategic vision in recent years. It has been trying to tear off the “low-end ten yuan store” label and transform into a global “super brand.” However, there seems to be a continuous split between a high-end strategic vision and expansive end execution.
Zhang Shule pointed out that the image of Mingchuang Premium's 10 yuan store is too deeply entrenched in the hearts of the people. Excessive desire to forcibly elevate its position through Chaowan IP will instead cause a rift in the brand image.
On this basis, Wensha also added that Mingchuang Premium started with channels and business models. Although it has achieved a huge scale, it has not been able to truly establish a great brand value that resonates with today's young people.
“Doing things only from the dimensions of data, selling goods, and growing plants will inevitably lead to a disconnect between brand tone and ideas. It's not easy to be a profitable business, but it's obviously harder to be a great business.” she concluded.
This article is reprinted from “Interesting Report”, author: Liang Tingting; Zhitong Finance editor: Yan Wencai.